Unlocking the Open Metaverse: Educating and Empowering the 3D Creators of Tomorrow with Julie Lottering from Epic Games and Liz Dailey from CreateAccess

Announcer:

Today, on Building the Open Metaverse.

Julie Lottering:

Epic wants to have as many creators as possible, so we've tried to democratize that process. Our tools are free for educators and students, but we also have libraries of assets, so people are excited to share knowledge, and it doesn't feel like a walled garden or an exclusionary space.

Announcer:

Welcome to Building the Open Metaverse where technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse together, hosted by Patrick Cozzi and Marc Petit.

Marc Petit:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Building the Open Metaverse Season 6, the podcast that showcases the community of artists, developers, researchers, executives, and entrepreneurs who are building the internet of tomorrow.

My name is Marc Petit, and my co-host is Patrick Cozzi.

Patrick Cozzi:

Hey, Marc. Hey, everybody.

This season, we've been exploring what real-time 3D and the transformation of the internet mean for television, commerce, and fashion. But today, we're taking a change of pace and are going to cover an important topic: education.

Marc Petit:

To do so, we have two experts who understand both technology and education very, very well.

Our first guest is Julie Lottering, the Director of Education at Epic Games. She's in charge of global strategy for education, training, and partnership. Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Julie Lottering:

Nice to be here. Thank you.

Patrick Cozzi:

Great to have you here, Julie. So Marc, you probably remember about a year and a half ago, we moved into the new Cesium office, and we built a studio for recording the podcast, and we set it up so we have two people in the same room. Now, a year and a half later, for the first time, we have a second person in the room.

For those on YouTube, they see. But for everyone else listening, our second guest here in person is Liz Dailey. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Create Access. It turns out I am also the Co-Founder of Create Access, but Liz has been doing all of the work. Liz is also my partner of 10 years, and she is helping open up the aperture for 3D creation to many different folks. So welcome, Liz.

Liz Dailey:

Thank you so much. Really glad to be here.

Marc Petit:

Liz, it's good to have you here; I've heard a lot about Create Access and I think it's a great initiative. It's only justice that you get to talk about it. Also you, Patrick, you're going to have a dual role today because you're involved on both sides of the conversation. But to keep with tradition with the podcast, we'll start with Julie.

Give us a quick summary, Julie, of your journey to the metaverse in your own words.

Julie Lottering:

It is a very personal journey in many ways because I come from a family of artists. When we immigrated to Canada, my parents became art teachers here, and they were in classes with many students who didn't speak English. And so, with a paintbrush in hand, they used art as a path for these students to gain confidence and express themselves. From a young age, I could see that art was a language and that education was a conduit. But if art is a language, I really believe that technology is the systematic craft that allows us to push it forward.

My education was in art history at first. I was just fascinated with the idea of why visualization was important to humans, and then I moved to neuroaesthetics. What happens in the brain when you see something beautiful to the science of learning, which is how do we measure an increase of creativity or self-expression?

I'll be honest: I didn't know where all my skills belonged, but I had a career breakthrough when Side Effects gave me a chance to build up their education and training programs. I fell in love with visual effects, procedural content generation. I loved it so much that I wanted to continue to do the work that I love so much in real-time with Epic.

Marc Petit:

Quite an amazing path. You've been doing a lot of very interesting things. Part of your work at both Side Effects and Epic. I was there, too, to see you do that. It was amazing.

How about you, Liz?

Liz Dailey:

This is a space that I never thought I would occupy. If you asked 20-year-old Liz, "Where do you think you'll be in your 40s?" I never would've guessed here, but I feel so, so lucky to be here. I'm actually a social worker by training, and I've worked in social service across different sectors including education, criminal justice, and, most recently, public health.

But a few years ago, when Patrick and I were talking, we were thinking about something that we might want to do as a family to support social impact; he had the vision for Create Access and was looking at something that we could do to engage people in this amazing world of 3D creation. I'm not a technologist. I have no technical background other than what I've learned since we started Create Access.

But in December of 2022, I took a leap of faith and left my job in public health, which I loved, to devote myself full time to trying to get Create Access off the ground. Since then, it's just been this incredible journey of engaging with some of the most brilliant, resourceful, engaged, and creative people I've ever seen in all different areas of the work.

I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to be leading an organization that is really in this space that's so exciting and so leading edge. I'm remembering back to the first time that Patrick showed me a photogrammetry capture tool and how fascinating it was and how exciting it was. When we think about Create Access and building confidence in beginners, I was that beginner. I still am that beginner in many ways, but I'm very much aligned with our participants in terms of the excitement they feel at trying something new.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah, Liz has been on an amazing journey; I feel like it's an amazing time to be in 3D. We want to talk a little about all the opportunities for 3D creators.

So Julie, I saw recently on LinkedIn you made a post about the new Unreal Engine Career Resource Guide. I was wondering if you could share just some of the career opportunities out there for 3D creation.

Julie Lottering:

Careers in 3D and real-time have been growing at basically an astounding rate. I think it's the combination of free tools and the ability to publish that creates this desire for more digital experiences and more digital goods. When we think about all of the games that people play, all of the film and television and advertising, right now, there's some crazy estimate out there that that's only about 1% of the population that creates that content.

A few years ago, there was a Burning Glass report that said real-time skills were pegged to grow 601% faster than the overall job market. I believe this because I hear it all the time; people are always looking for Unreal Engine artists. And in Canada, just as an example, those salaries for real-time jobs are about 70% higher than in other markets.

The career resources we work on are really around portfolio preparation, shining a light on the various kinds of jobs that exist and the industries that are looking for those skill sets. And then how to engineer your own career.

Right now, with film and games, the industry is experiencing what we would say is a bit of stormy weather, but we know that weather passes and that it's not the climate. When we think of games, really, it's like 50 years old. It started with arcades and consoles and now has VR and AR. In a short time, it has made huge leaps in graphics and technology. I know that it seems crazy, but it was only in 2011 that video games were considered an art, and the first country to do that was France. They legislated it as an art itself.

If you were going to think, "Wow, first 50 years in a new industry or a new art," well, there are a lot of contributions people can make. It's still early. We're still pioneering. Of course, there's going to be some learning and some bumps along the way. Right now, there's this conversation that's happening around building resilience into the job market and inspiring entrepreneurship. When I think about careers, definitely, there's a lot out there just because of the growth of the industry, but also a way to engineer your own.

Looking at Unreal Editor for Fortnite, this is a tool we published a few years ago, and it is an exceptional opportunity for young game devs who are experimenting. Finding a job in AAA can be challenging, but with Unreal Editor for Fortnite, you can make something quickly and publish it to Fortnite's social graph. 

On your resume, for instance, you could say, "Hey, I have published a console." And this is a huge deal.

Marc Petit:

Julie, beyond games and film, are there a lot of opportunities for people with those skills?

Julie Lottering:

Where we are today, Marc, is we have moved from industries like architecture, fashion, and automotive. Now, they understand the application of real-time, and they've moved to imagine it in their context, and now they're into the integration side. The thing that's slowing them down is really about finding the right skills. I mean, interactivity is a nascent skill, coming from my art history background. Human history is full of breakthroughs related to visualization, like da Vinci's drawings helping people understand anatomy and engineers turning triangles into bridges.

Right now, the historical fidelity, or the visual fidelity that we have, usurps the Renaissance, but we're comparing the length of time humans had to create cave drawings and to practice visualization to a handful of decades where we're practicing interactivity.

Real-time is a different class and I think the industry adoption and all these other realms is just the beginning. It makes sense that architects would want to move from a 2D plan when they're building something 3D to even a 3D paper model to now a virtual or digital twin that responds to weather, helps you to test lighting, and then even you can run different sizes of crowds for the building to see what it looks like. Interaction allows these companies to model, communicate, prototype, and produce more creative results.

This is the way that I think about it. So if we think about rendering, which would've just been the visualization side of it, an artist might have to wait five, 10, 15, and, in film, sometimes 50 hours for something to render, that would be learning to play the piano where you can only play one key every 24 hours. Real-time allows this creative decision-making process to speed up and is totally unmatched. It is definitely being absorbed and used in all these different industries, and it is an amazing time to make contributions there.

Marc Petit:

I hear rumors that there is 3D geospatial, Patrick.

Patrick Cozzi:

Just a little bit.

Marc Petit:

So, Liz, can you tell us the mission of Create Access, please?

Liz Dailey:

Absolutely. Our whole purpose is to try to engage beginners in 3D creation and help them get started in hopes that they'll eventually be able to engage in all of these amazing opportunities that Julie is talking about. We all know that we're on the precipice of something very exciting, that 3D is evolving every day, and that it intersects with so many other industries that we see incredible opportunity here.

We really want to engage folks who might have had limited previous exposure to the field and might not have seen what's possible otherwise. We want to show them, "Hey, you can get started with 3D, you can be a 3D creator," and help build their confidence. We know that sometimes folks don't engage with technology because there's fear around it. They don't think they can. It's intimidating.

We really try to take the intimidation factor out of 3D creation and help people get started with a really gentle on-ramp by providing freely available educational materials on our website that anyone can use, no login, no paywall, no barrier. Then also providing in-person facilitated programs that help people create meaningful 3D projects.

Patrick Cozzi:

I'm a product of the '80s and '90s and to make a video game back then, I had to write my own pixel routine, an inline assembly, I had to do my own art pixel by pixel. For publishing, Julie, I had to publish on BBSs that I would dial into. But today, the world is very different for 3D creation. I feel it's more accessible than ever.

Julie, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts there.

Julie Lottering:

I do feel like it is easier to get started today than it has been in the past; part of that is outlook. Epic wants to have as many creators as possible doing cool things with us. We've tried to democratize that process.

One of the ways is cost. Our tools are free for educators and students, but we also have libraries of assets, learning content, and then, of course, the community. Epic is interested in sharing as much knowledge as possible. Today, we have more tutorials. I think it's something like maybe 150, 200 tutorials that are being created by our community every month on our developer community. That is exceptional. People are excited to share knowledge, and it doesn't feel like it's a walled garden or an exclusionary space. This is where diverse creators can come together to tell their story.

Liz Dailey:

First, Julie, you mentioned Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and I will share how much we at Create Access love that platform because it's such an easy way for creators to get started with something that's recognizable, something they're already excited about as players and users. The bridge to becoming a creator becomes much, much easier to cross. What we love about so many of the 3D creator tools that are coming out and evolving every day is that you can get started without a lot of experience, without any knowledge of how to code.

I think about things like the UEFN, like the Polycam app that we use in some of our 3D creator courses, and folks are getting immediate visual feedback without a lot of work to get started. With the Polycam app, you can create a 3D model by taking photos with your phone, right? Most folks can do that. With Unreal Editor for Fortnite, there are so many functions that are drag and drop, so many assets that can be brought in instantaneously to help build that momentum, which, again, ignites that curiosity to keep going and build that momentum to get started and feel comfortable moving forward and exploring more sophisticated functions.

It's always a great moment, I think, when we see creators who have some success, get started with something, see something that's visually cool, and then say, "Okay, what else can I make it do? Hey, what happens? How can I make this move? How can I make this look more interesting?" And in that moment, I think folks are willing to apply some discipline to doing more sophisticated stuff.

We think that's how we're, again, creating on-ramps for people to really engage with these tools. I love the 3D community of creators that you mentioned, Julie, who are sharing tutorials, so ready to pave the way for others and show people new and creative ways to do things.

I think it seems easier than ever to get started with 3D creation, and we see that even becoming easier over time.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah, I agree. Now, with that said, I think we found some of our experience with Create Access is that 3D creation is very accessible, but there are still a couple of barriers, and we're working to break those down.

I was wondering, Liz, if you could speak to that.

Liz Dailey:

Certainly. With some 3D creator tools, hardware is definitely an issue. Having computers, for example, that are powerful enough to run the tools that we want to be able to run. We also know that not every school has computer science education. So, when you're thinking about school-based programs, I just saw a report from code.org that says that more than 40% of public high schools don't have computer science education, even though there are so many career opportunities that are now expected in computer science.

I often talk about that fear barrier, that confidence barrier. If learners are not getting messages that 3D creation is for you, that you can do it, that it's possible for you, and there's not always scaffolding that's accessible to all groups and communities, I think that's improving. I think we're seeing increasingly folks who are making beginner-friendly content, making things that are easier for beginners to use, programs that are engaging underrepresented groups in tech.

We have a long way to go, and that's an area that we're trying to impact.

Marc Petit:

Liz, you mentioned you went through this beginning experience. Can you share how it went and how it felt?

Liz Dailey:

Absolutely. I mentioned that my first experience with 3D creation was on Patrick’s and my deck, making a photogrammetry model with RealityScan of a little wooden cat that I had in our house. That, for me, was enough to light the spark and say, "Hey, this is really cool," and we have to help people get started with this stuff. Every moment of this journey, I've just been so grateful for a community of folks who are just really excited about what's going on.

I mean, Julie, you talked about how Epic is trying to open doors for people, wanting people to engage, wanting people to create because we all know that the metaverse is going to be so much more interesting the more people contribute to it and the more people with diverse backgrounds and experiences are offering what they can.

I've been really, really happy for the support that we've received at every turn. We've been met with enthusiasm by big companies, students, and small nonprofits. I think people are just really excited about 3D and have been really ready to help. There's no gatekeeping; there is no "Hey, this is my territory." It's just about, "Hey, how much can we, as a community, build and invite people in together?" It's been an incredible journey.

And Julie, I want to name specifically you and your team Steve Isaacs and Cathy Cheo-Isaacs, who, three months into our existence as a nonprofit, gave us a platform to share our work at a couple of different conferences. That was so cool for us and it just showed us the commitment to uplifting all of the different ways that people are engaging with 3D. It's been many experiences like that where people are excited about this and want to bring more people into the fold.

Julie Lottering:

Oh, gosh, that's so nice to hear, Liz. Yeah, we feel the same, totally inspired by our community and the contributions that they can make to the field.

We keep seeing how the world has so much imagination. We can show someone a corner, and then what they're able to do with it is just confounding. This feeling of wanting to shine light on the great work that's being done is true to every person that I work with at Epic. It's just so lovely to see it happening with you and Create Access as well.

Patrick Cozzi:

Epic is doing so much to support the community and to support educators. Could you give us a bit of an overview of how you engage with secondary and post-secondary educators?

Julie Lottering:

Yeah, I love that question because I live and breathe that every day. When I start a presentation, I typically ask three questions: who has had a teacher that has changed their lives? And everybody in the room will put up their hand. And I'll say, who believes that education can change a country? Everyone puts up their hand. And then my last question is always, who believes we can do it better? And everyone puts up their hand. So, I wake up in the morning thinking about how education has the opportunity to change lives and countries. With our community, we work on defining what we can do to make it better.

Right now, what we see is that schools are focused on teaching skills, not technology, and that is appropriate. That makes so much sense. What isn't always known is that 80% of the workflows for Unreal Engine can function across industries from film to automotive to architecture to fashion. There are very few points in history when one tool could actually apply to so many different industries. We have to work to translate what is happening to industry for those schools and respect that it might be a responsive process because industry changes very quickly, alignment is challenging, and knowing what durable is.

How we support our schools is really to help them understand what the durable change is. For instance, with high schools, AI, cybersecurity, and graphics all live in one bucket. There's not necessarily the same distinction. When you have all those things to sort through, and you think that you have six weeks with a student and you have to add it, which one are you going to pick, and how do you even know where to spend your own time? Of course, there's no discount on time. So, it is time to learn something new; you need to have a very clear value proposition, and it requires support.

Our support starts with a conversation about your major pain points and barriers to entry. And if it's machines, well, let's talk about that. Maybe we can look at RealityCapture or RealityScan; maybe photogrammetry is the right way to go. Then we would look at building that confidence that Liz said. How do we train our trainers? Maybe it's facilitating the classroom and not having to feel like you're the expert the entire time.

Sometimes, our own learning curve can be the best thing that we use in the classroom. We try to work to share knowledge and inspire projects with those teachers. Then, we curate resources. So, how do we create continued learning? There's a lot of learning material out there, but the most artful teachers I've found are the ones who can synthesize it to tell a greater story.

We'd say, "Okay, you want to teach a history class using Unreal Engine?" Amazing. How do we make a virtual museum? We might have a teacher guide or student resources that look into virtual museum creation, or it could be, "Hey, we want to look at climate action and climate change." Specifically in high school, these are large topics, but if you could actually animate them and bring them to life, and you could have your peers play with your game or view a video that you've made, all of those are different ways to have peer-to-peer learning take on.

Then, we look at industry insights. We have a lot of virtual summits, especially in post-secondary, where it might be, "Hey, these are the skills that studios are looking for. These are the real practical problems they're trying to solve. These are the things that they'd love insights on from research institutions."

So we bring educators and industry together, and then we have something called Unreal Academy, our curated space for all of those learning resources and our education community. Very few people learn this alone, so we want to make sure that there's a space for us to do it together.

I'll add one more thing, which is job placement. Many universities actually have program growth and funding through proven job placement; that's pretty difficult. I mean, how you're actually going to measure that might be challenging. There are external factors that happen. What we try to do is bring industry to those schools. We noticed that 70% to 75% of students apply to a job when they heard that company present.

We started to have these education industry mixers, where we were trying to create this ecosystem between the schools and the studios so that the studios would have awareness about a cool project that's happening, maybe there are some portfolio reviews that are happening, and then we could also create this consistent bridge so that the studios were doing recruitment in those schools.

Marc Petit:

You mentioned high school and secondary education. What is the level of awareness of institutions and governments? As we move forward with the metaverse, there will be a creator economy, and having a population that is well-versed in creativity and creation is going to become a strong differentiator.

Can you tell us if there is already awareness around this issue or if that's something we still need to evangelize because it's going to be a global opportunity, and we've seen third-world countries already step up?

In the creator economy, everyone will have an equal chance to participate because it will be a global opportunity. How do we ensure that our next generation is ready for that?

Julie Lottering:

I think that the ability of a country to have a framework around education and its population being part of this digital economy is very worthwhile. We see it as mixed. Some countries are totally bought in and have very systematic ways to place it in education, whereas other countries we've seen have 2% unemployment.

Creative industries aren't necessarily what has been invested in, and they feel behind. And now there's a spurred action to try to work with UNESCO, Unreal Engine, and multiple universities to say that a creative city is a flourishing city. How do we bring these creative skills in place? I think that there is mixed maturation, a mixed level of maturation in the global economy, but we see that there is awareness.

What do you think?

Marc Petit:

The gap between the home experience and the classroom experience is still too big for our kids. And knowing how the education system works, it's going to take a lot of time to bring this technology into the classroom. With AI, just the ingestion of AI and getting our kids ready. We used to talk about this a lot, you and I, when we were at Epic. How do we get people ready for jobs that we don't even know are going to exist? That's a challenge.

Around creation and creativity, there are core skills that are still underrepresented in the curriculum. For example, in Quebec, we try to evangelize, but changing things in education is always a decade-long process.

Patrick Cozzi:

Julie, I like Epic's holistic approach to supporting educators, and I thought the mixer there was a great idea.

I mean, beyond academia, could you talk about who else Epic engages with, whether that's training centers or nonprofits?

Julie Lottering:

In many countries, post-secondary education has now grown to include programs like games or media and entertainment, 3D graphics, or real-time at all. Training centers and vocational facilities are critical for things like reskilling people in the economy, like those who are transitioning their careers. It can also be a finishing school for anyone who's graduated and just needs a bit more time before they feel like they're ready.

When we look at the US, there are millions of people who have some college, and there are high levels of attrition due to cost or family responsibilities. Training centers offer an opportunity to join into the industry at a different stage in life or from a different path.

Currently, we have close relationships with about 90 training centers around the world, and we work with them to create visibility, connect them to the ecosystem, and then share with them our knowledge.

We have our training catalog that we use for our customers with 130 courses, so we give them free access, but then we also have partnerships with platforms. Coursera is one of our platform partners, and we are working with them to design a game designer course. It's a professional certificate that Coursera gives that has 80 hours of hands-on learning. They'll be doing about 80 hours and finish with a professional certificate.

This should show higher ability and employability. We are working with them to ensure that this is something many people can access regardless of what post-secondary institution they might have or regardless of cost so that it is as accessible as possible.

Marc Petit:

Liz, you've created something interesting: this microcourse model at Create Access. Can you walk us through it?

Liz Dailey:

I first want to acknowledge that the microcourse model we gratefully borrowed from our collaborators at Malvern Preparatory School. They have an incredible computer science education team and incredible educators. We learned this from them. But our microcourse model involves developing step-by-step beginner-friendly projects where new creators can use professional creator tools to get started, especially tools that work together and string together to build personally meaningful projects.

Again, our point of entry is the beginner. Our projects are really heavily scaffolded, and they're meant to help build confidence. We really try to help thoughtfully design our courses so that creators experience pretty quick success; they're getting visual results nearly immediately and then able to explore, experiment, and iterate on those to improve their projects. We hope that that helps people then feel comfortable to explore where else they might want to go.

Invariably, what we see is that once a creator gets over that intimidation factor, they get started, they can do something because they've gotten support to do it and scaffolding to do it, and then they see results. There's a lot more willingness to then apply the diligence.

Our microcourses are very flexible in that there's a core workflow that we think most people can complete. There are directions for further exploration where folks can take their projects in a direction they want to go. It's very important to us to get learners creating right away. Rather than providing an overview of, "Yeah, hey, here are some core 3D creation concepts, and here are some foundational areas that you need to know about," we say, "Hey, we're going to give you just enough support to get started and then have you get your hands in the technology right away." Then, they learn as is necessary to accomplish the outcomes they want.

It's a very learner-driven, learner-centric way of engaging folks in a creative process. And we've definitely seen in every group that most people think it's cool; I might venture to say all people think it's cool. There's some significant subset of folks who are saying, "Hey, I want to do more. Where do I go from here?"

Something that's super thrilling to me is when someone wants to do something that our microcourse doesn't cover. So they say, "I want to figure out how to do something maybe a little more complicated, something that involves some code, maybe that requires the integration of a new tool," and then we have the opportunity to say, "Hey, there are resources to help you out there. Let's take a look." So, it's an opportunity to amplify and highlight all of the great things that the 3D creator community is doing more broadly.

Another thing that's helped our microcourses have some pretty quick uptake with some of our participants is that we're really working to amplify what's interesting to the creator, right?

One of the wonderful things about tools like photogrammetry capture tools like UEFN is there's so much opportunity for customization and bringing objects from one's own life into a 3D experience. You can't believe how much kids love to photogrammetry scan their heads, by the way. We have so many people bringing themselves into 3D experiences. But the beautiful thing about that is they're making things that are truly personal. We've had the opportunity to work with different organizations where we've seen really nice ways to use 3D creation to amplify and showcase what participants are already interested in. 

We've worked with a music camp, for example, where their educators taught students and their families how to compose original music compositions using AI-empowered technology. Then, we worked with the participants to bring their compositions into UEFN along with photogrammetry models and set up some trigger events so that their song would play when the player approached a model.

A simple, short program like that showcases a bunch of really interesting stuff about interoperability, about different tools and how they work together, but also is showcasing music, which is important to that participant group. Similarly, Patrick and I are both boxers; a fun fact about us is that we belong to a boxing gym where we ran a program in their basement that showed kids how to rig an avatar to mimic their own boxing moves. We had kids jab-crossing, and then the avatar was jab-crossing just like they were.

We think that the flexibility of our microcourse model is that once folks know how to do three or four technical things with different 3D creator tools, they can use those skills to showcase what they're already interested in and excited about. And so 3D creation is augmentative in that way.

Marc Petit:

Another interesting aspect of Create Access is you are making an open-source model where participants can actually contribute to the content over time. How do you do that?

Liz Dailey:

First, all of our content, as I mentioned, is completely freely available to anyone who wants it. What's been really exciting is that when we've worked with different participants in our different programs, there are always those few or even those many who take to it who want to keep exploring, who are curious, who do more than the core microcourse workflow asked them to do. We actually ended up having that experience at Malvern Prep, which I mentioned earlier. On the fly, we decided to create our first internship program because the students were so engaged in the technology, and we saw them not only as potential 3D creators but as folks who could engage in such a way as to help other people engage with 3D. They became content creators for us and are still working with us, which has been super exciting.

We also have a wonderful relationship with UMass Boston. There are two instructors there who are also involved with BostonGFX or Graphics for Everybody, who allowed us to speak to their students, share our microcourse model, and share our microcourse materials. These are computer science students who then completed our microcourses as part of their coursework. Once they got familiar with our structure and model and our educational approach, they had the option to actually build microcourse content for us as their final course project. Through that experience, they're getting introduced to maybe 3D creator tools that they weren't familiar with before. They're getting to see how they can adapt our educational materials for their own interests and use cases, and they're teaching others how to use these tools, which is one of the best ways to learn.

They're deepening their own learning by becoming folks who are teaching others, and I've worked directly with students at UMass to think about how you can make your content really beginner-friendly. How can you build a workflow that's going to work well for folks who've never seen 3D creation before?

Our whole model is built on really having a community of people who are getting started with 3D, getting excited about 3D, building momentum with 3D, and then giving back. My dream is actually in the future that our program participants will become our interns and maybe even our full-time permanent employees. We're a little young for that to have happened yet as an organization, but I see the beginnings of it already. I see participants who say, "Hey, keep me in mind because in a couple of years, I'll be old enough to work, and I'd love to be your intern."

I think that really this idea of a collective community that's sharing what we know, helping others along, building content that benefits everyone is really core to who we are at Create Access and then what we're trying to achieve.

Marc Petit:

Sometimes, we tend to forget that access is a privilege. And so I think it's fantastic.

I know Patrick is very involved in the graphics community in Philadelphia. How did they welcome you?

Liz Dailey:

So kindly. If I may, I'd love to just acknowledge a few folks specifically. We have wonderful support from Bentley Systems. Locally, they're located in Philadelphia and in Exton, but they're a global company, and they were kind enough to donate space for our summer team to meet in person so we could work together creatively to build our first microcourses last summer. They also allowed us to deliver one of our very early pilot programs to interns that they had engaged through their internship program with Building 21 school in Philadelphia. They actually recently made an introduction that is laying the groundwork for a very promising partnership this summer that I can't share about yet, but stay tuned.

I think we've been so fortunate to have their support, to have them open their doors, and to expose our team to their work, their beautiful office space, and their wonderful team.

Certainly, I think the educators that we've encountered, especially at Malvern Preparatory School, who, very early on, were very excited to just welcome us in and brainstorm with us. Kevin Quinn and Lou Osinski really invited us to experiment and explore with them and with their students. That laid some pretty incredible groundwork for the work that we've been able to do since and the work that we're continuing to do now.

Of course, the folks at Cesium have been excited for us and wonderful to us. We've had industry volunteers who are very skilled, very knowledgeable people. I'm shouting out Victor and Pinot right now, who decided to dedicate their time to working with us outside of their full-time work. There are just so many different people and so many different ways that we've been supported and welcomed into the community.

Pat, am I forgetting anybody? I know there are infinite people that have welcomed us.

Patrick Cozzi:

Well, we're going to do some shout-outs at the end if you think of anyone else.

Liz Dailey:

All right, sounds good.

Patrick Cozzi:

But I was thinking we could move on. We prepared a little bit of what I'll call a lightning round on the state and future 3D education. Maybe we'll do the questions if it's okay.

Julie, we'll do you first, and then, Liz, if you want to add anything. The first thing we were curious about was the traction of UEFN and Verse in education.

Julie Lottering:

We've seen quite a bit of adoption in the first and second year of game programs. So, it is a way to move players into creators. If you love video games, making video games might be a learning curve, and this is a great way to get started, as well as transmedia storytelling where a school like SCAD is using it for music experiences, to Ynov, which is a school in France, that actually worked with service partner for fashion, gave a realistic brief, had 300 students across 10 campuses participate and make a game in five days. We even see organizations like EPAM that are helping students learn Verse and programming by playing within UEFN.

Liz Dailey:

We've seen really wonderful use cases and education where students have the opportunity to really integrate 3D creation with lots of other disciplines. Students building galleries of their own artwork in UEFN, or their own fashion designs, their own music compositions. I think we have ideas about actually helping organizations showcase who they are in a 3D space. We've explored the idea of helping nonprofits build virtual tours that are 3D representations of their work and helping to spread the word about what they're doing in a new way.

There are just infinite possibilities for using even some basic functions of UEFN to get a pretty interesting outcome. We don't dabble a lot in Verse because we're really beginner-focused, but even without needing to code, there's so much that can be done, and you can get so far with UEFN and make such interesting experiences that I think there's plenty for us to do before we even touch Verse.

Marc Petit:

So Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, made a controversial comment that he would not recommend anybody to go to computer science programs and learn how to code. Is that something that you think will happen and that interactivity can be authored through AI?

Julie Lottering:

Right now, today, there's a lot that you can achieve without having to code. We had this UEFN student contest, and in five days, they made an entire game, now just five days' worth of a game, but it was that, without necessarily needing to jump into Verse. There’s a lot that's already set up. If you need a clock, it's there. If you need certain gameplay or devices, it's there. But there's this human desire to tinker and to make it bespoke. So, yes, you might have a clock that counts in minutes, but gosh, I really want it to count in milliseconds. I think that there's always going to be this desire for customization.

Patrick Cozzi:

Julie, is there a person or organization you'd like to give a shout-out to?

Julie Lottering:

I would have to give a shout-out to Side Effects because I still love that company. Everything they’re doing is so innovative. I know that they contribute a lot to the field, and I always love seeing the new developments in the tool.

Patrick Cozzi:

And they came on the podcast.

Julie Lottering:

Yeah, I listened to it. I loved his interview.

Marc Petit:

I met Tim in Germany a couple of weeks ago. He's unchanged, as you could expect. And Liz, you gave us already a little bit of an insight of who supported you. Is there another shout-out you do want to give to a person, an institution, or an organization?

Liz Dailey:

Well, certainly. Everyone who's believed in us on our journey and invested time, energy, and resources in this new thing that we're trying to do, I think, definitely has all the gratitude in my heart and to our team. They took leaps of faith in joining us and being willing to invest their time in something that wasn't yet formed. And, of course, I would be remiss not to give a shout-out to Patrick. Patrick is the visionary behind Create Access. He's our heart and soul. He's the person I engage around the dinner table when we're thinking about strategy, and he's trying to eat his dinner.

I'm just so grateful for your vision and for your belief that I could do something with it. So thank you.

Marc Petit:

Well, thanks to both of you. Create Access is a fantastic initiative. It's new. We wish you a lot of success with this organization. And I also want to thank both of you, Liz and Julie, for this insightful journey into the impact of technology and real-time 3D on education. We hope that the investment will revolutionize the classroom experience for the coming generations and offer new ways to ignite curiosity and deeper understanding.

We've heard that more real-time 3D will create a wealth of new job opportunities. Some we know in design for experiences and games, but some we do not even know. But one thing we know for sure is that the skills that we foster today with real-time 3D will be the foundation of tomorrow's careers for many people, and it should be bright for those who embrace these technologies and these innovative possibilities today. So go for it.

Again, thank you, guys, and thank you to our ever-growing audience. You can find us on the podcast platforms. Reach out to us on our LinkedIn page and our website, buildingtheopenmetaverse.org.

Julie, Liz, and Patrick thank you very much for a great episode.