#217 Frankie Cavanagh's Vision: The Uncharted Intersection of VR, Gaming and Education

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0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmed. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Frankie, the CTO of Gemba, frankie, the way I like to do it, I give it to the guests to do themselves, because I believe they are the best ones to do that. So thank you very much for being on the show. The floor is yours Excellent. 

0:00:20 - Frankie
My name is Frankie Cavanagh. I'm the CTO of Gemba. My background is in video games and generally in tech. I'm also a university lecturer. I specialize in cordon to 3D art all aspects, but predominantly design. 

0:00:38 - Mehmet
That's cool. What brought you into this domain? I can't imagine from what I'm seeing in the background that you love gaming actually, but can you a little bit us like what attracted you to be in this field? 

0:00:53 - Frankie
Yeah, my passion originally was 3D art and 3D animation. That's where I started in the industry and while I was at university I entered a business competition and a business startup doing tech and back in the day and the idea was to create digital artworks online and have them displayed in real world galleries across the world. So I kind of got the taste for running my own business and being your own boss and things like that. And then I went into lecturing and for a long time I was a university lecturer, started courses and looked for spaces in the world of education and trends, so stuff like robotics, video game design, video game engineering and things like that that at the time were just open coming and then moved into the industry more. 

So I was working in video games, started in triple A, so kind of high end mid-weir Sony X Dev places like that and then, after years of teaching and working for other people, I decided to run my own business and so before I worked at Gemba we still run a video games company and the idea was how I became CTO at Gemba was I have a weird set of skills that sounds like I'm on T-ag and now Starting with kind of my video game background. So the fun bit, then the teaching, the pedagogy. So you have the ludology from video games, then pedagogy from kind of the teaching aspect, and then that kind of passion for tech and what's new and things like that. So that's kind of how I didn't start as CTO, I started as designer and kind of worked my way up in the company. 

0:02:43 - Mehmet
That's very cool. So now let's dive a little bit into the VR world. So can you tell me how you're leveraging VR to transform traditional work force training? And, to be honest with you, I'm excited because I was in the corporate world and you know it was not usually the funniest part of it. So what has been the immediate impacts on engagement and retention from what you have seen? 

0:03:11 - Frankie
So I think the thing to understand. I think there's the meme of people going through training click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You know forced training. I think they're misunderstanding and I think even again, but when I first started that there's a level of professionalism where, see, when you get to sea level you stop wanting to have fun. But you know it's kind of you go home, you watch the same programs, you're looking for that same level of entertainment. 

As a lecturer, I always looked. I always knew that if I could engage with a student in whatever way whether that be jumping around or playing a game or doing something like that I could teach quite high level concepts. So really it comes from that. It comes from being a human and wanting to. You know people to enjoy and I knew if I could capture them for a second, if I had them engaged, I could teach them anything. So the best way to at the moment, the best way of doing that, is with the. 

There's lots of ways of doing it In real life. It's quite engaging, but there's nothing quite like being able to take someone to a different world or an enclosed environment where they get to think about problem solving or how to manage a task or do a war room. So the idea of VR allows us to, first of all, take you to completely different places where you need to be the best place for that level of training and, secondly, what it allows us to do is a completely safe environment. So if we were doing very dangerous health and safety training, for example, we can do it still, get the message across that it's very important, but move people away from that traditional power point training, and that's exactly what we're looking to do, predominantly, the things that we're teaching. 

We teach a very wide range of things to a lot of different clients. Traditionally, we're a management training, so it's along the lines of lean, six sigma, agile. Those are the things. And being able to put somebody in an experience where you're in a stand-up meeting as a conflict or a conflict with a stakeholder how are you going to deal with that situation? And being able to adapt it and change it. So every time they get a different experience. But yeah, so that's really what it is. It's the ultimate role-player experience. 

0:05:32 - Mehmet
That's cool really have you seen any in real world like you gave some now, but what was, for example, an aha moment for a client that he tried? He said, yeah, like we were doing this and now, because of Gemba, we reached this. 

0:05:53 - Frankie
So one of our bigger clients travels around the world and big automotive company and he has a small team of people and his job is to travel around the world and he gets there and he's got to be on top form. His ability to train hundreds of people at once from his home or from his office here, I think, was the big push moment. Traditionally, gemba was a traditional training and then COVID hit and then people and we so I was working for the R&D department at the time created this demonstration. No real events were happening. So we did this and the aha moment was when people didn't want to go back to doing real world events anymore and I think every client that we've had as preferred on 99, I'm sure there's somebody that didn't but 99.9% of people not only enjoyed it more but also started seeing where we could take this next. 

So a lot of the stuff is can we do this? Can we do this? Can we do this? And a lot of time is spent with Gemba making. We have two systems, flex and Adapt that allow the systems to adapt to your wants and needs. So I think that was the big aha moment for a lot of our clients where, as soon as they tried it and they were like we prefer it this way to the real world. So that was a big kind of a big push moment, I think. 

0:07:19 - Mehmet
Yeah, 100% Now, because we touch base on this about transitions. So usually I've been in that world also myself. So when you bring something new to the game, all these people, there will be some friction sometime and people will tell you hey, like there will be some learning curve because this VR is something new to us. So how do you address such I would say let's call them like not challenges, but kind of pushbacks. 

0:07:51 - Frankie
Exactly. So what we do is it's again we pride ourselves on teaching and being the best at teaching. So the idea is, most of the things, or a lot of the things, we get taught, especially the things that are forced upon us, we don't necessarily want to change. People have a problem with change. A lot of the things I teach industry 4.0 and what's that going to do to your job, and things like that. 

So the first part of what we're pushed for is we do a lot of handholds and we support the people that are doing that, and normally it's a trickle down effect, so we get those people at the top. We've got multiple levels of support. Whether that's turning the headset on we've got a team for that. Whether it's understanding what VR is and how it works with your environment we've got a team for that Understanding how we can adapt your training from a PowerPoint to a VR environment and what the changes, because we don't just want to replicate what's going on in the real world. We support these people all the way through and I think that's the point and it gets to. It's a bit like pushing a snowball it gets to a point and then I can step back and the snowball starts rolling by itself and then that it's like it spreads across the business and I think that's once you get to the and get into the right key people. That's the core part. And once you can get that message across. 

And normally in my discovery I'll ask for the people who don't want VR in that discovery and I've done this for a long time to understand. So once I get those people on side, everything else is fine, because it's not. It's great filling a room up with people who love VR and want change, but the people I want in that meeting are the person who's like what's the point of this? I don't see this is really expensive. We can just use our old PowerPoint or we can use our TV to do this. Once I get them on side, then everything else. 

But to be honest, from my side of things, there hasn't been a lot of pushback and we do a lot of kind of again, I would say a 0.1% of pushback. And you know and these are demographic, are not always the you know the young tech guys. We've got people that have been working in the industry for a long time. But the important thing to understand is the people who work in this industry. They're pushing for change all the time. Their job is to how do we cut, you know how do we move the needle. That's the important bit. And when VR moves the needle, whether they want it or not, they know they've got to do it. So it's normally embraced very quickly as soon as they see the kind of possibilities of it. 

0:10:25 - Mehmet
Yeah, I love that, frank, because you you know like it's exactly the I would call it the consultative approach, and you know like telling the customers that seeing is believing. I've done this for more than 10 years, so I know exactly where you're coming from. Now you know back to your background, as you know, game designer. So what aspect of game design principles that you found are most applicable in creating effective training? 

0:10:52 - Frankie
modules, so there's two. So there's a word that's banded around a lot gamification, and we talk about that quite a lot. However it's there's normally a misunderstanding. People think we do a lot of gamification, we do gamification, but there's three aspects of the kind of video games in teaching and learning. First one's gamification. I'll briefly go in and I'm fully aware of you audience will understand it, but the gamification is really about the scoring mechanism and rewards and achievements and that's great, and so we have gamification. Some of these terms I might have made up gamification. I didn't. But gamifying learning is about the fun aspects. It's the luedology, it's the ability to not feed you the answer. So, for example, if we were looking at eight weists in an environment from a lean perspective, traditionally I would tell you what those eight weists are and expect you to do that In. For example, we'll create an automotive environment and you'll go out running around with your team on a timer looking for those eight weists and you've got to bring them back and put them on the board. It's in its sense and it becomes experience. 

What you get from VR video games even more so than video games is it becomes a real event. That's happened. No one's or very few people will stand it the water cooler and go. Never guessed the train and I've just been in. But if they, just like I was on the spear station exploded and I put eight steps in place from a lean perspective to get the spear ship back and then repair it and things like that, it becomes experience and that's what you get from VR. When people talk about VR video games, they talk about it as if it actually happened to them, because you're standing, what you're seeing, the sensors are enclosed. So you've got that side of it. And then you've got the third one, which is a little bit more nuanced, is stretch and support. Now, in video games such as Left 4 Dead, which is a zombie game, you're running around shooting zombies. Now what the game does very cleverly is, if you're not very good at it, it reduces the zombies down and gives you more health. If you're great at it, it starts throwing more zombies at you. Now that principle. 

When it comes to teaching and learning. As a lecturer or a teacher, what you want to do is differentiate between every student in that class. Someone's going to be great, but when you've got 100 people in the room, it's really difficult to differentiate your learning for each one of them. Now, in VR, what we're able to do is understand what areas you're weak in or what areas you're strong in, and what's called stretch and support EI system. So I use a very simple EI kind of system and what it does is it understands what. 

So if we were doing times table, for example, it understands that seven times seven is your weak area, so it will support you and give you questions around it and that area and then it'll push you for the ones you know very much, the areas you're very good at. It'll push you to stretch you in that direction. So stretch and support EI. So it's been doing video games and, again, it is an ideal teacher. That's what you're aiming to produce. So those three aspects so gamification, gamifying and learning, which is just making it fun, and you know the environments, the sounds, the experience. And stretch and support I don't actually know. So it would be kind of changing the balance of the game it's the balance in the game out for a different level of play. 

0:14:17 - Mehmet
Yeah, it's pretty much very clear, frankie, and I think you know, maybe because you've been a lecturer as well, this has helped you also in getting this, especially when you gave the example of the timetable. So maybe this has affected also the way you know you came up with the whole concept Kind of. 

0:14:39 - Frankie
unfortunately the concept is not quite mine, but it's an accumulation of people. 

But the actual doing a PGCE or a teaching qualification teaches you certain things and the disappointing part is you can't always achieve those. 

And I think that's the and it is it's a weird tri-factor of the tech that I'm interested in. Being a teacher and the games give me a weird kind of tri-factor of information that helps and it's just kind of but understanding that level of kind of when you get to a certain point where you're trying to understand very high level concepts, and it moves on directly from that, from the teaching, to actually doing it as a tool. So what we do with Gember is you've got that teacher teaching aspect and then we say now you know how to use it, you can actually use it. And what we're seeing more and more every day is people using Gember as a tool as well as the teaching. So they're working in there. They've got people from across the world that want to collaborate on a certain machine or on a problem and they're coming together to do that in the environment. So the teaching and the tools are now kind of integrating as one. 

0:15:54 - Mehmet
That's really great and I think you know we touched base a little bit on the barriers. But I'm more interested in how do you see this technology being applied more in the workplace, like beyond, like beyond just you know, the traditional onboarding maybe, and these things. So what we can expect in the future. 

0:16:18 - Frankie
So I think what you'll actually say is and what we're actually working on with a lot of our clients at the moment is the, not just the onboarding, but what happens in a lot of production factories is they have to change the production line a lot, and that means high speed, changing of information or being able to see inside of machinery and things like that. Or, if it's super, super complicated, they want heads up displays Now with Apple vision and things like that. The versions that we're running at the moment allow not the VR world or mixed reality or spatial computing, whichever the term XR there's plenty of them but what that means is it was expected for it to become a day to day. Meta's kind of plan is for you to carry your headset into work with you, like you do your laptop, and I think that's and I think Apple are very much moving along those lines. Possibly not, but a lot of their talk was about the workforce and a lot of the stuff we do. 

Now when I'm not in a video call, I've got a headset on. That's got pass through on it. Now that allows me to kind of talk to my colleagues, work, have a heads up display here and see what's going on. So I genuinely think is the headset to get smaller, lighter, more comfortable. That ability to kind of them, to become like our watch or our phone or a pair of glasses, is the next logical step for that and they'll just, it'll, seamlessly integrate into our lives. 

0:17:50 - Mehmet
It's a very futuristic approach because, you know, like I'm, I'm imagining maybe, like I would be doing podcasts using AVR technology also as well, where I will be like instead of being in this setup, so we'll be like sitting in in a proper studio maybe I can tell you. 

0:18:04 - Frankie
I can tell you, like I can tell you as a fact, I got interviewed by a giant donor in VR quite recently. So it's not that unusual. It's kind of so, you like, podcasting is being done in VR at the moment. I think that the things that were the kind of moving again, I think the it might seem very futuristic, but we're not that far away from it. It's kind of, you know, I mean, we've got like I walk around, I work in a big tech building and the amount of people that are working in VRs and don't have any monitors in front of them at least 20 of our staff don't use monitors anymore because it's spears and they can move around and the ability to sit at a desk and they take their wireless keyboard and they type and they've got 10 screens in front of them and high resolution screens that they're more than capable of working on. 

So I don't think, with that, it might seem and I think that's maybe one of the issues people think it's this super far away. It's very much in grasp, but then the more people embrace it, the more it becomes to-deer rather than tomorrow. 

0:19:06 - Mehmet
So, Frank, just out of curiosity it came to my mind now. Do you think like, if it becomes and I'm sure it's going to come more widely adopted, and even by home users, I would say, not only in business? 

0:19:19 - Frankie
do you think? 

0:19:19 - Mehmet
we're going to at some stage get rid of these huge screens and monitors. 

0:19:23 - Frankie
That we use today, so it's already so. If you look at the Apple vision, strangely I have a pair of glasses and the depress I have a. At home, I have a man cave with a big 120-inch TV inside of it and I have a pair of ER glasses which are just like we're fair, you know, like glasses, just normal sunglasses, and the screen perfectly matches the TV in front of me and I'm like that was quite an expensive TV that I maybe didn't, but then that's also has advantages. So, yes, it's at one hook. 

That will probably be the first thing that happens is because they're cheaper produced than when you've got VR headsets. It's all singing, all dancing, that's one thing. A lot of the ER headsets at the moment are replicating screens. So at the moment, when I'm on an aeroplane or when I'm not near a big screen and I need multiple screens, I literally just plug the glasses into my computer and I work like that. Or if I want to play them, I can work, and or even if I'm watching a movie, it's a you know, 120-130-inch screen in front of you and reasonably inexpensive. 

0:20:33 - Mehmet
Well, you know, yeah, I'm looking forward to have it, you know, like buying as a phone or a laptop, just also a couple of things like we maybe talked about. What do you see? The challenges in the adoption, in the mass adoption? 

0:20:52 - Frankie
I think the mass adoption are first of all. It's one of those things. Once you've tried it, it's fine. That's getting it in people's hands. I think the bigger thing is to be able to. It needs to be smaller, lighter, more comfortable. That's the biggest thing and really the only thing. Sorry, price price point's going to come down, but yeah. 

0:21:22 - Mehmet
Yeah, hopefully the price. It's one of the things that I wish it goes down as soon as possible. Like one thing also, like out of curiosity, I ask and this is usually it's not like to make up the question or something, but I believe like technologies merge somehow with each other. So what are you expecting to be the next thing that we are going to mix with and I'm not asking you to tell me AI specifically, but because some of my guests they're still AI but where are you seeing an intersection coming very soon with other technologies? Maybe AI, maybe something else? 

0:22:03 - Frankie
I think, as I see it, there's a lot of technology that's kind of coming together at the moment. If you look at some of the games engines, for example, so huge steps have been made in kind of CG steps where, for example, up until still now we worry about polygons and things like that. How many? If you look at what Unreal are doing with their games engine, where it's almost unlimited polys now and very super realistic stuff, having that tech in a headset means almost super realistic visuals. Ai is a huge part of this and it's one of the more scary, fast moving worlds, something that we've got to embrace change. It's kind of I worry about anybody investing heavily in AI at the moment because, whatever it is now I watch because I use a lot of software All of our companies embrace AI as much as possible. 

Just as you get used to one thing the next week, there's huge weirs and huge changes In the tech industry as a whole, especially video games. Things are changing very quickly From image generation, which is probably doing some damage to concept artists out there, vior voiceovers From now I saw there's some nice new 3D, create 3D objects, what rings things. Obviously the coding side of it is getting even the design side of it running my stuff through an AI system to be able to adapt to a client's needs we have our own AI solution. So, yeah, ai is the obvious answer. But I definitely think from a kind of computer graphics thing those two obviously the AI outwears that a lot. 

But having not worrying about the performance issues, I think once they figure out how to get that on a smaller headset at the moment you need a big hefty graphics card to make that run, not a big hefty like a PS5, you know Sony PS5. Once that's on the headset level then you get unlimited graphics, pretty much all pretty close to unlimited polys and real-time lighting and things like that. So those two things. But I think AI is definitely the most important thing to worry about. But also in Bria, I think is the important part. 

0:24:50 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. So, as we are coming a little bit to end, frankie, so I'm interested and this is always I repeated with every guest I have about some lessons learned. So what have been the most significant challenges and triumphs like that as a CTO of Canva and how have they shaped your leadership approach? 

0:25:16 - Frankie
I have changed quite a lot. I mean, it's going from somebody that I think, yeah, I think the things and I'm still learning now this is not something, a lot of some of these things are very new to me. Somebody said quite recently me two things. One of them is an old adage, but it's kind of. I think people, especially people in my business, in tech and things like that forget People. 

If you, we worked in hardware, people want to know. People sell you the drill bit, the nine millimeter drill bit. They'll tell you how fast the drills and how you know how sharp it is, how long it's gonna last. Client only cares about the nine milli hole and that's quite the important thing. So try to focus on the hole rather than the drill bit. But understand that they go hand in hand. 

And I think when I'm talking to clients and I try not to get wrapped up, even in the tech, it's in my job title but it's but really what I care about is thinking about the human aspect of that. How is this gonna impact you? What does it feel like? You know, I mean and I'm like a lot of the things that have kind of touched me and changed me over the years is people understand and all panic and about industry 4.0 or you know, the new, whatever the metaverse is called today, a web 3.0. I mean, but Unbeing, I treat everybody as kind of in the same kind of weird, but the general idea that we're looking for is or the things that have changed me has been the people. 

I wasn't a particularly good manager and, over time, is Understand and how people feel, how people react, and being slightly chameleonic with who I'm speaking to and when I'm speaking to them was how I Reacted a long time ago. Now you just get frankly all the time. I'm afraid it's just whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think that's that's the one thing I've learned not to pretend to be anything. You're not. If you don't know, it's not a bad thing to go. I don't know, but I know this and I can do this instead. So, yeah, that would be be yourself. It's a is always a good thing great now. 

0:27:37 - Mehmet
You know also maybe a lot of Usually. I try to target younger people than me, I would say, and fellow entrepreneurs, and you know fellow people who are interested in tech. So what you advise in these? You know professional students, fellow entrepreneurs who want to pursue a Career, maybe, or a. You know they want to choose the path of the AR, vr and Metaverse. So what are some of the advice that can share with them? 

0:28:10 - Frankie
Okay, I think just generally. So I, you know, I ran a business for a long time. I still continue to run a business, as well as alongside Gemba, and Stabilize. Stabilization is hugely important. Okay, because you can't. 

In order to do the things that we do, especially with new tech, you need to be able to take risks. And now, if you're taking risks, you don't want to be in a position where your family's a jeopardy, your house isn't in line. So what I genuinely Stabilize your business as fast as you can. If you want to do it is, if you're running a business, if you're an entrepreneur, keep that full-time job, deal the main and work it up. Well, maybe go part-time, get a credit card. That's what I did. I borrowed a credit card Like partners, an accountant, so it's a little easier and borrowed the credit card and I went part-time and that was my stable, and then I could take the risks here. 

And I think you know, because what happens if you don't take the risks is you become Steel and you need to be able to take those risks. You need to be able to stand up in front of a client and go no, I don't want to do that. We, we we're not going to take that risk or we're not going to be trell like that. And so I genuinely think and and it's just the next level of stabilization, that's the point, and I think that any advice I would give is you don't have to risk everything. It means working a little bit harder, maybe if you're later hours, maybe you don't go on holiday that year. 

But stabilizing when you sit in life and then go now I can take these risks. I can take risks 50% of the time. Now I can take risks 60% of the time. That's what I'd advise is to kind of stabilize. Even if you're working as a barista, you know, I mean so you know you can cover the rent, you're not going to worry about that if you remain, and then it's kind of, then you can take these bigger risks and make the bigger changes. And that's what being Running a business or running in tech, or VR, er AI, because things change too fast to bet the the house on it's. So yeah, that's that would be my advice. 

0:30:15 - Mehmet
That's spot on, frankie. Like you touch base on something that I always repeat, like we always hear this advice about acting fast and taking, you know, take actions, but now, like, and no time before. And this is you know like what. One person advised me the other day, like he said why you're doing this podcast daily and I said you know what? Because I'm afraid now I have some backlog, let's say it's like maybe five, six episodes. So when someone mentioned something today, after five weeks, I'm not sure if it's yeah. So things are changing very fast and I would second your, your advice on this about acting fast, lessons learned. You know, I always mentioned this, like I always kept pushing, pushing, pushing things and then at some stage I said, okay, it's good that I figured it out, but, as you said, act today, of course, take calculated risks. I would say, but yeah, you need, you need to do it. Frankly, is there anything like you wish that? I asked you. This is how you should. I end my my interviews. 

0:31:25 - Frankie
No, it was all good, you know, I mean, I have a tendency in all interviews I try and deliberately upset people by asking them a question they wouldn't expect. So I sometimes ask what are you watching on Netflix at the moment? And I see my unit, because what happens is people have got a preset thing of what they're going to answer and how they're going to answer them. So I like keeping people off there, getting people off their kilter and making sure they're a little bit uncomfortable In a nicest way possible. But yes, so maybe something that would have Something I didn't couldn't answer. That would be an interest. Watch me pan. 

0:31:58 - Mehmet
I don't. I don't like to do it frankly, honestly, because, by the way, when I asked this question, some of the guys they saw that I'm putting them in a Like, of course, in the joking way like I said oh like are you trying to, you know, get us embarrassed? Or I said no like Because maybe sometime, maybe I missed any point. You know that, and maybe you have something that you wished really to say, and maybe I didn't ask or there was no way to convey this. 

0:32:26 - Frankie
So this is why I asked this question usually. 

0:32:29 - Mehmet
Um, great, thank you. Thank you very much for being on this episode today. And when can we find more about you? And then Gemba? I will put all these things in the In the episode description. 

0:32:43 - Frankie
The website. If we got the get, if you got the Gemba website, will give you all the information. If anybody wants to contact me, I sure I've got a LinkedIn or some means you can contact me anywhere you want through gambas, probably the easiest way. I'm reasonably secretive, I just hide in the shadows behind the computers. But you definitely get to me if you're interested. Yeah, sure, I will put the website of the company. 

0:33:01 - Mehmet
That's definitely something I would do and this is for my audience. Guys, like, keep the feedbacks coming. I am enjoying reading the feedbacks, both the positive and negative, was I'm not, I'm not having a lot of negative, but anyway, yeah, please keep them coming. I'm happy that you are Getting engaged and you know, now we have, you know the newsletter also as well. We have, you know, the show itself and you know a lot of things are coming also very, very soon, maybe by the time this goes live. You know there will be something live out there. So also, if you are interested, if you are watching or listening to this and you are interested of being a guest, same way, the way Frankie was, I guess, today Don't be shy, reach out to me. Time zones, no problem at all. I'm lucky to be somewhere in the middle in Dubai, so I can afford people on the West Coast, I can afford people in New Zealand, so it's all working fine. Thank you for tuning in and we will meet again very soon. Thank you, bye, bye. 

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