Frank Buytendijk Blog

. . . obviously come from Oracle. What can I say. But this weekend they had to compete with something like a BI tool, almost as good as Oracle's ;-) : the Nike+ system. Nike+ is a collaboration between Nike and Apple. It consists of a sensor and a receiver. The sensor, placed in your running shoe, sends through a bluetooth connection a pulse on every step you take to the receiver that is connected to the Apple iPod Nano. While you are running (in my case jogging -- at least my attempt to it), you can see your average speed, distance covered, time spent running and an approximation of calories burnt. Through the earphones, there is audio feedback: "1km completed, 3km completed, halfway point, 500 meters to go." All in real-time. After finishing your workout, you upload the data to the Nike+ website, and you can see your overall results in graphical form, as well as progress towards your longer-term goals. And through the Nike+ community, you can even challenge your friends world-wide, for instance by tracking who runs most during a period of, let's say, 2 weeks.

That's perfect BI. First of all, it helps you track your short-term goals, helping you to achieve the task at hand. How far to go, how much time to spent, how much resources consumed. Second, it helps manage long-term objectives through the website. The short-term goals are managed through a real-time device, the longer-term goals have a richer user-interface, and you analyze that while sitting behind your computer. Lastly, the most important thing: it's not about control, it's about motivation. The system helps you want to make your goals, because of the continuous feedback of where you are and where you need to go. It's great to hear Lance Armstrong's voice after jogging: "Congratulations, this was your longest workout yet." Makes you want to go for even more.

I am not the most athletic person, to put it mildly. But the Nike+ system helped me to improve from after-three-minutes-spontaneous-disintegrating-spleen to running close to 10 kilometers in one hour.  In fact, this weekend I completed my first official run, the Dam-to-Dam run in the Netherlands, 4-mile distance. I finished almost last, but hey I finished in time!  

frank