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Crossroads Alpha Recruiting!

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Hey gang, if you want to join up with the sites at Crossroads Alpha, here’s what we’re looking for!

Muse Hack
Muse Hack is the blog of Geek Applied – career-building, skill-learning, and community-creation. We’re looking for motivated, engaged authors that want to write on people putting their passions to use; career, education, conventions, fan charities, technology, and more. If you want to write on people getting things done, contact us.

We’re specifically looking for:

  • A person willing to put together a weekly roundup of relevant news.
  • Coverage of the convention beat, especially conventions with a heavy career and/or charity presence.
  • Coverage of training, skills, and development.

Contact Steve Savage

Psycho Drive-In
Psycho Drive-In strives to be the home for intelligent reviews and commentary on television and movies on the fringe of mainstream.

We are always on the lookout for great new writers and prefer distinct individual voices with something to say rather than someone just looking to recap the latest episode of whatever you happen to be watching.

We are looking for reviewers of weekly television programs that veer toward the horror/sci-fi genre, but also includes the best that TV has to offer, as well as people interested in reviewing films that are currently playing in theaters and/or new release home videos. Each writer should ideally maintain a presence on Facebook and/or Twitter – at least – to help spread the word when new items are updated on the site.

We are specifically looking for:
* A person willing to put together a weekly roundup of relevant news.
* Writers interested in launching quality ongoing columns analyzing or surveying specific film or TV works/genres/creators with an eye toward future publication as ebooks – either independently or under the PDI banner.

Contact Paul Brian McCoy

Seventh Sanctum
Seventh Sanctum, the site of random generators, is looking for creative people to share their advice and their secrets! The site supports a legion of random tools for ideas, and now hosts The Codex, an online section for advice for creative people. Be it writing, art, or role-playing games, we’re looking for you to share what you know to help out others.

We’re specifically looking for:

  • People who can write on art and visual creativity.
  • People who can provide serious, hard advice on writing such as editing, publishing, and more.
  • Someone willing to do a weekly roundup of news, interesting links, and of course crazy inspiring stuff.

Contact Steve Savage

Indie Haven
Indie Haven, the site for all the news you’d ever want about Indie Games, is looking for folks eager to delve into the world of games journalism. We have a solid reputation among Indie Developers and this is a close-knit group of writers and editors that will help you get better.

What we’re looking for:

  • Reliable reviewers that can turn around a game review in a short amount of time.
  • Journalists willing to put together feature stories for the website.
  • Livestreamers willing to play some games on our Twitch TV channel.

Contact Jose

50 Shades Of Resume #1: The Progress Graph

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Resume 1

So what’s our first resume? It’s this graph of progress by Branko Yamasaki, a combination of a regular resume and a graphical display of his career growth and skill usage.

Brako’s resume is a skills-based info graphic that shows how he’s improved in his skills over the years (and in a few cases, like Ruby, just sort of let the skill go), and where he used them. It’s a single-page hit of information that focuses on what he’s done, learned, and where.

The High Points of this resume-chart are:

  • Strong use of visual space to portray skills, progress, and where he worked.
  • Surprisingly keeping everything on one page.
  • Shows a definite sense of growth and progress in a compelling way.
  • It’s humanized – Branko’s smiling face and extra comments on the left bar personalize what could be an otherwise effective but ultimately not “human” graph.
  • Demonstrates his graphical talents.
  • It’s clever, in that a lot is actually done with visual space and elements to communicate.

The limits of this graph-resume are:

  • It’s definitely going to choke a scanning system. This is a resume to send to people or put in a portfolio to impress them, not send to any position on a message board.
  • It may get more crowded over time and need to be rethought.
  • It may need to be rethought if any career changes occur.
  • The left column is indispensable to keep the human side, limiting space available.

Steve’s Summary: If this came across my desk, I’d be intrigued, especially if Branko was applying for a data-visualization heavy job, and I’d like the honesty on his skills.  I also like the fact I have a feel for his personality.

[“50 Shades of Resume” is an analysis of various interesting resumes to celebrate the launch of the second edition of my book “Fan To Pro” and to give our readers inspiration for their own unique creations.]

– Steven Savage

Brendan Eich And The Unspoken Origin

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Looking over the departure of Brendan Eich, I have the feel we’ve just seen something historical happen.  A CEO of a Silicon Valley company was compelled to leave (apparently at his own choice) after protests over his support of Proposition 8.  I’ll be analyzing this for awhile, knowing me.

Right now there’s a roundup of unhappy people who are anti-gay rights who are obviously unhappy about this.  I’m seeing the words “homofascism” thrown around (possibly to recall the infamous Pink Swasticka), talk of the Gaystopo, weird ranting, and so on.   Mozilla is target of several boycot calls, including one aping the OK Cupid call.  There’s the usual parade of anti-gay groups like NOM, which to note seems to be the only group actually calling for a boycott.

I didn’t see any LGBT rights groups involved in the call for Brendan Eich’s resignation.  I saw various individuals, a company in protest, and frankly a lot of unhappiness here in Silicon Valley.  It was grassroots displeasure.

Allow me to postulate a theory.

What is really upsetting to people against the LGBT population is this was spontaneous.  There was no one group involved, nothing from GLAAD, no big campaign.  It was a bunch of different people and then one company saying they didn’t want this guy.

That’s upsetting to the anti-LGBT activists because it suggests that this behavior – their behavior – is simply not acceptable.  It’s something people are viscerally disgusted with and won’t put up with.

The anti-LGBT groups target people, let us make no bones about it.  They target a small population for ridicule and persecution and worse.  They are bullies – they’re big groups (funded by people glad to or ignorantly donating to such groups), and like bullies, they punch down.  The people supposedly below just punched back – hard – without an organizing group.

That suggests a fundamental shift.  People aren’t taking anti-LGBT stances and laws lying down.  If first Eich (who, frankly, handled this poorly and probably could have saved his job) what’s next?

I think they’re angry people are fighting back and there’s no one person to target, no one to take revenge on.

However, let me end that for supporters of LGBT rights this is just one thing.  It made a statement, threw down the gauntlet, and called out the rather foul Prop 8.  But if you want to help, go get involved.  Donate to the Al Forney Center or a similar group to help LGBT youth.  Join GLAAD or Lambda Legal.  Vote.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.