English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week was a hectic one as our group was finalizing the draft. On Monday at 6pm we had our weekly meeting. It was here that I bounced ideas around with everyone on how to break up the editing. Mike did a majority of the editing, but he still needed my resources and input on it all. I went through my solar power section and found all the resources that I used to write about solar power and forwarded them to him. I then proofread the white paper at several different stages of the editing process.

This week was a busy week for me. First, on Monday, I participated in our weekly group meeting online through AIM. Next, I came up with a design for our white paper. The thumbnail was due Wednesday, and I struggled to get it exactly how I wanted; I couldn't get an active sidebar similar to the white paper example (steak and sizzle one). I then proceeded to comment on my group members' thumbnail sketches. I liked features from all of them, but I believe that we should start with Adam Waters' as his has the sidebar that I was seeking to employ.

Topic: Solar Radiation Maps

Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

As I was doing my research for this white paper, I stumbled across some valuable information. I was looking for information in the form of text to reference for writing the body of our document, but I forgot that visuals are always helpful in relaying information. That’s when I saw many different variations of graphs, charts, and maps from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Topic: Government Affairs

Source: Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

Topic: Photovoltaic (PV) Technology

Source: DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewably Energy, Energy Information Administration

This week for Group 8 was a productive one. On Monday we all met in a chat room via AIM. There we discussed how we wanted to approach the project. We had found that our audience for our white paper needed a more specific audience. In our proposal we stated that our primary audience would be political leaders. We learned that this audience is too broad and needed to be more specific; therefore, we narrowed our primary audience to someone that is in charge of making new policies for energy, such as the Secretary of Energy.

This week was a tough one because we did not have much time to complete the proposal. I believe having a little more time would have been nice, but we are cutting it close here at the end of the semester. This week my group decided to split the project up into the four major documents due. Lindsay Petrovi did the bulk of the proposal. She did a well thought out rough draft. She posted it on Google Docs and then I gave feedback to what questions she still had about the proposal. Overall she did the bulk and my answers were small.

I have never heard of a white paper before this assignment. I found there a few major components to consider when writing a white paper: audience, context, and credibility. First the audience is important because your vocabulary should form around the directed audience. For example, if a technical white paper is meant for company executives, then the details and vocabulary should be more elementary so the executive knows what is going on. Likewise, if a technical audience is desired for the same white paper, more technical terms can be used.