Way With Worlds: Welcome To Utopia

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Future City

Let’s talk Utopias in the worlds you make.

Utopias seem to be less popular in fiction of all kinds as I write this in 2014. Sure we’ve got plenty of dystopias; it seems that there’s always a fire sale on at the Life Sucks Dystopia Department Store. But Utopias, not so much.

However, sometimes your worldbuilding is going to involve Utopias or at least Utopia lite. I’d like to address how to design good utopias, but first a little detour into just why I don’t think we see them.

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Crossroads Alpha Needs You!

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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!

Comics Bulletin

At Comics Bulletin we love all kinds of comics – new, old, mainstream, independent, web and print – and feature smart, insightful writing about comics.

We’re always looking for great new writers to join our team. We encourage smart, passionate writing by writers with individual voices to explore their ideas. We’re looking for reviewers, essayists and interviewers but are always open to new ideas as well.

Contact Jason Sacks.

 

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 #39: The Wheel Graph

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Resume 39

There’s changing resumes a bit or trying something different, and then there’s throwing the whole thing out. Scott Stedman pretty much did the latter and re-envisioned a resume as a wheel including color-coded elements for the kind of things he learned and did. It’s a timeline bent round to form a circle, and frankly, one of the more outrageous takes on resumes I’ve seen.

Like some of our previous resumes, it’s almost hard to start because it’s really its own thing. But I’m glad to analyze it to see what we can learn. Here’s my takeaways

  • This is a gutsy move, period. Doing this is risky, but also shows that Scott seriously thinks outside of the box, probably as he threw the box out of the window.
  • It’s also a resume that screams “I have talent.” Not many people do a resume like this.
  • The “Start Here” is smart. He clearly knows not everyone would get this.
  • The color graph of just what he did is an interesting touch. It adds more to the wheel and gives you an idea of his involvements – and their ebb and flow.

Being an experimental resume, I do see some issues:

  • First, this is really a radical departure. Not everyone is going to get this or like it. It may work well with a more standard resume OR a list of skills and so on that was still creatively laid out.
  • I think having the text lie across other elements of the wheel is a bit much. That’s disruptive.
  • I’d also want the descriptive text larger.
  • The use of the wheel should probably be used to communicate cycles or something similar – it might work best if there was a “what’s next” gap at the end.
  • I’d make his portfolio links larger.

One thing I take from this resume is its so radical that if paired with a well-designed standard resume, it would speak to even more skill. The unusual and the standard (but artistic) paired together could be real powerful.

Steve’s Summary: I love graphs and charts, so I’d get a kick out of the resume – and it tells me this guy gets data visualization. I’d want something much more standard to show other people though.

[“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