For this wiki post, you will continue to rehearse and grow your group-writing projects. Basically, composing a  mission statement gives you an opportunity to begin thinking about your final projects. Mission statements provide opportunities to produce specific definitional arguments, and they provide and occasion for you to create a platform of values that will resonate with a particular audience. For example, the Center for Cognitive Liberties define "privacy," "autonomy," and "choice" as they seek support and link to diverse communities in their mission statement.

Dilbert breaks this genre of professional writing all the way down to it's core. Plug some data into this mission statement generator. Although Dilbert's generator is pitched as a gag, there is some truth to the idea that arguments are simply patterns composed of repeatable formulas. Good arguments "tune" available patterns and templates into statements that educate, inform, and make a difference.

Mission statements often highlight and briefly define key concepts, so consider the whole spectrum of basic definition strategies when you tune your mission statement. Begin looking around for concepts and terms that you might want to spend a lot of time on, because next week we will dedicate a lot of our blogging to structured exercises in composing definitions. Keep brainstorming and writing together with peers on the wiki--remember, informal writing exercises are still real rhetorical situations, and as such, opportunities to rehearse communication skills that will eventually help you tap your group's "distributed imagination." Think big, but differentiate between big hairy audacious goals and more immediate outcomes, such as the outcomes you will describe and propose in your final project proposal in week 5.

Mission Statements

Megamix Mission

Sustainable Fashion