Packet 1

Billy Gottenstrater
English 149 Section 17

Contents
1 Audience, Purpose, Context

2 Weekend Box Office Analysis

3 Groupwork guidelines

4 Weekly Availability

5 Persuasive Email to Boss

Audience, Purpose, Context

Audience

Professor Green

Purpose To inform Professor Green about my technical writing capabilities.

Context

The first major assignment of English 149

Weekend Box Office Analysis

To whom it may concern:

I recently went to your website to find out the box office results for this
weekend. This page has some elements that are very well done and several that
are not so well done. As a consumer and web developer, I believe that my advice
could be quite helpful to the people in charge of this page.
Your target audience is most likely young people. Teens and young adults
use the internet more than any other age groups. Since they use web pages
so much, they are very in tune with their aesthetics. This web page is not
aesthetically pleasing by todays standards. The colors and fonts are neither
interesting nor elegant, and the mobile page is just a zoomed-out version of the
desktop page. These aesthetic elements make the user experience less enjoyable.
My advice is to use Bootstrap, a CSS library that looks elegant and integrates
mobile and desktop. Your developers should find it very intuitive.
Despite the aesthetic shortcomings, the chart does a fair job of conveying
information. It is mostly intuitive to use, although some elements, such as the
background color of the rows and the headings TW, LW, and Theater Count
/ Change are not very understandable. It would be helpful to have a brief
explanation appear when the users cursor is hovering over a term (This can be
done with Bootstrap as well).
Overall, while the page is not the most aesthetically pleasing, it conveys
information well, except for a few terms with unclear meanings. I hope you can
use my comments to better your product.
Sincerely,
Billy Gottenstrater

Groupwork guidelines

Students,
Here is a list of guidelines for group work to follow during this class and
hopefully, whenever collaboration is necessary throughout your lives:
1. COMMUNICATE. Make sure that everyone knows what the others are
doing. If necessary, have an online record of each persons responsibilities.

2. Before allocating work, find out what the strengths and weaknesses of each
group member are. Then assign tasks accordingly.
3. Make sure each member has an equal amount of work. Dont let anyone
slack off or take too much work.
4. Keep the atmosphere open and respectful. A welcoming environment fosters good ideas, so be open to all new ideas.
5. Keep each member accountable for their work. The status of each members portion should be common knowledge among the group.
6. Know that each of your group members depends on you just as much as
you depend on them. If they see you working hard, they will return the
favor.
If you follow these guidelines, you should do well in life, and more importantly, in my class.

Weekly Availability

Here are the weekly times that I am available:

Monday
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Friday
Saturday

8am-12pm , 3pm-8pm
9am-12pm , 1pm-5pm
9am-11am , 3pm-7pm
12pm-8pm

Persuasive Email to Boss

TO: Adam Anderson

FROM: Billy Gottenstrater
DATE: Sun Sep 27 2015 16:11:20 GMT-0700 (PDT)
SUBJECT: An opportunity to better your employee
Adam,
There is a technical writing class currently being offered at Cal Poly San
Luis Obispo. As you know, this is an area which I have routinely struggled. I
believe it would be beneficial for the company and me if I took this class. The
only problem is that I dont have enough money to pay for the class. I would like
to request that the company pays for it. I believe it would be a wise investment
for the company. The great success of Cal Poly Engineering graduates is often
attributed to this class. I have no doubt that this investment will return more
than its price in the form of efficiency and communication from me.
Thank you for your consideration,
Billy Gottenstrater
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