English 420: Business Writing

This week we had a final decision that we wanted to work with the new karaoke bar that will be opening. After doing some brainstorming in class of exactly what we felt we could give the company, we decided that creating a menu template and some fliers to get the buzz about the new venue opening would be very beneficial. We decided it was a good idea to create a schedule of when we plan on getting our work done. As a group we planned out roughly when we could meet but realize that with everyone’s changing schedules we would have to be very flexible.

For the week beginning November 8, my group and I had a few goals that we would try to attain by the end of this week. Our group met on Tuesday in class and finalized the type of public document that we would be providing for Skylight Coffee House. We all thought the best option for this project would be to redesign the menus that are distributed in the coffee house. We would also pass these menus out to different areas around Lafayette.

This week our group decided to go with Lafayette Instrument Company for our project. We let them know through email and I met up with the president of the company to discuss our means further. He then presented to me what he wanted us to do for them. They want us to prepare a new template for the company's newsletter and write an article in it about two of their new employees. After I told my group what they wanted us to do, we then met up on Wednesday in Hicks to prepare and complete our proposal which the class peer evaluated on Thursday.

Our group met Wednesday to work on the project proposal. I completed most of the document on my own, but Erik and Taylor helped me to edit it and work on dividing up different parts of the project. After editing other groups’ documents and receiving some feedback on our document, I feel like we have a solid plan for this project. I have a few minor things to change in our proposal before the meeting on Thursday though. Most of the comments on our proposal were about minor grammatical errors, but there was some concern about how we will know what color scheme to use for the menu.

This week was a very productive week for our group. We started our week by finishing up our memo and coming together to decide where we wanted to take the project, and what we wanted to ask Mike at Sports Etc to see what he wanted to get from the project. We went into the interview with a few possible ideas, but since we did not know what he wanted, we had to keep an open mind about our possible deliverables. The day before we met with Mike we decided to start drafting our proposal, so we had a clear direction of what we wanted to do.

This week first of all we discussed on what company do we want to do our project for. After a small debate we zeroed that we want to do our project for a Lafayette based company called Lafayette Instrument. Chris went and talked to the person he initially made contact with about what type of project does their company want us to do. They asked us to design a newsletter template that they will be using from here on. We all agreed that it could be a good project. We met up in class to decide who will do what part for our proposal draft due Thursday.

This was a very productive and encouraging week for our group. After learning last week that Sports Etc was very willing to work with us on this project, we decided as a team to choose this company. I contacted to owner, Mike Thiel, to set up a meeting with him at his store to discuss what he was hoping to get out of working with us on this project as well as what we needed from him. Since our meeting with him was not until Wednesday and our formal proposal was due Thursday morning, we began working on the proposal in class Tuesday morning.

This week, my group worked hard to get a proposal constructed to turn in as a rough draft. Tuesday during class, we discussed what we had heard from our three options. Clayton said Skylight was very enthusiastic, Stephen said Vienna did not want to participate, and when I spoke to Java Roaster, they were interested but the owner was not free to talk until that afternoon between 1 and 4. Due to Skylight’s enthusiasm, we decided that would be the easiest and most pleasant coffee house to work with. Skylight is owned by an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Benner.