Businesses that were late adopters of the World Wide Web and the mobile realm are the butt of obsolescence-themed jokes today. Extended Reality evangelist Rori DuBoff from Accenture joins us to advise the businesses of today how not to miss the same boat, and shares strategies on staying ahead of the curve.

Alan: Today's guest is Rori DuBoff, Managing Director and Head of Content Innovation and Strategy for Extended Reality -- that's VR, AR and MR -- at Accenture Interactive. Rori is a strategic and innovations leader with over 20 years experience working in digital marketing, integrated media, creative brand advertising, and emerging technologies.

As a virtual, augmented, and mixed reality evangelist, Rori advises companies on strategy and marketing opportunities for brand and business transformation. Prior to Accenture, Rori was Global Head of Digital Strategy and executive vice president at Havas Media Group, where she led and managed strategic planning worldwide, with a focus on digitally-integrated marketing communications and innovation.

Previous to that, Rori was a partner and director of strategy at Ogilvy, where she focused on developing digital marketing strategies for health, retail, and media industries. Rori holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is a regular public speaker, contributing writer for Ad Age, Guardian, Campaign US, Mediapost, and a jury member for the Cannes Lions. With that, I mean, what more can I say? Rori, welcome to the show, and Rori, I just want to let people know that they can find you on Accenture.com and they can follow you on Twitter @RoriDuBoff. Rori, welcome to the show.

Rori: Thank you. Nice to nice to be joining.

Alan: It's such a pleasure to have you on the show, and I'm really excited. I want to dive right in and get an understanding of what Accenture Interactive does, and what your role there is, and how you're helping businesses use these virtual/augmented/mixed reality technologies across their enterprise.

Rori: Sure. So, Accenture Interactive is part of the larger Accenture consulting company. So Accenture is a very large technology and strategy company with over 400,000 employees worldwide. Accenture Interactive was developed, I think about five… a little bit more than five years ago, to focus more on the brand experiences that a lot of our clients were looking to develop, in terms of engaging customers. So within Accenture Interactive, we focus on user journeys, on strategy, on experiences, on marketing, and we've more recently -- in the last two years -- been looking at this new space of extended reality. And extended reality is the term that we are using at Accenture, and I think across the industry others are also using this term "XR" to include virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D experiences; all different types of experiences that blend the digital and physical worlds, and work on extending your reality.

Alan: So, would the things like computer vision and machine learning, would that fit? Would you bundle those under XR as well?

Rori: Yeah, absolutely. Those are critical technologies that we are looking at, in terms of making VR and AR experiences smarter, more personalized. Accenture has different groups, like a group headed dedicated to artificial intelligence, things like cloud computing, and machine learning is a part of artificial intelligence. And we work together to sort of use those technologies within the immersive experience area.

Alan: Incredible. So let's dive in: what are some of the best examples that you or your team has worked on in this type of role? So, you're meeting with a customer, you're saying hey, we've got a solution for you? Or is it a joint thing?