You’ve just been included on the Forbes list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in Spain. What does being on that list mean to you?

I’d like to think that it’s a recognition of my efforts over the last 24 years, and the passion I have for the creation of digital content, which is what I’ve focused my entire career on. From the first commercial project that I did, when I was still a minor, to the companies that I founded to pursue the dream I had. A dream to have an impact on the world, to have visibility with the content I made, to entertain people, to help them better understand technology. I think it’s kind of all that combined.

How did you get into the role of Senior Creative Technologist? How do you view the relationship between creativity and technology?

For me, they’re essential to each other, it’s a mutual relationship. I started my career studying 2D animation, then I went on to do 3D animation, digital cinema, visual effects, video games, etc. It’s been a bit of that more holistic perspective towards everything related to creativity and technology that has brought me to where I am now. That “creative technologist” label comes once you’ve led processes in different media, ranging from flat screens to physical events, and now Virtual and Augmented Reality too.

I see creativity and technology as things that go together; one leads to the other. Creativity needs technology to make everything easier and more usable. Technology in front of the user is something like magic. It has to be invisible. When something technological seems easy to use, it’s because there’s some magic in that process. My job is to allow you to understand well how it works, what it’s for. I simplify the process for you, and that is, in the end, bringing technology closer to humanity. That is a very important part of my creative process. And then, obviously, the technology needs a layer on top that makes everything visually understandable and pleasing to the eye. In the end, human beings are very visual; the way we see things has a big impact. The ears are also important. I work a lot on immersive content, with sound probably being 51% of the experience.

Are you free to let your creativity run wild at Accenture?

Yes, I have a multidisciplinary, multicultural, and very creative team. We have all the necessary profiles internally to be able to carry out the projects: artists, technicians and engineers. I’m in a position that is very comfortable for me, perhaps because of my entrepreneurial spirit and my knack for looking for innovative ways to carry out projects. It’s a structure that gives you the opportunity to lead creative projects, to explain this new context to clients, and to try to make it easier for them to understand the technology so that they can include it in their daily lives. It’s something I love. In addition, we often do projects that grow exponentially and scale up to other contexts, projects that have an impact – and that was the reason why I decided to get into this in the first place.

Your team is focused on the metaverse. Would you define yourself as a metaverse expert, or can one not be an expert in the metaverse because it doesn’t exist yet?

It’s not that it doesn’t exist yet. The metaverse has two very important connotations right now, and the main one has more to do with PR than anything else. What we understand in the Metaverse Continuum Business Group – the unit that we created at Accenture to address all the needs of the industry – is that the metaverse is a whole spectrum of different technologies that are coming together at a given moment, but what it really represents is an evolution of the Internet.

The Internet is a large telecommunications network. It is based on different technologies that enable us to generate content and to bring about interactions, doing so both with tools for leisure and with tools to be productive. The metaverse is that next evolution of the Internet, in which many technologies are coming together – such as Artificial Intelligence, inteligencia artificialthe Internet of Things, edge computing, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, etc. In the end, this confluence of technologies is what we’re calling the metaverse right now, not just one of them in particular. That’s why I think “metaverse expert” would be like saying “Internet expert.” Can you be an Internet expert? Yes, but... an expert on what part of the Internet?

There are many connotations within the word metaverse, and we still have that mission to teach and use the appropriate words about it, so as not to mislead people. The metaverse isn’t just a 3D virtual environment. It’s not a platform, and it’s not a VR headset. It’s the entire amalgamation of technologies that allow us to generate the content, the platforms.

One of the ideas that you insist on so that nobody is misled is that “metaverses do not exist.” Can you explain that to us?

Yes, the exact quote is: “There are no metaverses, there is only one metaverse. What exists are platforms in the metaverse.” I always focus a lot of what I say on these types of statements. In the end, one of my goals is for people to stop calling everything the metaverse. In fact, in internal meetings with my teams I tell them, “Don’t use the word ‘metaverses’ in the meeting. Let’s see if you’re able to do that.” Because it confuses clients a lot, people who aren’t so sure about things yet. “I want to make my own metaverse,” some clients say. No, you can’t make your own Internet. You can make your platform, your game, your environment in the metaverse.

In the 1990s, there were those who believed that the Internet wouldn’t succeed, that it would just be a fad. Do you think that the same thing is happening now with the metaverse? Do you think that many people believe it won’t become relevant?

Totally, but that’s normal. I think that part of human nature is for people to reject innovation if it’s too fast for us. Because humans can’t grow exponentially like technology can. We are very linear. It’s very difficult for us to accept changes and get used to them, especially when we don’t fully understand them.

Our first reaction is always rejection. And we see this with each and every one of the innovations across history. But technology, especially fueled by the recent pandemic, has undergone an unstoppable growth spurt, leading us to live almost a decade further in the future than we had planned.

The time required for the development of many cutting-edge technologies is seeing progress. We are training a lot of new professionals so that they can respond to new needs, and we are generating this entire ecosystem of tools, platforms, and content that will allow the general public to access all of this sooner than expected. Of course, the public may think, “No, I don’t want to be locked in a virtual world forever, I don’t want to wear a headset and have holograms appearing in front of my face.” Or, “I don’t want to be locatable….” There is a debate on ethics with Artificial Intelligence and privacy. We will have to rely on innovation, on new tools, and on technology to define how we’re going to focus the conversation, how we’re going to provide the mass public with this technology, in what way, and, above all, how we are going to help governments better legislate everything that is to come. That is the question up for debate, and it’s undoubtedly exciting.

At Accenture you help companies get into this world. Is the metaverse for everyone?

It’s for everyone. In 2007, with the first iPhone, we went from being connected to the Internet only when we were on our computers to being connected 24 hours a day. That was a big paradigm shift. At that time, many companies thought, “When this is more advanced, I’ll be there... when the time is right, I’ll set up my community.” Later, it was clear that waiting was a mistake. The companies that took the lead at the time are the ones that have emerged as the big players on the stock market, like the big technology companies of the last two decades. Even SMEs saw their results improve; as they were suddenly accessible to everyone, they turned local business into global business. Our goal at Accenture is to make companies understand what this whole technological revolution means and, above all, how they can gain an advantage over their competitors by assuming the risk of being pioneers in this revolution.

Right now we have several companies trying to take the lead, like Meta and Microsoft, who have the ultimate goal of making money. To access the metaverse you need devices created by those companies and you have to give them data. Shouldn’t there be a space in the metaverse that doesn’t depend on them, one that is public?

In fact, it exists. The whole metaverse is not just Meta or Microsoft, or any of the big tech companies. The metaverse, as we said before, is the Internet. It’s a large network. And within large networks, there are standards. Just like until now on the Internet we’ve had standards, like HTML, and anyone could build their own webpage and give others access to it, the same thing is happening with the metaverse.

We’re at a point of transition between standards. We’re finding the standards for this future of the metaverse, this future of the Internet. And what we’re trying to do is to make them open, free, and accessible to everyone. And then, obviously, there will be platforms that these companies will be at the center of, that will give us certain services with a free layer that we’ll get in exchange for our personal data. The Internet has always had this label – a bit of a harmful one, in my opinion – of “everything for free.” Nothing is free, everything has a cost. We have Gmail accounts because we signed a license agreement so that they can read part of the content of our emails. We have access to Facebook because we give them access to our privacy. In the end we’re using ourselves as a bargaining chip, thinking that these services are being given to us for free, but that’s not the case at all.

The Internet is free, standards-based, and open to everyone. These are the principles that must continue to be upheld for the good of the communications network, because otherwise it would no longer be the Internet... it would be something else. The metaverse is nothing more than an evolution. It will have standards, and that same layer of freedom, so that any of us can create our platform and offer whatever services we want.

Continuing on the topic of money.... A Beeple NFT has been sold for 69 million. What do you think of the NFT hype? What value do you see there?

Beeple is a 3D artist who generated one piece of art every day for a year. And that collection was what was auctioned off, just like works of art are supported and sold at Sotheby’s. NFT is something we have in order to protect digital artistic creations. And not just digital artistic creations; we’re seeing NFTs being used for luxury brand reward programs and many other purposes. An NFT is nothing more than a tool, and the value that it is given is the intrinsic value that the element the NFT represents has in and of itself. That value may be related to the Nike shoes I just bought. It means those shoes are mine.

In other words, now there is also a market for physical items, and that market is growing a lot. People collect sneakers and other items and, in the end, having an NFT that certifies ownership is one more tool to create that market of value that surrounds objects. Whether it’s more or less ethical for NFTs to be traded for a certain amount of money is something very much to be left for people to decide. It has always happened with art and with other assets. In the end, it is something natural. But nobody should doubt that NFTs are a good tool, especially the technology behind them: Blockchain. Blockchain technology will be able to be used for things that today we still can’t even imagine.

On the Internet, you can not only learn, but also pass your message on to the world. Now we have streaming on Twitch, people who make a living creating content on social media, virtual worlds, etc. What do you think of these new codes?

Well, as I was telling you before, since 2007 we’ve seen a paradigm shift in terms of interpersonal communications... this whole dynamic of content creators comes from precisely that moment. It’s very easy to reach the other corner of the world in real time. We’ve harnessed that as a virtue and an advantage. I see this as a great opportunity to bring the world together as well. Even though we’re in 2022, sometimes it seems that we’re still in the 20th century.

We have to embrace our diversity, to be very aware of the fact that there are many types of people, many types of cultures in the world, and that unity –the knowledge given to us by working with people from all over – enriches us professionally and provides us with a context that was never possible until now. It’s extremely important to contribute to this globalization in a positive way. In the end, everything happening right now is an opportunity that is being given to us. This trend to create and share content is one more way to transform people’s mentality a bit.

Younger people, who were already born with this whole machine assembled, have an advantage in terms of getting into this world professionally. What would you say they have to specialize in to be able to stand out?

As I mentioned before, the metaverse is very broad. There is a need for engineers, mathematicians, but also philosophers, artists.... It’s the world that we already have, but transformed and reconverted. Knowledge is always essential, in any area. We need philosophers to think about ethics, to correctly generate Artificial Intelligence algorithms. We need engineers to tackle the new wireless telecommunications networks. We need artists to provide us with interfaces, entertaining content, and educational content that is more engaging and easier to consume. We need people with all types of profiles.

Some professions will inevitably transform. With driverless cars, I don’t see a future in which we’re going to need drivers, but we’ll need someone to control those fleets. Engineers, programmers, and managers will be needed for all the services to work well. In the end, I believe that we’re moving towards a society that aims to optimize people’s free time through innovation, and that this is going to be very important in each and every one of the sectors.

Then, if all types of profiles are needed, the key would be to follow your passion, right?

Yes. Each person has abilities and desires, or yearns to be something. I think people have to find out what motivates them, what they’re passionate about, and take that to the extreme. I was lucky (and unlucky) to be born at a time when there were no video game degrees, no animation or 3D schools. But I was clear on what I wanted to do, and from the beginning I tried to take my passion to the limit. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t have a degree in it.

I think that it’s also important to change the educational model with this point of view in mind, to try to foster passions. In the current context, technology is very important, but so are all other disciplines. We must continue to try to get our youth to focus on pursuing their dreams.