At the XR4U Summer Event in Berlin a training program got introduced in Berlin: Designer for immersive media (Gestalter für immersive Medien). The enactment by the government for this program will get into effect on August 1st 2023 and is approved by the chamber of industry and commerce in Germany. You can find more about it here:  www.ihk.de
This is a huge breakthrough in defining the tasks of a XR creator. 

What does this mean for people that want to get into the field of XR? In general you can apply for the training from your 15th birthday on. The training and education is separated between going to school – the “Berufsschule” in Germany and working and training directly in a XR company. How exactly the ratio is, differs from school to school and XR company to XR company. The training takes three years and you’ll get paid a monthly salary. 

If you want to start this training you’ll first need to find a company that offers the traineeship and has a certified educator within the company. Then you can apply for the traineeship. As this is the first year for the whole program to start it might be tricky  to find such companies, as probably many have to do the test, to be able to get into the program. Your chances might be better the bigger the company as they probably already have trainees and educator in other fields and are more experienced with it. 

Unfortunately most of the information out there at the moment is in German. If you want to learn more about the enactment you can find the information here: 
www.recht.bund.de/bgbl/1/2023/99/VO

With a growing industry of XR in different fields like media and entertainment, production in general, trading and consumption, the medical area and education it seems like professionals are missing. This is a general problem in Germany and I am surprised as on how fast it was possible to get such an educational plan approved. Thanks mostly to the coalition of these different unions and organizations in Germany:  

Erster deutscher Fachverband für Virtual Reality und immersive Medien e.V. (https://edfvr.org/), nextReality.Hamburg e.V. (https://nextreality.hamburg/),  Virtual Dimension Center (https://www.vdc-fellbach.de/), Virtual Reality e. V. Berlin Brandenburg (https://virtualrealitybb.org/), XR Bavaria e.V.( https://xrbavaria.de/), XR HUB Bavaria (https://xrhub-bavaria.de/), Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di (https://www.verdi.de/), Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer (https://www.dihk.de/de ), Zentral-Fachausschuss Berufsbildung Druck und Medien (https://zfamedien.de/)

And all of this in less than three years’ time. For German standards that’s close to the speed of light when it comes to an enactment like this and one can only congratulate  all the participants for this effort. What is the core of this education, what can you expect to learn? 

The job combines a lot of knowledge and tasks. It looks like a perfect field for women as it is a very versatile education. In the three years you will learn about distribution, marketing and project management. You learn how to conceptualize for this new medium, get an understanding of content creation in XR e.g. storytelling and storyliving and how to approach conceptart with moodboards, storyboards and animatics. You’ll also dive deep into the creation process by diving deep into 3D animation, learn about UX design, and how to create spatial audio for XR and postproduction on material, such as editing. Hence you’ll collect a broad understanding of the pipelines within a production for XR. And last but not least you will be trained in the coding part as well and how the connection of different stages within the work flow can operate together. 
So the idea is, that you will be able to come up with ideas for XR projects and get the tools during your education to fully be able to produce it and have an understanding of the market and be able to distribute it in the right paths. 

You’ll spend time at school and time at a company during your training – and best case scenario this company takes you on after your education. On the one hand this program sounds amazing. The moment I heard of it, I thought how great it is, now with a training of three years one will be able to do everything within the field of XR. But be aware, that the requirements demand a very diverse person with different abilities. And this might just be the reason, why your job title and description will not be taken away by an AI soon. It is exactly such intertwining skills and a general knowledge of combining different fields that AI won`t be able to handle for a near future situation. One task and it can get really good at it. But a “creative” field of work, where project management, meets technical skills, meets creative conception meets sales tactics – that is way too much for the artificial intelligence to handle. So if you are a women and feel like this is something for you then go to: 
https://gestaltung-immersiv.de/

There you’ll find the companies and the schools that are part of the program already. This list is going to grow over the next months and years. Maybe you know of someone who would like to get into this field or of a company who would join the program?