Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp led by the giant Mark Zuckerberg. Although Zuckerberg finds himself under the fifteenth position of the richest human beings on the second planet Forbes (although not too long ago he was much higher), his Meta company will surely have a central role in the economy of the next decade and probably in the lives of all of us.
Having overcome the era of a simple and outdated internet, we find ourselves at the gates of metaverse, a new way of connecting to (digital) reality. The metaverse in fact consists of an entirely digital and immersive world to the point of recreating life, the real one, through so-called augmented reality. The goal is to bring the web from 2D to 3D. And Meta plans to do it with a new school too. Sorry, an 'academy'.
Learning a new world
In collaboration with Simplon.co, a French social and solidarity company dedicated to digital training, Meta launches in France for the next academic year the "Metaverse Academy“, a free school dedicated exclusively to the metaverse.
The two organizations announced the launch of this project in a joint press release published on 12/06. There Metaverse Academy plans to train around 100 students from cities such as Nice, Lyon, Marseille and Paris in the first year. The training will mainly cover two roles: developers specializing in immersive technologies and service and support engineers.
What do we know about the metaverse academy for now?
Laurent Solly, vice-president of Meta for Southern Europe, assured that the future of the school will be "free, territorial, innovative and focused on employability". He then added:
Thanks to this strong partnership with a key player, Simplon, the Metaverse Academy is a first step that will help anticipate the acceleration of uses [of the Metaverse] and train future builders of the metaverse. We want to participate in the creation of a collective metaverse, creating sustainable jobs for the entire digital ecosystem
The co-founder of Simplon, Frederic Bardeau, said teaching will be face-to-face and projects will focus on 3D interactions and the immersive virtual world. The project will also focus on diversity, with Solly's goal of having 30% women in the first cohort.
In short, what future awaits us?
Both Meta and Simplon highlighted the need for training programs of this type in this era, given that 80% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented, at least according to Meta and Simplon. In October last year, Meta declared that he wanted to create at least 10.000 jobs in the next five years, just to build the metaverse (who knows, he might populate it). The Academy will also serve this purpose.
If all this will come true only time will tell us, in the meantime we wait and dedicate ourselves to the only reality we have at our disposal for now.