Welcome

Welcome to the course site for English 400: Business and Professional Writing, which is focused on Organizational Rhetoric and Writing. A lot of the course’s work will be done through this website. Students are asked to review the syllabus (pdf), the calendar, and the course communication guidelines (pdf). Other documents are available by selecting “Documents” from the top menu bar. I am your professor, Nathaniel Rivers, and I am looking forward to an engaging and productive semester.

Communicating with and within organizations is a crucial component of professional life no matter what shape that life takes or what directions that life moves in. Organizational rhetoric and writing can be defined as communication that motivates and structures values and behaviors within an organizational setting.

Day 14

Wednesday, December 7

• Postmortems & Organization Outcomes Due
• Formal Presentations
• “The Best of Organizational Rhetoric”

For Next Time

• Due (Friday, December 16): Individual Documentation Project: submit to both the instructor and to all team members.
• Due (Monday, December 19): Collaboration Evaluation Forms: students will receive this form upon submitting their Individual Documentation Project.

Hastings, Work Log Nov 19-Dec 2

Date: Dec 2, 2011

To: Dr. Rivers

From: Thom Hastings

Subject: Weekly Work Log

This work log summarizes the progress that I have made since November 19th toward completing the final draft of our feasibility report and other team goals and deadlines such as postmortems, conferences, and the individual documentation project.

Our team submitted our Midterm Project Report rewrite after our meeting on Tuesday, November 22nd, during which Ali, Li, and myself refined our Midterm Project Report, working primarily on its cohesiveness, flow, and alignment. Furthermore, our team continues to make progress with the feasibility report draft. We are in the process of putting together all parts of our feasibility report and finalizing them into a solid document. In addition, the team is preparing for oral reports and working on our Organization Postmortem.

The final draft of the feasibility report, as per our rubric, will focus on the physical location of the hookah bar, the total investment necessary to start a hookah bar, and will go on to expand on licensing and legal requirements, have a detailed marketing analysis, and will include details of the interior design of the hookah bar. This work has been delegated to various team members throughout the semester, and everyone has pulled their weight. This will be summarized and touched upon in our Organization Postmortem.

Our Organization Postmortem will be due this upcoming class on Wednesday, December 7th. For this document our team will largely be compressing our Midterm Project Report, while adding some reflection and summary. We will do this at team meetings this upcoming week.

Week 13: Work Log- Nie

This report is regarding the work that I have done in the week from 11/28 to 12/02 and what I am working on for the next week in SLU tailgating organization.

In the past week I have already done the all the major task in our group. So I begin to develop my individual documentation project. Also, our group has done all the major tasks. We had a group meeting during the class. We summarized all the things we have done from the day one of the project. We discussed the details on organization postmortem. We could not finish it in the class. So we made a group appointment on next Tuesday to do the postmortem and prepare the formal group presentation.

The work I need to do in the upcoming week is to read the sample final documentation project and the sample individual documentation project. Start to summarize what I did in the group and provide it to the group for editing the final documentation project.

Weekly Contribution Willis- Week 13

Date: December 2nd, 2011

To: Dr. Rivers

From: Allie Willis

Subject: Individual weekly contribution

This post summarizes my personal contribution to STL Hookah Bar from November 18th through December 2nd. Along with posting the team work blog for the week, I took and posted the meeting minutes which detailed the final task list for team team member. These minutes are crucial because there is very little room for error and miscommunication, especially in this last week. I have been editing and finalizing the documents that comprise the feasibility report, one of our final deliverables. Specifically editing and finalizing the total investment document and location description. I’ve also been working with the rest of the group on the formal final powerpoint which has proven more difficult than I thought which we’ve realized is because the post mortem report has yet to be completed. I’m confident though that if all the group members finish their assigned tasks before our next group meeting where we’ll be collectively writing the post mortem.

Khan, Weekly contribution, Nov 17- 30.

Date: December 1^st 2011              

To: Dr. Rivers

From: Ali Khan

Subject: Individual weekly contribution

 

This weekly report highlights the contribution I personally made to the Hookah Bar organization during the time period of November 17^th through December 1^st 2011.

As Thanksgiving was during this week we did not have many tasks to accomplish. My major objective for this past week was to finalize the group’s feasibility report. I managed to make so improvements as well as additions to the actual report.

The Organization Postmortem and our feasibility report is due in a week so my main focus will be on completing the documents. During class I assigned the tasks to the group with everyone’s cooperation.  We all know what part of the document we have to complete. The group decided that we should have an additional team week on Tuesday just to have everything and every aspect of the presentation covered.

The following week will be challenging as a lot of assignments are due. I also will have to help the others in creating a new Power Point presentation for the group’s final presentation. I am very optimistic and I think everything will turn out just fine.

 

STL Hookah Bar Team Work Log- Week 13

The following post summarizes group activity from November 18th through December 2nd.

Upon receiving the comments from our Midterm Report, the group met on Tuesday, November 22nd to discuss and allocate changes to be made for extra credit. The team’s current main focus is looking over all the elements that comprise the feasibility report including the Total Investment Plan, location aspects, and legalities. LiLu is adding the final touches to the marketing strategy and has compiled over 20 surveys from individuals around St. Louis in order to formulate our marketing plan. The promotional flyer has been roughly designed and will be continually updated and finalized by Thom until deliverables are presented on December 7th. Leohn has started using a program to create a blueprint for our interior design outline. For the blueprint, he’ll use the furniture that he’s previously decided on that fits into our budget. Ali and Allie will continue to finalize the feasibility report and the post-mortem. We have also started to create our powerpoint for our formal final presentation for next week. The team has scheduled a meeting for next week to collaborate efforts completing the post-mortem and power point presentation. The group continues to improve team building, organizational and time efficiency skills. We are all extremely pleased with how much progress we’ve made and how much valuable work has been completed and look forward to presenting our final project to the class.

Week 13: SLU Tailgate Team Work Log

During week 13 of the SLU Tailgating Organization, the group, as a whole, prepared to get everything ready for the final presentation.  This included individual work from each team member.

 

Michael began to start a rough draft of the powerpoint and an outline of the packet.  These will serve as a starting point for the group to work together for the completion of the project.  Nie and Barret made sure everything was correct in their pitch letters and worked on creating an presentable way to show that the businesses were commited. This is help show that we have done work to SLU and that we are prepared in our presentation.  Alex, also, worked on creating a way to present our involvement with the humane society.  Brian made the finishing touches to his flyers and made sure everything looked exactly the way he wanted.  This will help show that we are an established organization that has a purpose.

 

For next week, the group will be working together to finish the presentation and packet for SLU.  We will also be finshing our Postmortem document and preparing our presentation to the class.