Rachel Park is a freelance writer and editor focused on 3D printing since 1996. She owns RP Editorial Services and is a Director of PYL Associates — and she is our Women in 3D Printing guest #274.
Sarah Goehrke: How did a newspaper ad lead to a career in additive manufacturing?
Rachel Park: Just to clarify from the off: I don’t actually view myself as having a career “in” additive manufacturing! I get that I am connected to the industry and have been for a long time, relatively speaking at least. However, I am not an engineer or a designer. I don’t have any technical skills or a PhD in polymer or metal powder processing etc. The women that have achieved these things are the ones who deserve the kudos. I just write and talk about the industry and its many layers (pun intended!!).
On that basis – please don’t read any further if you’re looking for any deep and meaningful insights into the technology, processes, materials or software. There’s plenty of other, really talented, way more qualified sources for that.
To answer your question though — it was the tiniest little ad in a local newspaper in Chester in the UK, advertising for an Associate Editor for a new pan-European magazine with a small publishing company in Cheshire. This was March 1996, so I printed off my CV and popped it in the post (I realise I will have lost a whole generation or two of you there, but bear with). I got called to interview a few days later.
I was working for the European branch of a large US B2B publishing house working on a Medical Device Technology title, which I actually enjoyed, but the politics of that organisation was doing my head in! These being the only two publishing houses in my area I figured I would give it a shot. I had no inclination to move to Manchester or London which were/are the two main media cities in the UK and I needed a change.
At interview, it turns out that two of the co-founders of the company had both previously worked for the same US company and had set up on their own. They had acquired a newsletter from Warwick Manufacturing Group called “Rapid News” focused on an embryonic technology called Rapid Prototyping, which they had developed into a well-received journal and the circulation was growing. They were now looking to launch into the US.
Knowing the training I had received in a busy editorial department themselves, I was offered the job on the spot, and started working as the Associate Editor on Rapid News the following month. Rapid News became Time Compression Technologies, subsequently TCT Magazine, the name it still operates under today. I became the Editor and then the Editorial Director of the group — I was also involved in event planning for the conference and exhibition of the same name.
Read the rest at Women in 3D Printing
[Note: I wrote this piece for and published it at Women in 3D Printing as part of my work with that organization; it was outside the scope of my work with Fabbaloo, shared here with permission. -SG]
