Makers of The Metaverse: Kyle Michl Of Accenture Federal Services On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries

The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, we had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle Michl.

Kyle Michl is the Chief Innovation Officer for Accenture Federal Services.

Michl helps drive growth opportunities and identifies high-impact innovation strategies that focus on emerging technology incubation, rapid prototyping, and co-creation of innovative solutions.

Michl is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Thanks for having me! I grew up in Long Island, New York, with my parents and twin brother. We had a large extended family, and I was fortunate to grow up in an environment with many first cousins and a strong sense of family.

My father was an engineer in the aerospace industry, and we often worked on projects together, either building things or fixing items around the house. It was an early glimpse into my future of consulting and solving client challenges!

When given the opportunity to go to camp or to get a job at age twelve, my brother and I both took jobs as caddies at a private country club. I have spoken with many successful executives, and it continues to surprise me the number of them that caddied as a part of their childhood. It was a great job as it provided a view into many different successful careers of the members. Most importantly, it created a foundation for a strong work ethic spending my summers starting work at 5 AM!

I also worked as a youth and in college at a construction company paving roads, as a cook and a server, and as a sound tech at concerts. I met a wide variety of people and learned a lot across industries. I believe that I developed many of the skills and habits during that time that helped me to be successful in my career, from my work ethic to customer service and learning new skills.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

There are many books and films that have impacted my thinking throughout the years. One worth highlighting is Exponential Organizations by Salim Ishmail. It looks back at corporate history and the successes and failures of some of the largest companies, including the characteristics of those that saw explosive growth. Most importantly for me, it highlighted the impacts of not considering the future of technology. While these are themes that I understood prior to the book, it was a great read that forced this topic to stay top-of-mind.

The impact for me was a renewed focus in the future of technology. Emerging technologies offered the excitement of constant change and the challenge of determining what the next major disruptors will be in the market.

This supported my career direction as a client portfolio CTO and most recently as Chief Innovation Officer for Accenture Federal Services where I get to work closely with our clients to help solve complex problems and explore how the latest commercial technologies can enable innovative ways to meet business and mission challenges. It is also part of why I enjoy working on our Federal Tech Vision report every year. It provides me with the opportunity to promote trends that Accenture sees across the global landscape. This year’s Tech Vision — Meet Me in the Metaverse — really captures the impact Extended Reality will have on the future. We’re currently working on this year’s federal version of the report which will be available later this summer.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in your industry? We’d love to hear it.

I’m not sure there is one pivotal moment where my career trajectory became clear but rather a theme of interactions with technology and problem-solving that continually nudged me in the right direction.

As I mentioned earlier, having a childhood immersed in engineering created an environment where solving problems was rewarded. Whether that was fixing something I own or often helping friends to fix issues with their cars or homes.

Additionally, while we never had cable TV in the house, we always had computers. So, I was exposed to coding and technology that was reinforced when I got to college. I studied engineering at the University of Notre Dame and spent a large amount of time in the computer labs running simulations and coding.

I went on early interviews for consulting without a strong appreciation of the career path. However, once into discussions on the opportunity, I knew I had found the right career. The combination of solving large intractable problems alongside working with and learning the latest technologies was exciting. In hindsight, it all now makes perfect sense. I had been working as a consultant with family and friends for years. Now I had the opportunity to get paid for it!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

As a frequent business traveler through the years, as you might imagine, I have several stories related to air travel. One notable example was early on in my career. I was traveling back from Atlanta to my home in New York. There were thunderstorms up and down the east coast and flights were delayed for many hours. This also was before there were limitations on how long aircraft could remain on the runway with passengers aboard due to delays.

We boarded the plane and spent roughly 3–4 hours on the tarmac waiting to take off. You knew it was going to be a long trip when the flight crew decided to make a movie available for free. The movie was “Titanic”. I wasn’t sure if I should be more concerned that they selected a 3-hour movie to show, or that it was a disaster film.

Eventually we departed and made it to around Baltimore where we hit bad turbulence. Our plane was struck by lightning, and we ended up having to land in Baltimore to check the equipment and to refuel. Planes at this time had credit card phones — so I think I spent $25 to call friends and family and let them know we were making an emergency landing.

Ultimately, we made it to New York very late, safely and without issue. I’ve since had many unique business travel experiences. But I find that this trip helps keep other trip issues in perspective!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

One of my first projects was as an analyst consulting with the telecom industry. I was responsible for updating the C code for the management of cellular features for cell phones. This was the 1990’s so we were enabling services like call waiting and voicemail. I was asked to add in a feature to a large program, likely 50K lines of code.

Now keep in mind, I was not a computer science major and while I had training in C programming, I did not have the background on the initial code developed. I updated the code and then compiled it. When we deployed it for testing, there were more errors than the lines of code!

I slowly worked through my errors line by line and retested the code. We were ultimately able to deploy the functionality on time without errors for the customers. However, I learned an important lesson that I’ve carried throughout my career, which is the importance of attention to detail and thorough testing. While initially funny to have thousands of errors, having to be the one to fix it was not as enjoyable!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Interestingly, the most impactful person for my career trajectory is likely my twin brother. He both directly and indirectly helped me to get where I am today.

We grew up at a time when twins were less common than today. We were often compared with one another. As a result, we were always very competitive. Whether it was sports, school, or careers, early in life we motivated each other to push the limits. That competitive spirit with one another became part of our DNA.

As we matured, competitiveness played a less important role in our interactions. Despite different schools and majors, we both ended up in Washington DC with similar career directions. He always has been a strong sounding board for my career; I was provided the opportunity for unlimited counsel on career decisions and directions.

Whether a detailed discussion on experiences with a specific technology or weighing the pros and cons of various career progression opportunities, I’ve been fortunate to have a brother who happens to be a successful professional in the same space. Having such a trusted family member for counsel and feedback is a true asset and why I’m grateful for both the competitive push and the supportive ear of my twin.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I have the best job, as my role is to work with our clients to find innovative ways to solve their toughest challenges. Virtual and augmented reality is a critical tool in my toolkit to help clients advance complex mission agendas. I focus on the federal government space and am continually impressed by the willingness of our customers to explore how new technologies support their mission.

For example, I’m working today with customers to explore how we can improve the way repairs are done on heavy equipment. Can they get virtual guided instructions on how to make a complex repair? Can they collaborate in real-time with an inspector to improve quality and speed to readiness?

I’m also working with customers to help create digital twins of complex environments. This allows for less travel because stakeholders can participate in planning remotely in virtual environments together and be better prepared with “what if” scenarios. The same digital twin can then be used during operations — allowing visibility into an environment or event in a far more immersive way than just a 2D screen. Then, by integrating multiple digital twins and bringing in real-time data, we can truly transform situational awareness and understanding of an environment and ecosystem.

These types of technologies will help people get work done more quickly and safely and have the potential to save lives when applied to critical defense and security missions.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

Trends in this space are moving quickly. And I’m excited to see the VR, AR, and MR vernacular in the lexicon of business leaders across commercial and government leaders. It is a technology that I’ve been an advocate of for many years, and, like many new technologies, it takes time for the technology to mature sufficiently to the point where its impact is clear. I think the pandemic was critical in moving us forward in this space. To answer your question specifically, three things that excite me are:

The maturing of the hardware — Moving from tethered devices to untethered devices alone was a critical part of rising adoption. Additionally, the computing power in the devices and resolution has consistently increased. There are new haptics providers to make experiences even more immersive with incredible resolution to make environments life-like.

The growing ecosystem of organizations using AR, VR, MR capabilities — Whether it is the large cloud service providers or niche application providers, there is an ever-increasing set of XR tools available to build VR experiences for consumers and enterprises. I see this very much akin to 2007 when the iPhone supercharged the mobile phone industry. The future is exciting as we help our clients move to the metaverse.

The deployment of 5G technologies — Public and private 5G roll outs are underway and there’s no doubt 5G will be a key enabler of future XR technologies. It will provide advances in the aggregation and rendering of high-fidelity images and data. And it will bring the bandwidth and low latency necessary to get real-time information available on devices.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Any new technology will bring concerns. And at times, these concerns can make or break the success of the technology or minimally affect the speed of adoption.

The first concern is not new: security. These new devices need to be managed in secure enterprise environments. Also, the security of data captured, either retina, voice, or application data, needs to be secure. While this can sound daunting, I see this as no different than any other technology where good security hygiene is required for devices, data, and user information. It is important to consider security upfront and build it into development lifecycles and operations.

The second concern is the human interface for this technology. Accenture Federal Services has dedicated resources that focus on Human Centered Design. For adoption of these technologies, and solutions to be built upon them, we need to consider the humans that will use them. Going back to the mobile phone example, I was a Blackberry user and never thought I could move from a tactile keyboard to a glass screen. How will we type and input data? Would NLP be sufficient to capture information? Would finger tracking work well enough? What about the AR interactions — would the depth and scale feel natural?

Anyone who has donned a headset knows the challenges of interaction for complex tasks or fatigue of headsets over time. The good news is there are many companies working on these very challenges today — including VR keyboards, lighter HMDs, improved haptics and more.

Lastly, there is a concern that it is unhealthy or addictive to spend too much time in these environments. And of course, there needs to be a balance. But if you look at the many ways these technologies are making life better and enabling rich collaboration, there are clearly so many offsets to concerns about overuse in the gaming or entertainment space. It is important that these technologies are used ethically and responsibly with consideration for the potential long-term impacts.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Thanks for this question because this is a common starting point for anyone who has a Playstation or Oculus Quest in their house today. While these technologies are great for gaming, what is their real applicability to our day-to-day lives and in the business world? Well, this is where it gets exciting….

A top use case is Immersive Learning. Research shows that virtual experiences allow for higher content absorption rates, anywhere from 40%-70% depending on the content. These technologies also allow for the simulation of scenarios that are inherently dangerous or difficult to recreate. Personnel can learn without having to worry about making mistakes that would be costly in the real world and can come together virtually with others to train while being physically distant.

Depending on the business there is also the ability to apply XR technologies to bring digital twins to life. We can recreate environments, train, simulate scenarios, and operate more efficiently by creating high fidelity, realistic 3D models of the environments. This can apply to supply chain, medical scenarios, equipment maintenance, mission operations, and event space planning, among many other areas.

Finally, a likely workplace use case will be collaboration. Whether that be for orienting new joiners like Accenture did with over 60,000 Oculus Quest 2 headsets, or using platforms like AltSpace, Horizon Worlds, Spatial, Omniverse, or others to bring people together to collaborate on complex tasks and network while remaining distant. This is a powerful tool as we work to define the “new normal” for remote and in person work models.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Applications for XR are constantly being explored as the technology has improved. There are many examples. Here are a few that are just the tip of the iceberg:

Health & Wellness — Virtual and augmented reality can be used to help reduce stress or assist with certain disorders. For example, virtual reality has been shown to be able to help with PTSD and is being explored for pediatric physical therapy.

Traveling the world — Today, travel is mainly a “physical only” activity and with the pandemic travel was interrupted in many parts of the world. But XR technologies provide the opportunity for virtual trips to destinations. Have you ever seen the pyramids of Egypt or the Eiffel tower? With high resolution experiences, the ability to see and explore parts of the world will be accessible to all.

Remote medicine — XR technologies are enabling medical care of the future, from remote- guided surgeries via AR to medical training from across the globe. The ability to obtain top medical care from specialists around the world is getting increasingly easier. This can also be applied to the battlefield where split second medical decisions are often life-or-death.

Work life balance –The pandemic saw a drastic reduction in travel and proved many jobs and functions could be done without or with less physical time together. Because you can virtually travel to many destinations or participate remotely, you can minimize the times you have to go to a location physically in person. This can help with inspections, legal proceedings, planning and even networking. It allows more flexibility in travel and location and ultimately an expanded pool of resources and improved work/life balance, as well as sustainability thanks to less travel.

The list is truly endless, and I’m really excited for what the future holds. I am optimistic about the many positive ways this technology will change our lives for the better.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

There are many myths about working in the consulting and the XR industry. Focusing on XR, one key challenge is the myth that VR/MR is just for gaming and kids. I believe this is driven by movies and the accessibility of games for XR market today. Often the commercial and entertainment markets adopt technologies before enterprise markets.

Given the rate of adoption and maturation of the technologies, it would be short-sighted to not consider the enterprise impacts of XR and the metaverse now. Certainly, there will be waves of XR adoption to follow, but those who get it right and apply it early will separate themselves from their competitors. The impacts to training, remote work, and immersive insights from digital twins will be powerful for the enterprise and enable the next set of digital leaders.

Another myth is that using VR/MR is going to end in a dystopian future where all are stuck in the virtual world. I liken the rise of the metaverse and the use of VR, AR, MR to that of artificial intelligence — which often has a similar narrative. When talking about artificial intelligence, a common fear is that machines will take away human jobs and functions. There we often talk about the role of human + machines and the power of bringing the two together to do the functions they do best. For the metaverse and XR, I see it as bringing together the physical and virtual worlds. Some use cases work best in the fully virtual, but many others have a mix of physical and virtual that can optimize performance. We won’t fully replace our physical work, but we can bring the best of both virtual and physical together.

The last myth is that technology practitioners are “hammer looking for a nail” bringing the same technology to all. And while there can be instances where people bring what they know, the best will seek to understand the real problem space and solutions needed before identifying the right technologies. By understanding the outcome desired and the value provided, only then can you optimize the technology stack for the near and longer term.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”

I received good advice throughout my career, both formal training and informal guidance. I enjoy talking with those who are just starting their careers as they often bring perspectives I may not have considered and always have an infectious enthusiasm for the work we’re doing. Here are my recommendations:

Be constantly learning — Technology is moving fast in all industries and the XR space is no exception. The pandemic has only increased the speed of technology adoption. Build a technology foundation and look to grow that with the latest capabilities. For example, find podcasts, leaders, and RSS feeds that have strong content and block time in your week to review the latest happenings. We’re all busy, so make it a part of your routine.

Build your network — Build your network in technology and industry and surround yourself with people smarter than you. Your network is critical for your success — invest here and you’ll be rewarded with connections that help you solve problems and doors to future opportunities.

Stay relevant — As you progress in your career, management responsibilities can consume a lot of your time. Make sure to stay close the enabling technologies and go “hands on” both using and developing technologies. You may not be able to be an expert in each technology, but you will be able to approach your next discussion from a deeper position of understanding.

Don’t make it all about technology — Technology is exciting and VR, AR, MR are technologies that will forever change our world. Focus your energy on impact and outcomes. How can we change the world for customers, business, and citizens for the better? For example, don’t start conversations with technology — make sure you understand the problem you’re trying to solve.

Follow your energy — I wish I had understood this earlier in my career. I’ve been fortunate to always like what I’ve done in consulting and especially around emerging technology. But I know my colleagues and clients can see the genuine energy and enthusiasm I bring around extended reality. Lean in where your energy is strong — you’ll not only do your best work, but you’ll wake up each day ready for more.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I believe we need to supercharge STEM. Technology is the foundation for our future, and we need to build the next generation of technology leaders. There are many great programs already in place to help with this; what we need is to continue to support and drive STEM across the country and at all age levels.

One program I personally participated in is the Hour of Code. I was able to work side-by- side with multiple classes in school and was so impressed by the teachers and the coding knowledge and skills of the kids. These digital natives are truly going to do amazing things and our job as leaders is to give them the tools and opportunities to make their mark.

My ask is that everyone working in this space, especially those focused on XR, take the time to nurture that next generation. Look for local opportunities to engage with schools or give your time or sponsorship to organizations that share the STEM mission. There are many ways to get involved, through donations, time, assisting with getting technology into students’ hands and being an advocate for those already working in this critical space.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

There are so many leaders that I’d love to connect with that it makes just picking one very challenging. I believe that you can learn from other people’s journeys and find it fascinating to understand how leaders achieved their success. Jensen Huang of NVIDIA is one leader that has a great backstory. He is driving work around artificial intelligence, video gaming, autonomous cars and, in the last few years, is making increasing investments in the metaverse. It would be an engaging discussion to talk about the future in these areas as well as his individual journey to success. Discussing the future of technology and especially the future of AR, VR, and MR is a passion of mine. Thanks for the thoughtful questions on the industry and market.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!