Chia Hwu

November 26, 2011

I led a very interesting discussion at Quantified Self Europe this morning with about 10 attendees with a variety of backgounds. There were entrepreneurs who wanted to start genetic information based companies, a designer, a think tank analyst, and people who are just interested in where the field is and where it was going.

The first thing we did was to create an impromptu community, putting the chairs into a circle and starting the discussion with what brought each of us to the topic of Creating Genetic Communities. This is where the conversation started but the topics ranged from where the industry is going to how to use design to help a non-technical audience understand their genetic data.

There was agreement in the room that the price of DNA sequencing is decreasing exponentially, the discussion then moved to what an individual can do with their own data vs. getting aggregate genetic data. There was an intense debate about open data vs. transparency of who has access vs. private databases. There was also a challenge thrown out by two group members to make genetic information more actionable.

It’s an amazing group of people who have come together in Amsterdam to discuss where we are going as we get more data on ourselves.