Chapter 21

A part of this chapter that I found interesting was the section about types of oral presentations, particularly sales presentations.  This is because at my company I have sat in on a handful of different sales presentations, some from my company for my company, and some from other companies for other companies.  As I read this particular section, I noticed that the presentations I watched followed these guidelines quite well.  The people giving the presentations would almost always be part of the development team for the company's product.  They would be able to answer literally any question about the product because they understand it not only from a user's perspective but also from an architectural perspective.  They always seemed very friendly and interested in the needs of the possible customers.  At the end was always a Q&A which really showed the presenter's expertise on the product and it's design.  I think the presentations I watched will serve as a good example for presentations I may give in this class.

Chapter 17

A part of this chapter that I found interesting was the discussion on the solicited versus the unsolicited proposal.  A solicited proposal is one that has been requested, and an unsolicited proposal is one that has not.  A proposal for a phone app would definitely be an unsolicited proposal.  We have not been asked to create this app, we simply have created it and now wish to 'sell' it to the class.  Due to the nature of an unsolicited request, we have to work a bit harder to convince the readers to use our app; they have not asked for it, so our goal is to make them want what they never knew existed.  This should be fun.

Nerdy Birds' Memo

Personally, I reviewed the memo made by the Nerdy Birds group.  I only had a chance to glance at the other pieces of their packet, so I'll just speak of the memo in this post.  One of the things I noticed in their memo, that was not included in ours, was an initial 'thank you' to the reader for reading the memo.  Another thing I noticed was that their were a few grammatical mistakes in the body.  With the memo being mostly used in professional situations, it seems best that they be proofread a couple times before being sent out.  I had one more point to make about their memo, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment and can't recall.

Chapter 14

I think summaries are a wonderful invention.  I find more often than not, I am too busy to read an entire letter or wall of text someone has linked or emailed me.  Summaries really keep the reader in mind because, as the chapter says, they appeal not only to the readers of the main article of information but to the ones that don't have the time to read the entire article.  Brevity is far between these days in business communication, so I really think we should bring back the summary in work emails.

Chapter 10

I thought an interesting part of this chapter was the discussion of a "you" perspective.  'A letter displaying a "you" perspective puts the reader's interest and feelings first."  I think too often people write letters without this tone; they write in a "me" tone where it seems they are the only person who is being affected by the information in the letter.  At my company we have a few specific people that are known for writing nasty letters when things aren't being done correctly.  I think writing this kind of letter more or less shoots yourself in the foot.  People are less likely to get anything at all from your letter if you leave them out of the picture.