Individual Report - Week 13

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Submitted by ajwaters on Sun, 04/12/2009 - 18:12

Our white paper project seemed to really take shape and get off the ground during this past week. Last week, we deciding upon a topic and established a general definition of our audience. We chose solutions to America’s oil dependence, focusing on sustainable energy sources and smart grid technologies. Initially, our audience was defined as “American political leaders”. The instructor feedback from our initial proposal suggested that this was vague and too broad for the sake of this project. Our group met online on Monday evening and discussed ways to narrow our audience to something more specific. I suggested that we focus on officials and policy makers who deal with energy solutions, specifically the Department of Energy. Our idea right now is to prepare a white paper for the Secretary of Energy, with members of his cabinet being secondary and, possibly, tertiary readers.

In addition to the work on our audience definition, we discussed how we would go about completing each deliverable for the project, and who would be primarily responsible for each portion. Adam P. volunteered for the Ganatt chart due this past week. Upon working up his initial draft, we circulated the document via email making updates and edits to finalize the chart (there was some problems working it up through Google Docs). I, specifically, figured out how to make the due-dates for each separate task appear on the chart in a different color. I also added some graphical elements including chart lines and a legend (which was omitted for cleanliness). I rechecked the chart before sending it along, ensuring it met all criteria and followed the guidelines of a proper Gantt chart.

I also volunteered to take responsibility for the group report this upcoming week, as well as cover the research for political/environmental effects of oil dependence and smart-grid technologies. I have conducted some initial research, and plan on devoting time this evening to have at least one research blog completed and posted by tomorrow night.