English 420: Business Writing

This week our group got a lot accomplished. After meeting in Chauncey Village on Monday, I drove our group out to see Natalie Moore, our client, and owner of Natalie’s Second Chance Dog Shelter. Her dogs were quite loud and entertaining so our group’s talk with her was delayed. We showed her our brochure and asked for her suggestions. There was a lot she really liked about the brochure and then we also added some of the things she wanted on there. On Tuesday we had our meeting with Mr. Baker and decided not to meet until class on Thursday. On Thursday, we spent our time very well.

This week, since it was thanksgiving holidays, we were waiting on information from the client, so we didn't achieve much. However, two of us were working on a template that we are going to present to the client for their final approval. We are also planning to meet on Monday to finish our drafts before Mr. Baker meets with us.

During the week we finished our contract. I started it earlier in the week and sent it to the other members of our group to edit it. We then sent it to Mr. Baker to get the new format and get the approval. After we met with Mr. Baker on Thursday morning we had a better idea of where we wanted to go with the rest of our project. He suggested that we submit a one page document to them also highlighting other potential ideas for a menu. Because they plan to potentially use touch screen monitors to select songs, one idea is to use that to order food.

This week my group communicated a lot through e-mail because we were all very busy. We did meet in order to finish our proposal. While working on the proposal, we figured out our deliverables for the project and when we should expect to have most of it completed for Lafayette Instrument, our client. We finished our proposal and then met with Mr. Baker on Thursday to present our ideas. We have decided to create 2 different newsletter templates and they may choose which one they would like to use or they can use both of them.

This past week our group made significant progress on our project. We designed the format and layout of what the menu will look like, as well as printed out a rough draft with the complete menu on it. Three of us went to Skylight Coffee House on Wednesday to meet with one of the owners and discuss our progress thus far and get feedback. Mrs. Benner loved the style of our menu and gave us her updated menu list so that we could add the new items to ours. We looked up the menu on their website, but there were some food and beverages that Skylight offers that were not on the website.

This week we worked together to create a contract so that we can have enough time to have all parties sign before the due date next week. Since the next few weeks are going to be hectic getting ready for finals week, we are going to get a head start on some items. I will be out of town this weekend for a family event but will think up of questions to ask during the interview that we plan to film the week we get back from Thanksgiving break. We are also going to start creating menu templates and come up with different ideas on how to display the menus.

Due to our client being out of town during the time our contract was due, we had to create our contract early so that he would be able to sign it so we could start working on our deliverables before Thanksgiving break. Therefore, we met early with Mr. Baker on Friday to discuss our formal proposal and the ideas we had for creating deliverables for Sports Etc. After this meeting, we drafted our contract and set up a time with Mike from Sports Etc to sign it.

This week was our groups third week of the Client-Based Project. Due to some prior travel plans, our client, Mike, was not available for our scheduled client contract completion date. Get work around this obstacle, our group first had meet earlier in order to discuss our deliverables that we were in agreement to for our contract with the client. Secondly, our group had to create a contract for the client at an earlier scheduled time. Our group met together on Sunday to complete this step.

This was a very active week for our group for the client based project. On Monday Samantha and Brandy went down to Two Tulips to meet with our client and discuss more about what she wanted done. After meeting with her, we discovered there was no need to create a flier for the 15 sororities as we had planned to do earlier since Cheryl (the owner of Two Tulips) already had pamphlets she hands out to every sorority. Mr. Baker had suggested during our meeting on Thursday to make an electronic flier instead of printing them out.

During the past week, our group worked to create a rough draft of a template of the menu we are creating for Skylight Coffee House. We wanted to give Mrs. Brenner, who we had a meeting with on Wednesday, an idea of what we envisioned for a menu redesigned for distribution. Our group used the menu information from www.skylightcoffee.com to create the template. On the template, we created various sections for drinks and different categories of food. There was space designated for a picture on the front of the menu and some space left throughout for menu updates and other images.