IBM Impact

At AEE we know that you want your event to be remembered, so when IBM came knocking on our door we wanted to give them something special. We took a few of the standard games and turned them into something that IBM could use to gather data in a fun and useful way.

We took a standard Basketball arcade game and improved it. Normally the game is scored by the amount of baskets scored in a set time, but the folks at IBM wanted something more. They wanted more real life statistics, similar to those of a real game. Using IBMs own equipment we customized the game so it could now give play by play statistics for each player. Players could now, not only compare total scores but also accuracy, near misses, far misses, shots taken and shot frequency. These new numbers could also be used to compare accuracy against the clock as it counted down.

Foosball is usually pretty straight forward, each side has rows of ‘players’ and they try to score a goal by having their ‘players’ hit the ball into the goal at the other end. This simple game was improved by placing sensors on the ‘players’ and the goal that could note ball speed, strike speed, shot type, and how many ‘players’ touch the ball before it scored. Now the game was more about statistics than merely the amount of points that could be scored.

We did something similar with the golf putting greens. By placing a sensor on the club and in the cup we could measure a variety of factors that would help people determine who was actually the better player. Scores were not about luck, but skill. Measurements included club speed and angle, ball speed and path, successful strokes, and near and far misses.

All of the scores from these events were posted to cloud storage so they could be easily accessed through a mobile device and everyone could see the leader boards. These statistics were then used by IBM personnel to show how that data could be sliced up to improve process and or performance.

I want to thank you again for all you did to keep us technically and emotionally moving forward through that conference. We all came away thinking of you as our guru . I know the guys really appreciated the tour of vegas you gave… and I was sorry to have missed it. .. I’ll give you a call sometime this week to catch up..”
-JC