For this essay I wrote about the same topic for my other two compositions, tech. However, in this one I focused entirely on diversity in tech. We had to identify our audience and purpose to create the two best genres for that specific audience and purpose. The two genres I chose to do was a website and an interview/podcast.

The website and the interview can be found here.

Potential Genres and a Reflection on the Research-based Inquiry Essay

Writing the inquiry based essay was actually quite enjoyable and informing. Doing the research about my inquiry, mainly about the lack of diversity in the tech field (My question was “How do we avoid racial and sexist biases in artificial intelligence?”) I found out that the tech field is actually suffering from an issue that I thought wasn’t as bad as it actually is. So doing the essay served as a sort of eye opener to the huge problem that there is. Even though I was very interested in the question I tried to answer, this wasn’t my initial question. I didn’t even start in this area. My first question I had was about universal basic income. I went through numerous iterations of around the same question. Going through this process, I researched and researched but I couldn’t really find a good amount of evidence to use for the question. Also the inquiries I came up with for this topic I felt like you could answer them easily or that it was too hard for me to find sufficient evidence to answer it, meaning it was too hard. The thing that got me into my field was an informative speech that I had to do. The speech was about AI and its problem with the lack of diversity in tech. I applied this topic to my essay, and since it was a topic I was more interested in, I found it easier to come up with questions about it. After going through multiple iterations of a couple of different questions on the lack of diversity in tech I i finally came up with my question. After this it was relatively easy compared to the process of coming up with the question.

I think multiple genres could work for my composition. My purpose in writing this piece is to get more women and minorities into tech. So thinking of my purpose, my audience would be targeted towards young women and minorities. Also considering that my piece is technology related I think it would be best if my medium was through technology. So the genres I’m thinking of using are, a website with information on women and minorities in tech, an interview with women/minorities in tech, and a social media post. I would really enjoy doing all of these, however I think the most interesting and fun out of the three would be to do the interview and a website. A website would be great because it would be easier to get people that are already familiar with tech, to get interested in tech. Also I could use the website to post the interview on it too! On the Website I’ll probably include pages with, relatable figures in tech for minorities/women, opportunities in tech, why theres such a need for minorities/women in tech, etc. With the interview I’ll probably ask about my interviewee’s experience in tech and advice they could give, and topics of the sort.

My Audience Strategy

For my two genres I’m planning to do an interview and a website where people can view information about the lack of diversity in tech (It will also have the interview on it as well). I’m using this genre as a means to spread awareness of this issue because of my audience. My intended audience is going to be women and minorities that aren’t already in the tech field, career wise or studying for it, and also women and minorities who are already in the tech field. More broadly, I’m trying to get my message across to young people because they have the most versatility when it comes to choosing their career as opposed to older people who can’t afford to switch careers to tech because bills must be paid and there might not be a viable way for them to switch into tech careers. My website will help target these people because it’s mostly younger people who are on the internet and already know a little bit about technology, so it might be easier to spark an interest in a career in tech with young people than it would be for old people. On the website I plan to have information about the disparities between males and females in tech and the lack of diversity of tech workers. I also plan to have tabs you can click on to go to other areas which will hold information about the tab’s name. Tab’s I plan to include are, “What’s the problem?”, “Why is this an issue?”, “How you could get Involved”,”Benefits of being in Tech”, “Minority and Women Leaders in Tech” (Also give some info on why it’s important to emphasize these figures), “Scholarships and Programs for Minorities and Women in Tech”. Having tabs like these should make the information easily available to minorities and women in considering their career paths, it could also help anyone who might not know about these huge issues in tech. I’ll take advantage of the website as a genre as well as a medium to put my interview. For the interview I’ll be interviewing a minority woman in college pursuing a career in tech. This should help with my audience because they should be able to relate to a minority woman in tech, because that’s exactly who I’m targeting. In the interview I plan to ask questions such as, “Why do you think there’s a lack of diversity and women in tech at the moment?”,  “What’s one way you would recommend tech companies to improve diversity in their company?”, and “What’s one thing you’d like to see more of in the tech field that would maybe make women and minorities more interested in the tech field?”. These questions should be effective in helping the tech field fix these problems and get more women and minorities involved in tech because they have someone they could relate to in the field and could get advice from. It should really help expose the fact that even though women and minorities may think that there aren’t really people like them that go into tech, there are.

My Rationale for the Website and Interview

My two genres for this project is a website and an interview. I chose these two genres precisely for my audience and the topic. My targeted audience is young men, women and minorities (in and out of the tech field), technology companies, policy makers, and more generally Americans. I am targeting women and minorities because that’s who I want to persuade with this piece. I’m more specifically targeting young women and minorities because they have the most flexibility when it comes to their career choice and their mindset. Young people have a lot easier of a time when compared to older people, because most don’t have any bills to pay and most can completely rely on their parents for financial support. Also their minds are more malleable and therefore more susceptible to be convinced of a major decision in their life, their career. I’m targeting technology companies and policy makers because they could actually make a huge change in the policies and the actual hiring of minorities and women in tech.

My main purpose, as mentioned above, is to persuade more women and minorities to choose tech as their career path. However this isn’t my only goal with this piece. I’d also like to give some ideas and potential solutions to tech companies and policy makers in order to help decrease the unequal racial and gender demographics in tech workplaces. Lastly the website is designed to get more people interested in the issue by making the information about the problem clear, concise, straight forward and available to the general public so they can help push for more minorities and women in tech. I also want to give men a better perspective of what it’s like to be a woman in the tech field and how they feel about working in tech when a lot of their colleagues are mostly men. 

I chose these two genres because of my audience and the topic. My audience mostly being young people, I think the easiest way to get information across to them is through the internet. Which is why I chose a website. A website is easily accessible to anyone with a phone, tablet, computer or any other device that has a web browser and internet. While its a genre, its also a great medium to use to get both my information and interview out into the world for review. Also people who are on the internet are already interested in technology technically. If you’re using a piece of technology, you’re at least somewhat interested in technology, otherwise you wouldn’t be using it. So it’s easier to convince people who already are interested in tech rather than people who don’t care too much about tech to begin with.

I used an interview with a woman in tech as well to show to women (also a minority in tech) that there is someone in the field. It should invoke maybe some inspiration to join the tech field or a sense of comfort to see that there is another woman in tech like them. I think the interview serves greatly as a more personal connection to my audience better than words do. It also serves as a different perspective for men to see what its like to be a woman in the tech field. It could also get more men to sympathize with women in tech because they can hear the actual perspective of a woman in tech. The interview is a great medium for keeping people interested in the topic because it’s almost like a radio show or a podcast (a lot of interviews take place on a radio show or podcast too). However, this one is only 20 minutes, whereas most podcasts and radio shows range from an hour to two hours long. If people are willing to listen to podcasts and radio shows at that length, then a 20 minute piece shouldn’t be too hard to retain their attention.

My Reflection

The 2 genres composition in my opinion was the best project I’ve done in this class. Looking back on it there are a couple things that I really liked and some that I would change. I’ll start with the things I would change. Since I am new at coding websites I didn’t really have much time to write the substance of the website, because I spent most of the time troubleshooting the website and getting it setup. However one thing that I think went great was the interview. The interview touched in all points I wanted to make and was helpful to support my purpose of increasing diversity in tech. Maybe next time, I can do a transcript of the interview and write a little bit about the interview. Something more interesting I could do could be a podcast as well since the interview was mostly a podcast interview hybrid. So that’s something that I would change. Overall I really enjoyed working on the project because it allowed me to incorporate some of the skills I learned on my own in a project for English. While doing the interview I didn’t stick strictly to the questions I already made before the interview. Instead I took more of an approach like the interview that was done with Obama, where he turned it into more of a conversation than an interview. That’s what I was really going for. I think I achieved it and that the interview was a pretty natural conversation. Lastly another thing I feel like I did pretty well was the layout of the website. The layout was clean and simple. It was straight to the point. You don’t have to navigate on the website to find the information I want you to see. I presented it with pretty clear navigation options and clear summaries with some evidence of the points I wanted to make.