The journey (and my career) continues
In November '23 I lost my job, what do I do now?
I began writing this post as just a recap of what I had been up to in February this year, but then it kind of ballooned into something bigger. I’m posting it mostly as a snapshot of where I’m at for my future self, so it’s quite self indulgent—but it might be interesting to other people too. TLDR: there’s lots of potential and I’m open for business as a consultant! ~ Tom
The end of February marks 3 months since I was made redundant from my role at Sketchfab / Epic Games. If I am honest, part of me is still a little sore from the sudden change - I loved my job of 6+ years and the wonderful team at Sketchfab 💙 There was also still so much more I wanted achieve in helping connect the amazing Sketchfab cultural heritage community with Epic’s suite of creative software.
As I explore new opportunities and conversations, I’ve noticed that I’ve started saying “since I left Epic” instead of “since I was made redundant” because I feel some shame in how my role ended. Surely if I was more valuable, better at my job, or was more strategic in my work I would still have a job? Maybe. But over time, I’m making peace with the fact that—like 9,000+ other people in the games industry—my role was just a casualty of poor planning, overspending, and finally, the need balance the books at the expense of people’s livelihoods (so says Epic’s press release about the layoffs).
Above: some playful interactions with cultural heritage content that I built in UEFN in my spare time at Epic.
During my 2+ years of Sketchfab-within-Epic (as well as in a few au revoir emails to management), I tried my best to lay out to new colleagues the aspirations of Sketchfab’s Cultural Heritage Program, the responsibilities of stewarding a unique collection of digital heritage, and future opportunities for collaboration.
There are tens of thousands of open access cultural heritage 3D models sitting on Sketchfab which are now a digital stone’s throw away from being part of an amazing Unreal Engine creation or reaching a young, diverse audience on Fortnite. The match up of content + tools + audience seems like a no brainer to me, especially in the context of a diverse digital entertainment offering.
However, the cultural heritage 3D data and it’s huge potential didn’t just evaporate along with my role at Sketchfab and I look forward to seeing what the clever folk at Epic get up to in this regard in the future. Hopefully the digital plumbing between platforms will get connected, workflows will be established, and the community and practical use cases will evolve. At the same time, there is plenty of work to be done within the cultural heritage sector—which is producing many gigabytes of spatial data every day—to better engage with Epic and other commercial companies over their 3D resources to help them reach new audiences and tell stories in new ways.
However I might feel about being laid off, there are some benefits to a career reset (OK and a decent severance package). Personally speaking, more time with my family is the most significant gain, and I can refocus professionally, for a while at least, on projects and activities that I am passionate about. I am now able to spend a more time exploring new technologies & communities, and looking at the bigger picture of spatial heritage. There is so much great and varied work happening every day, all over the globe, in this space as people are connecting the dots between 3D digitisation and what audiences want, or just experimenting to see what sticks.
I love discovering and being inspired by what academics and creatives are getting up to with cultural 3D data, and I think there is value in sharing these stories and examples with other people, too. Which brings me to one of the things that is now taking up some of my time…
The Spatial Heritage Review
As my last day at Sketchfab neared, I formed a plan to take December off as a ‘career holiday’, to give myself time to process things and enjoy time with my family. It would mean I could enjoy the holidays, hibernate a little, and start 2024 fresh - it’s not often as an adult that one gets the opportunity to do this, and I didn’t want to miss it.
As it turned out, I managed to slow down, spend more time with my loved ones, and hibernate a little …but did I take that career break? Not quite. In fact I launched the first issue of The Spatial Heritage Review on December 4, just four days after my official last day at Epic Games 😅.
By then, my post-Sketchfab plans had resolved into either a) set up a consultation business based on my specific knowledge, experience, network, & enthusiasms or b) retrain for something entirely different. While I still might take up plan B one day, I decided to give plan A a good go and creating a free monthly newsletter seemed like potentially a good way to begin.
Some of my goals with the The Spatial Heritage Review are:
Curate & showcase amazing things that are happening at the intersection of spatial computing and cultural heritage, both from within the GLAM sector but also in adjacent industries like games, entertainment, education, and journalism.
Provide a free service that is of benefit to professionals in the heritage sector, but also of interest to commercial companies and tech enthusiasts alike.
Make the content that I was traditionally producing for social media networks work for me instead.
Convert the industry and community followings I have developed over the years into something that might work for me, too.
In summary, I hope that I can bring something valuable and interesting to people’s inboxes for free, and in return that they’ll permit some occasional self-promotion😇.
Continuing the Sketchfab Weekly Top 10
If you subscribe to The Spatial Heritage Review, you can also receive weekly roundups of the best cultural heritage 3D models posted to Sketchfab.
Hundreds if not thousands of new cultural heritage 3D models are published on Sketchfab each day, and it’s easy to miss great quality content if you’re not paying attention or subscribed to the right accounts. To help with this and as part of my role at Sketchfab, I used to create weekly collections to highlight the best & most interesting uploads. For years these collections were promoted on Sketchfab’s social channels and were often the posts which received the most engagement.
Sketchfab no longer continues this activity, but I still want to help people discover novel heritage content and great interactive 3D so I’m happy to keep dropping a new collection each week.
Re-joining IIIF
If you’re not familiar with IIIF, go check ‘em out!
During my time at Sketchfab I was a long time contributor to the 3D Community Group, and for a while one of the co-chairs of the group too. As work pressures shifted after Epic’s acquisition of Sketchfab, I had to step down as a co-chair—annoyingly just at the moment the group was moving to establish a Techincal Specification Group, the next stage of the community’s efforts towards 3D interoperability.
Lucky for me, the group hadn’t forgotten about me and (maybe because they saw that I had some time on my hands) I was invited to join a 3D group summit in Washington DC in January. I’ve written about that event at more length here, and I am truly grateful to be back working amongst a group very clever people who are as hyped for 3D as I am.
I’m happy to say that I’m recently back in the role of co-chair of the community group, and I’m looking forward to ramping up efforts to involve more people in the group’s work. With so many people working on 3D digitsation and publishing in the cultural sector, the IIIF 3D Community Group slack channel and monthly calls are relaxed and friendly spaces to share projects, listen & learn, and network.
I should note that being a co-chair is an unpaid position, but there is a lot of value in contributing to the group both for the sake of the work itself, as well as for professional networking. I don’t always work for free though, and the following activities are the first of many that I hope to build out into a decent monthly income.
Brighton University Webinar
One of several groups that kept in contact with me post Epic, the good folks at Brighton University’s Cultural Informatics group were in interested in exploring what I could bring to their their program and to their students. After some discussion, we settled on an initial webinar on the topic of “Publishing & Re-use of Cultural Heritage 3D for Narrative Purposes”
The webinar was well attended, at one point we had just shy of 100 people listening in and taking part in the Q&A - not bad at all for a free online event! Organisers Dr. Karina Rodriguez Echavarria and Dr. Myrsini Samaroudi were amazing to work with and I’m really grateful for this first post-Sketchfab gig. Preparing this webinar allowed me the chance to re-frame my own knowledge and experience with a focus on a topic that I love while signposting some of the great work of others, and opportunities for the sector to explore.
The experience also reminded me how much I love teaching and working with large groups.
Oxford University Seminar & Workshop
While still at Sketchfab, I had taken part in a ‘conversation day’ between academics, cultural heritage professionals, and creative sector folks at the kind invitation of Tasha Patel of The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). The event was intended to help everyone involved explore what possibilities and value each group could bring to the other - it was a great experience.
Keeping in contact with TORCH combined with a new conversation with the Oxford Internet Institute over my potential involvement in the work of interdisciplinary network the Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage Network (DHSH). Attendees to DHSH events come from a range of backgrounds including undergrads, early career researchers, all the way up to seasoned academics and post-docs, all of whom are (among other things) looking understand the latest opportunities for collaboration with the cultural heritage sector.
We settled on my participation in two parts on a single day: a joint seminar in the morning, and an introductory photogrammetry workshop in the afternoon.
The morning session was a two-header, with Katerina Kremmida, Director of Heritage and Attractions at Hampshire Cultural Trust talking about 878 AD and a presentation from me entitled Academia & Publishing 3D Online. My presentation aimed to highlight opportunities for academics to help cultural organisations work with and make the most of their 3D data, with some examples along the way. There were some great questions from attendee on the subjects of authenticity, ethics, copyright, technology, and more.
In the afternoon, I ran a workshop at the incredibly scenic Worcester College for people new to photogrametry, Polycam being my gateway drug of choice at the moment.
It was a great day being back in a room with people teaching practical skills and having some frank discussion with talented and thoughtful folks. I’m very grateful to Dr. Emanuela Vai, Prof. Kathryn Eccles, Alice Purkiss, Dr. Rachel Delman, and Carmen Denia for all their help and support along the way!
Open for Business
Alongside all these activities, I’ve been having lots of introductory and exploratory conversations with academics, commercial companies, and heritage professionals. Aside form anything else, hearing what other people like about the work that I do and have done, and what they think I can bring to a collaboration has been a great way to better understand what I am good at and what work may be most valuable to the cultural sector.
While I continue the community building work of The Spatial Heritage Review and IIIF 3D Group, I’m hopeful that some of these conversations will lead me to more paid work and a sustainable income based on the work I love to do. In the coming months I hope to begin more paid projects that:
Help cultural heritage organisations explore and strategise around 3D digitisation and publishing.
Help academics to broaden their understanding of 3D & digitisation.
Help commercial companies strengthen their offer to the cultural sector.
If any of the above sound like something you’ve got the budget for, do drop me a line!