Original Definition Document

I assumed with my experience writing technical documents and reports these definitions would be an easy assignment however they were surprisingly more difficult than I had originally thought. When you are writing for people you work with, be it at a job or for a class, you can take real liberties in the explanations you use as the people in that environment are usually well versed in the topic being discussed. This assignment on the other hand is both technical in nature but to an audience who has a lot of unfamiliarity in the area. It is often one thing to have an understanding of something and it is another to be able to explain it in layman’s term or to teach it and this is where the difficulty of this assignment arises. I have some relevant work and some minor investments in cryptocurrencies, but distilling my knowledge into a format where the reader doesn’t have 5 years of Computer Science like myself becomes an entirely different ball game. I found that, one of our key expansion strategies outlined in the text: compare and contrast, was especially helpful in my explanations as cryptocurrencies can be seen as a derivative of modern digital financial systems.

Peer Review

The peer review process is very interesting for many of the same reasons as the original document was to create. In an area where I have little to no relevant background knowledge, having to edit the technicality and approach to detail while having no real understanding of the concepts. It’s an interesting task and one that I think would help a lot of people like myself in improving their writing. It puts you outside your comfort zone of knowledge and forces you to look at the minutiae of the text and not the details it is trying to convey, but the way they are being conveyed.

Editing Process

Reading the review of my work puts much of the work in my original document in perspective. In areas where I thought the purpose was clear, when explained from my partner’s point of view, its easy to see I was misguided. Going back I was able to really improve the brevity of the original document following the insight given to me by Jovana. One of the key improvements I feel, was the removal of redundant areas, where I may have intended to highly something different but instead doubled down on something. In particular I was able to combine the wallet section into a lower area discussing differences as well rearrange other sections into a proper section using the negation expansion strategy.

What I Learned

About My Writing

While I think one of my strengths in writing is the flow, I sometimes struggle with redundancy and repitition in trying to keep it easy to read. Along those same lines, I need to be more specific in audience. Knowing your audience is key to tailoring a document for them, and while my first version was not awful in this regard, it needed some adjustments to improve the context and breadth of detail that can be used. Another thing I learned I could improve upon is narrowing sections to be more tighter and concise in their purpose. I used comparisons to traditional currencies a few too many times in sections that were not meant to be highlighting differences and have since taken this into account for the updated document.

My Peer’s Writing

After reading Jovana’s definitions of Anomie I learned that I could be more rigid in the structure used for the writeup. Her approach was very easy to see what aspect of the concept it was trying to explain while mine was more subtle in trying to answer to questions that comes out of those aspects. Neither of us is wrong, but I think her’s was a better formal approach then mine and took some of the mental burden off of the reader. Instead of them reading a section and having questions that would be answered next, her approach simply answered the questions before they were asked.

End Result

In conclusion this unit and assignment in particular were very helpful. While explaining technical work to those within your ecosystem are important I think this assignment was particularly helpful in learning how to communicate in those who are not. In my future in the technology industry, I could see this being extraordinarily useful in things like pitches or proposals to stakeholders or management who may not see the values in something that I might.

 

Jovana’s Peer Review of My Definitions

301 Nick Rutigliano Updated Definitions