On March 31st 2021, Blender Network will terminate its operations. All ongoing memberships will be cancelled and have their last payment refunded. The Blender Foundation Certified Trainer program (BFCT), which was already on hold, will also stop. The blendernetwork.org domain (and all URLs) will redirect to blender.org. No data will be preserved on the blendernetwork.org server, which will be discontinued.
Originally presented by Ton Roosendaal as a whitepaper in 2010, Blender Network’s mission was to facilitate the provisioning of services and support, connect users and promote professional Blender businesses. This mission has been carried out by the blendernetwork.org platform, providing visibility and business opportunities to several hundred individuals and organizations.
However, the incredible growth of the Blender community and the rise of social media have greatly reduced the need for a Blender-backed platform to provide legitimacy and visibility to professionals. For this reason, after almost a decade of operation, it is time to retire the platform.
Similarly, the BFCT initiative has also been made redundant. While there is an understanding that an “official certification” is highly appreciated in the education environment, Blender Foundation is not available to oversee the effort of building, maintaining and auditing an educational curriculum.
The idea of creating a free, public, centralized index of professional service providers and education facilities is still relevant, and should be considered an exciting open market opportunity.
Moving forward, Blender Foundation will focus more on its mission; to get the world’s best 3D technology in the hands of artists as free and open source software. Supporting studios and institutions will be done by improving the availability of resources: documentation and know-how on the blender.org platform.
Over the years, Blender Network has developed and provided helpful functionality to its users, such as real time search and filtering, a world user map, social networking features, a jobs board and much more. Such functionality has benefitted several other official Blender websites. Special thanks to Pablo Vazquez for his essential contribution to this project.
Special thanks to all Blender Network members, who over the years have helped to grow the Blender ecosystem to what it is today.
Finally, a sincere thank you to Ton Roosendaal for trusting me and Pablo with the opportunity to run this initiative.
For any enquiry please reach out to francesco@blendernetwork.org.
Francesco Siddi,
Blender Network Manager
Amsterdam – 30 December 2020