I chose the David Hurlbut Podcast who is an electrical engineer for sound equipment companies, mainly the Loud Technologies company. I chose this podcast for two reasons, one being that my major, computer engineering involves the topic of electrical engineering, so it immediately grabbed my attention. The second reason being I’m a real music person, I’ve always had an interest in sound producers and engineers, especially people like David who work on making sound equipment. My original opinion on the role writing has in engineering, my own POV on it was that there wasn’t so much writing happening in the engineering world. Engineers aren’t doing much of writing whether it be a simple document or lab report, it was always like 10% of the job. However, after listening to this podcast and how David described the role of writing as an engineer himself, it completely changed my POV. David talks about how so much writing is in the actual job of an engineer, saying how writing reports is what an engineer will be doing almost half the time. He says how whenever he needed to get a supplier or a power supply part, there were so many reports to be written in such explicit detail, listing off requirements, specifications, the whys, etc. I would define the role of writing in the engineering area as a baseline. In the words of David, if you need something, you usually demand it via writing reports. He needs to be able to communicate with others what he needs, how he needs it, what it needs to look like, how it should work, and that’s all with writing. Writing is the base factor and engineers always go back to that base factor. This podcast did illuminate the fact that writing any documents or official reports like David does went through the same process as writing the lab report for the reason that you aren’t putting personification to anything in the lab report, you are using a passive voice.

Link to the Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/writingquestions/david-hurlbut-engineering?in=writingquestions/sets/writing-for-engineers-podcast-episodes