Kandamkulathy 1

Ajay Kandamkulathy

Ms. Gonzalez

ENC 1102

February 18, 2024

Reading Response # 2 – “Understanding Writing Across Communities” Panel

On Wednesday, February 7, 2024, I attended the panel “Understanding Writing Across

Communities” that occurred at 11:30 a.m. There was a moderator and four students who

presented their ideas. The moderator introduced the panel and was the first to speak. After that,

the first presenter presented. Her presentation was about deaf/hoh (hard of hearing) YouTubers

and how they use YouTube to connect with their audience using elements in their videos as well

as outside of their videos. One of the examples that she shows is a YouTube couple SignDuo.

She highlights the use of captions in their videos as well as their use of ASL (American Sign

Language) to communicate with not only themselves but also with their fans. The second

presenter focused on the game “Dungeons and Dragons,” the storytelling in the game and how it

has created a community with the fans. She explains the verbal components that contribute to the

storytelling like the dialogue as well as the nonverbal ones like the objectives that need to be

created and community theories created by online fandoms. She also goes into depth about the

fandom, even sourcing her own life and how she has made friends due to the bond that they both

have from the game. The third presenter focused on video game discourse and how communities

are created from it, using “World of Warcraft”. Working in a similar way to “Dungeons and

Dragons,” the communities are created by similar interest in the same game whether online or in-

person. However, the third presenter focused more on the multiplayer features of the game,
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although both are multiplayer, and how each player works together to achieve the goals set by

the game. He also talked about the rhetoric that is showed by the goals/the motivation behind it.

The fourth presenter related the topic to her own major, architecture, and the displaying of the

work as well as the people who review the work. She focused on how her peers would review

her work and how the words they used could be interpreted.

One thing that I learned from the presentations that could be helpful towards this class is the

techniques that they used when presenting their ideas to the audience. For example, the fourth

presenter made sure to include visuals and use less architectural terms so that we can understand

what she was trying to convey with her presentation as she knew that the audience didn’t know

much about architecture. One idea from the presentations that will help me for my research is

using personal experiences as well as pictures to help illustrate my points. I think a benefit of

presenting at KWS is that you are able to have an audience to show your work to. It also helps

that most of the audience is unknown to you. An academic benefit for presenting at KWS is that

you are able to get feedback/answer questions that can help improve your work from audience

members.