Report on my Interviews

Now that I have conducted interviews with two professionals in my field, it is time to come back and report on what I have learned!

"Mount Hood Reflection" via Wikipedia.  Public domain.

What are the most significant or interesting genres that you learned about from your interviewees? Please identify at least THREE specific genres from your discipline/field of study that your interview subjects discussed writing within. 

Three of the genres that I learned about from within my field of study are presentations (slideshows), videos, and articles/papers.

How do these genres differ from one another? Think about things like genre convention, content, purpose, audience, message, and context as you describe these differences.

The purposes of the genres are generally the same, to inform the audience.  Generally this information is about the discoveries or experiments  that the author of the work has made.  Videos and slideshows are generally intended for scenarios such as conferences or meetings so that a lot of people can acquire the information at the same time in an easy manner.  These two are similar because they heavily rely on visuals to inform their audiences, but videos have the additional aspect of audio.  Articles are the most text-based genre that are usually submitted to academic journals and databases once completed.

Based on the information you gathered in your interviews, what is challenging and/or difficult about writing within these genres (from a professional's point of view)?

One of the most difficult aspects of writing in the field is dealing with time constraints and the editing process.  It is very important to meet deadlines which can be stressful and require rigorous work.  The editing process can be difficult because an author's work is subjected to peer review, and the reviews can be extremely critical and require a lot of changes to be made, or the entire work can be completely scrapped.

Based on the information you gathered in your interviews, what is exciting and/or rewarding about writing within these genres (from a professional's point of view)?

The exciting aspect of writing in the field is that the content of the work are able to progress society in terms of technological advancement.  Published works are the result of tremendous research and discoveries, and the thought of getting these findings out into the world is rewarding.

Where in mass media - popular, academic, and/or social - can examples of this genre be found? If genre examples cannot be found within mass media easily, where can genre examples be found/located?

Genre examples of engineering work can be found on websites such as researchgate.com which assimilate the published works of people.  However, not all genres can be easily found, as the slideshow and video genres are generally intended for conferences and are sometimes not for public view if the contents of the work are for the private sector.