Here at SurrealPolitiks, our fondness for coherent economics, no less than our want of gain, inspires us to consider at all times what opportunities for economic cooperation might be presented by whatever circumstances we may be presented with. In the course of this contemplation, we came across a problem in need of solving.
We have big, ambitious plans for this project. Those plans are well underway in many respects, but they have created something of a skilled labor shortage. We do not yet have the resources to cover this gap, and while we expect this to change as the projects progress, the gap is obstructing said progress.
This is by no means an insignificant challenge, and we have done a good deal of thinking about it.In doing so, we came back to the age old practice of apprenticeship. A tradesman offers to teach his craft to a student in exchange for the assistance of the learner.
Too often overlooked today as our society has come to view “higher education” as the singular path to upward mobility, apprenticeship was long the best opportunity for an individual to make their way in the world. For some years now, this has fallen out of favor in the popular consciousness, but as academia discredits itself with foolish political delusions, we think the time is ripe to bring back this time honored tradition.
So, especially, though not exclusively for those young people out there, who would like to learn, or parents with adolescent children who would like their kids to learn, some very marketable skills, we would like to begin screening candidates for unpaid “Learn to Earn” opportunies with SurrealPolitiks Media LLC.
For those selected,
- We will show you the ropes of our operation.
- We will provide you with direction on what to read and cover costs of training materials.
- We will give you access to equipment and cloud resources on which to experiment.
- We will provide accurate but generous references and letters of recommendation to future employers
- We will consider our apprentices first for paid positions within the company.
A decidedly non-exhaustive list of the marketable skills one stands to learn within this operation includes;
- A broad range of sales and marketing skills including
- Social media management
- General principles of advertising
- General principles of sales and persuasion
- Specific advertising markets, such as Google AdSense/AdWords, Impact, and Commission Junction.
- Billing models for digital advertising (CPM, CPC, CPA, CPS)
- Email Marketing
- E-Commerce including WooCommerce, eBay, Amazon, and Shopify
- Client Relations
- Lead generation
- Cold Calling
- Business administration, accounting, and organizational skills including
- Forming an LLC
- Asset management across diverse legal entities
- Tracking diverse revenue streams and expenditures
- Acquisition and maintenance of diverse financial services
- Dealing with vendors and service providers
- Accounting with QuickBooks
- Tax and regulatory compliance
- Managing and insuring against liability
- Managing human resources
- Broadly applicable problem solving skills including
- Dealing with difficult people inside and outside your organization
- Anticipating and preparing for future problems
- Establishing cost effective redundancies in systems and supply chains
- Principles of troubleshooting
- Adapting to unexpected circumstances in a challenging fast paced environment
- Working with technical support services
- Searching for solutions on the web
- Generally applicable computer skills including
- Windows 10/11
- Linux
- Working with files
- Working with documents, including Microsoft Word/Excel, Adobe Acrobat, and open source equivalents such as LibreOffice
- Transferring files across the internet
- TCP/IP Networking
- Wireless networks
- Cable management for wired networks
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
- SMB/Windows File Sharing
- Bit Torrent File Sharing
- Printers
- Antivirus/Firewall applications
- Working with a Virtual Private Network
- Various techniques for backing up data
- Managing extremely large collections of data, including duplicate management, and RAID arrays
- Disk health monitoring
- Working with .zip/.rar/.tar/.gzip archives
- Data compression
- Data encryption
- Password management
- Software licensing and intellectual property management
- Cloud services
- PC hardware, and dealing with and overcoming resource limitations
- Hardware, software, and cloud service markets, how to shop for products and services
- “Full Stack” web hosting management, including
- Working with and shopping for service providers
- Virtual Private Servers, Dedicated Servers, and Shared Hosting environments
- Bandwidth management
- Disk space management
- cPanel web hosting control panel
- CyberPanel web hosting control panel
- Virtualmin web hosting control panel
- MySQL database administration
- PostgreSQL database administration
- SMTP/IMAP/POP3 email server administration
- Spam prevention
- Apache Web Server
- Litespeed Web Server
- Nginx Web Server
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Encryption
- TLS (Transport Layer Security) Encryption
- Encryption Certificate Management using LetsEncrypt, Certbot, and Cloudflare
- PHP
- phpMyAdmin
- WordPress, including advanced elements such as Multisite, memberships, and WooCommerce functionality
- Cloudflare, reverse proxies, and other caching and security measures
- DNS (Domain Name System) management
- TCP/IP Networking
- Firewalls
- Associated Linux Server administrative tasks, such as patching and server hardening
- Server monitoring and dealing with outages
- Streaming Media, including
- RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) Video Streaming, servers and clients
- HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) protocol
- Icecast audio streaming broadcasting, servers, and clients
- XSplit Broadcaster and OBS
- Mixxx DJ Mixer/Broadcaster
- Nginx RTMP relay server
- LibreTime radio scheduling server
- Kaltura Community Edition Video Hosting Platform
- Streaming Media Platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Odysee, DLive, Restream, and many others
- Digital Image Editing and Creation, including
- Digital photography, working with cameras, lighting
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- GIMP
- Midjourney AI Image Generator
- Stable Diffusion AI Image Generator
- Image Licensing and Intellectual Property Management
- Image compression and quality retention in a web hosting environment
- Video Production, Recording, Editing, Storage, Hosting, and Transferring, including
- Studio lighting
- Principles of video compression
- Real time effects, such as background removal, and chroma keying
- Handbrake video compression software
- Working with GPUs (Graphics Processing Units, or Graphics Cards)
- Video editing software such as MAGIX Vegas, and Adobe Premier
- Video Recording Applications such as XSplit Broadcaster, and OBS
- Digital video cameras
- Broadcasting over TCP/IP with RTMP
- Video distribution over Roku, FireTV, and other commercial platforms.
- Mobile recording and broadcasting equipment, transportation, and services
- Audio engineering, production, recording, and broadcasting, including
- General principles of audio recording
- Types of microphones such as condenser vs. dynamic
- Working with analog and digital audio mixers
- Familiarity with audio manufacturing brands, and associated quality control issues Shure, Behringer FocusRite, and Yamaha vs. cheap no name garbage from China.
- Digital audio effects processing, real time and in post production
- Identifying and working with different types of audio interconnects (XLR, TS, TRS, 3.5mm, 6.35mm, RCA)
- Recording and editing in Audacity
- Recording and editing in Adobe Audition
- Working with MIDI Controllers
- Cakewalk Digital Audio Workstation
- Audio signal transmission integrity, ground loop isolation, and noise reduction techniques
- Digital telephony and low latency voice communications over TCP/IP
- Mobile recording and broadcasting equipment, transportation, and services
- E-Commerce Specific Skills including
- Dealing with payment processing
- Dealing with cryptocurrencies
- Packing and Shipping
- Printing
- Product descriptions
- Drop shipping
- Wholesale product acquisition, shopping for discounts
- Supply chain management
- Inventory management
- Efficient product storage
- Advertising
- Managing affiliate relations
- Programming, Web, and Application Development including
- PHP
- Ruby
- CSS
- Javascript
- AJAX
- Python
- C#
- Flutter
- Dart
- React Native
- Working with code repositories (Github)
- Managing licensing requirements for code
- Publishing applications in mobile app stores
- Printing and Merchandising, including
- Screen printing
- Sublimation printing and heat transfers for t-shirts, mugs, etc…
- Understanding different types of printers, ink, and paper
- Digital communications servers including
- XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) clients and servers
- IRC (Internet Relay Chat) Clients and Servers
- VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) with Asterisk
- Artificial Intelligence
- Working with self hosted LLMs (Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT)
- Working with self hosted AI image generation systems such as Stable Diffusion
- Working with popular AI services such as OpenAI, Midjourney, Replicate, HuggingFace, Runpod, and other systems.
- Working with and shopping for AI hardware demands, specifically GPUs (Graphics Processing Units or Graphics Cards)
- And much, much more…
It might go without saying that few would be tasked to learn all of these things. Some of these are highly specialized talents requiring years of experience to perform competently. We have only created this very long list to illustrate some fraction of the wide range of opportunities that are available in this way.
Most of this can be performed from anywhere in the world. Other tasks would require an on scene presence. Many of these tasks would require disclosure of confidential information, and for those tasks the applicant would need to be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement and provide a government issued ID. Such would in any case be to some extent necessary for us to provide references to employers.
Some experience would obviously be preferred, but is not entirely necessary for all potential arrangements. If you have a resume you would like to send us, that would be helpful in determining how best to apply the applicant’s existing experience.
Whatever the case, if this interests you, please use the contact form bellow. In your message, please let us know some basic biographical information such as your age and region, if you have relevant experience, what you are doing now for work, what specifically catches your interest about this opportunity, and what limits you see on your capacity to contribute to the arrangement.
We’ll reply and continue our negotiations from there.
Thank you for your consideration.
