XR Interview: Jeremy Dalton, Head of XR at PwC & Author of Reality Check.
Welcome to the #VirtualLibrary. Here’s our latest ‘XR Interview’ — a collection of the best & brightest in virtual reality, uncovering their stories & documenting their insights into all things immersive.
Jeremy leads PwC’s XR team, helping clients understand, quantify, and implement the benefits of virtual reality and augmented reality technology.
As part of his mission to educate, connect and inspire, he has supported the XR initiatives of the World Economic Forum and currently sits on the advisory board of ImmerseUK, a UK government supported cross-sector network for businesses, research and educational organisations that are engaged with immersive technologies.
What was your first encounter with immersive technology?
When I was growing up in Dubai in the mid-90s, I recall visiting a fairly low-key shopping centre and convincing my parents to let me have a go on a VR machine similar in form to a Virtuality CS1000 system with a single wired joystick. It was a first-person shooter game with Wolfenstein 3D like visuals. I didn’t survive for long but it was well worth the equivalent of the few quid I (ie, my parents) paid.
Note to readers: If anyone has any inkling of what the above machine or experience might have been, I’d love to take a trip down memory lane!
Can you remember the moment you decided to work in & around XR?
It was less of a moment and more of a gradual realisation. I’d been working in innovation for a while but it was proving difficult to keep tabs on all the exciting technologies out there. I wanted to feel more valuable so decided to specialise in one area. I picked XR because it was so unique compared to everything else — a rare example of an experiential, visceral technology that has applications in both the business and consumer world.
Everyone has a different background, different previous roles, different upbringing, etc. Can you think of how your previous experiences have impacted the way you approach immersive projects today?
I spent most of my life in the Middle East, only coming to the UK to study mathematics at university. After completing that, I stuck around and had a weird and wonderful career trajectory involving stocking shelves at a department store, summarising lecture notes for disabled students, and teaching mathematics online. Afterwards, I joined PwC working in audit, business recovery and then corporate innovation before founding the XR team.
I doubt anyone would consider this a relevant or viable route into the XR industry but it’s important to realise that your past experiences have lessons that you can take with you into XR. For example, I strongly credit qualifying as a Chartered Accountant for my current role in XR — it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do and definitely skimmed a few years off my life expectancy! But in a strange turn of events, achieving that qualification despite how difficult I found it gave me the confidence I needed to believe in and push for a dedicated XR team at PwC.
You’ve worked on a whole bunch of immersive projects now, what was your favourite one? and why? You’re allowed to be vague if it breaks an NDA.
I’m super excited about a project we just finished which helps people build empathy and understanding on inclusivity-related issues such as microaggressions in the workplace. Not only is the subject matter incredibly important but we pushed the boundaries of the technology too, incorporating multiple volumetric video captures on a standalone headset.
What is the most challenging project or aspect of a project you’ve worked on? And how did you and the team overcome it?
For one of the projects I chose to feature in my book Reality Check, we had to build a ‘choose your own adventure’ 360 video experience, filmed in the UK, and delivered in Toronto to 300 people simultaneously. To complicate things even further, it required custom synchronisation and data collection software that was run from a tablet and we had to set up our own local network infrastructure at the venue to support it. All of this had to be built and delivered in 3 months with zero flexibility on the timeline. There was a lot of scrambling about and sweaty brows over that period but ultimately it was a resounding success thanks to the dedication and hard work of the people on that project from our script writer (Alex Rühl) to our project manager (Louise Liu) to the many PwC Canada staff that joined us in manually loading each of the 300 headsets prior to the event!
controller system showing the branching paths of the experience and the number of users in
each scene during a test session.
So you’ve written a book, tell me why you wrote it and what you’re hoping to achieve!
I wrote Reality Check to deliver a message to business leaders everywhere: XR is not just for gaming and it’s not a future technology. It’s here and, right now, it’s being used by organisations all over the world to reduce costs, build new revenue streams, create efficiencies and so much more.
My hope is that Reality Check will contribute at least a little bit to the great work everyone in XR is doing at promoting the diverse use of the technology. You can find more details about it here.
What challenges did you face with writing the book? (timeframe, how fast information becomes out of date, finding relevant case studies, etc)
The timeframe to write Reality Check was tight (6 months) and the pandemic unsettled things as my editor was put on furlough which knocked my confidence that the whole project would ever get off the ground. In a sudden shock to the system, she returned to work a few months later! With an imminent deadline now on the horizon, I returned to my routine of writing before work, after work, all through the weekends, and even took some annual leave to get it over the line.
One of the most difficult challenges was trying not to put so much pressure on myself to deliver a ‘perfect’ book — during my research, I always found more and more exciting concepts, data and studies that I wanted to include for completeness. I had to accept that if I followed through on all of these nagging desires, I’d never finish the book, so I drew a line in the sand and articulated the key points I wanted in the timeframe I had.
From the start of this project, information becoming out of date was a concern but to tackle it I focused less on cutting-edge news and future outlooks and more on the fundamentals: what makes XR so powerful, what are the myths surrounding it, how has this tech been applied in business, and so on — which will help maintain the book’s relevancy and value for longer.
What do you wish you could change about the industry?
Given the relatively emergent nature of the XR industry, we have a real opportunity to encourage more women to get involved. Half of our XR team in PwC UK are women, and all over the world, you can find examples of pioneering XR leaders, many of whom can be found on Joanna Popper’s very useful WomenInVRARImmersive Twitter list. While the numbers behind women in technology as a whole don’t bode well for the XR industry, it’s encouraging to see so many female leaders disrupt the status quo and hopefully encourage an even greater influx of female talent into XR.
What’s the best bit of advice you’ve ever been given in business?
While there’s nothing cool about joining a large company, joining the right one that aligns to your values can give you the opportunity and head space to lead a fulfilling career.
What’s the worst bit of advice?
Writing a book is a profitable venture.
Any parting words of advice or something motivational for our readers?
Remember that while knowledge and experience can be gained, your attitude and dedication is what really counts. The XR industry is not as established as other industries and that can work in your favour by reducing the red tape and elitism that often comes from trying to build a career in an established market.
#VirtualLibrary is powered by the VR marketing agency, Virtual Umbrella. We provide agency services and consultancy to immersive companies. If you’re in need of a marketing campaign, someone to run your email newsletter, or a team to do some deep dive research on your competitors, let us know 👋
We’re also open to sponsored posts and advertising on #VirtualLibrary so if you’re interested in reaching about 1000 immersive folks per month with your messaging, contact us via: bertie@virtualumbrella.marketing
