Ernesto Ramirez

June 12, 2015

It’s finally here.

Next Thursday we’re welcoming over 450 self-trackers, inventors, artists, toolmakers, researchers, and scientists to the 2015 Quantified Self Conference. Over two days were hosting over 130 different talks, sessions, and demos that showcase the ingenuity and expertise of our community. We create our program from the ground up, soliciting ideas from each individual that registers, and this year we’re excited to have over 100 different attendees contributing to the program. It’s going to be great.

View and download the QS15 Program here.

Here’s just a few examples of the amazing Show&Tell talks, Breakout Discussions, Lunchtime Ignites, and Office Hours we have planned.

Show&Tell Talks
THREE YEARS OF LOGGING MY INBOX COUNT – Mark Wilson
The number of emails in my inbox correlates very well with my stress level. After passively tracking this number for three years, I explore what this and other data says about how I’ve controlled (and been controlled by) this stream of angst.

TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION (TDCS) TO MANAGE MY STRESS. – JD Leadam
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is an emerging “at-home” method for influencing the brain using very low voltage electrical current applied to the scalp. I’ll show how I’ve used tDCS in conjunction with self tracking methods to assist in controlling my stress.

TIME AND INTENTION TRACKING – Allan Johnson
Does tracking my intentions affect how I spend my time? Using an app for self-reporting, I compared how I spent my time when tracking both my intentions and time.

CAN’T YOU SEE I WAS FALLING IN LOVE? – Shelly Jang
As I struggle with the iron discipline required for keeping consistent logs, I am often forced to look into what I call passively collected data sets. I explored whether I can excavate data artifacts from past and correlate them with known life events. Using Google hangout conversations, I ask “can’t you see I was falling in love?”

28 YEARS OF TRACKING: BUT WHAT HAVE I LEARNED? – Nan Shellabarger
I’ve got lots of data – weight, activity, sleep, and health. I find as I keep reviewing it, visualizing it in different ways, always looking for patterms, there are still things to be learned.

USING HEART RATE VARIABILITY TO ANALYZE STRESS IN CONVERSATION – Paul LaFontaine
I measured stress during conversations using off-the-shelf technology. The results were unexpected and at times funny; with some lessons for me about my “fight or flight” response.

IN PRAISE OF BAD DATA COLLECTION DURING EARLY FATHERHOOD – Thomas Richardson
Sleeplessness and the pressures of birth and postpartum life drove me to to collect information and quickly discard methods that appeared wasteful. Looking back, did the kinds of information I collected tell me more than the data itself?

RE-LIVING MY LIFE WITH MOOD TRACKING. – Kouris Kalliagas
I used an email-based mood tracking service for several months. I never used the data in any way till I noticed something which triggered me to look back at my mood tracking data and search for patterns.

Breakout Discussions
TRACKING BABIES! – Morgan Friedman
Like many parents, I tracked my newborns. By comparing my records with those of other parents using the same app I learned some interesting things about my son. I’m curious to see how they play out as he grows up.

HACKING OUR MICROBIOME – Alexandra Carmichael, Richard Sprague
Today it’s possible to get data on the microbes that live in our gut using personal genomics. We’ll lead a breakout workshop on understanding and hacking our microbiome.

THE QUANTIFIED SELF AT WORK – Joost Plattel, Phoebe Moore
More than 13 million wearable fitness tracking devices will be incorporated into employee wellbeing and wellness programs 2014-19. We will discuss how self-tracking and monitoring are used in working spaces whether traditional or freelance. What are the advantages/disadvantages of quantifying the self at work?

AGGREGATING MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE – Anne Wright, Randy Sargent
We’ve been working on aggregating, visualizing, and analyzing data for personal benefit, using multiple self-tracking sources. We’ll share our methods, and invite you to comment, ask questions, or share your own.

SEX, SEXUAL HEALTH & QUANTIFIED SELF – Ilyse Magy
Cycles, lovers, positions, kinks, symptoms, stats, safety: how can tracking sexual activity benefit our experiences? We’ll talk about what tools you’re using but mostly dream up the tools we would want to use. This is a sex-positive, feminist, inclusive space open to all gender identities.

QSXX: WOMEN-SPECIFIC QS CONVERSATIONS – Amelia Greenhall, Maggie Delano
Women-centered QS meetups in SF, Boston, and NYC have created space for important conversations. Nicknamed “QSXX” (though not all women have two X chromosomes), this breakout session is specifically for people who identify as a woman to talk about QS experiences.

THINKING THROUGH DATA ACCESS AND PRIVACY – Kendra Albert
How do you view third-party access to your data: either by governments, advertisers, or corporations? Are certain types of data okay to share but others make us feel icky? We’ll focus not just on privacy “in general” but on specific types of circumstances in which data might be shared, trying to draw lines between types of data and uses.

WHAT IS THE SELF IN QUANTIFIED SELF? – Natasha Schull
How do digital tracking technologies engender new modes of introspection, understanding, and self-governance?

Lunchtime Ignite Talks
THE DIGITAL HEALTH COACH – Glennis Coursey
You might have everything you need to be healthy – wearables, health apps, a wireless scale. But without the motivation and support to actually get healthy, change can be hard. That’s where digital health coaches come in. Glennis shares what she’s learned building digital health coaching programs at Sessions and MyFitnessPal.

FIGHTING PARKINSON’S DISEASE WITH DATA: ROUND THREE – Kevin Krejci
Round three in the proverbial boxing ring between Kevin and Mr. Parkinson, as he updates us on his progress tracking multiples symptoms and therapies with multiple gadgets to slow the progression of this progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Sleep and biome discoveries highlighted in this round…

A QUEST FOR HIGH FIDELITY ACTIVITY TRACKING – Jamie Williams
Jamie will show us how he is building tools to capture a timeline of his daily activities and explore his habits through data visualization.

AM I BEING INTENTIONAL? – Beau Gunderson
The challenges of tracking (and defining) intentionality.

WHY I WEIGHED MY WHISKERS – Jon Cousins
When I was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder, I noticed that my libido seemed to, er, rise and fall as my mood changed. Could this be due to a variation in testosterone? And might the rate of growth of my beard be one way of measuring this? I borrowed accurate laboratory scales and started daily mood tracking and whisker-weighing.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING – Cara Mae Cirignano
Whatify allows you to collect data in a mindful way in pursuit of a specific question, instead of just gathering reams of data and then rooting around for insights. We use the most powerful tool of professional researchers, randomized experimentation, to help you easily isolate and understand one decision at a time. No experience whatsoever required.

FRICTIONLESS TRACKING WITH BEEMINDER AUTODATA – Danny Reeves
Beeminder is Quantified Self plus commitment contracts: data-oriented behavior change. But mustering the discipline to enter data can be a catch 22. We’ll discuss the myriad ways you can automatically collect data about yourself with Beeminder, highlighting our partnerships with other QS mainstays like RescueTime, Fitbit, Withings, Zapier, and IFTTT.

Office Hours
SHERBIT – Alexander Senemar
Your apps and devices are constantly generating data about you. Sherbit puts it all together so you can easily understand and analyze your information, keeping the integrated day firmly under your own control.

REVVO – Siva Raj
Revvo is a smart exercise bike. Unlike apps and wearables that track activity (steps, calories, distance etc.) Revvo actually tracks your fitness – and helps you train smart – so you see quick results.

EXPLORING TOMORROW – Ryan O’Donnell
Exploring Tomorrow focuses on teaching students how to quantify their daily interactions and goals through the use of self-management tools developed through the science of behavior to align each student’s values with their daily actions.

HEADS UP HEALTH – David Korsunsky
Heads Up Health helps consumers combine medical, wearable and self-collected data with personalized analytics and insights.

SIREN – Ran Ma
At Siren we believe that prevention is the best medicine – we combine smart textiles and user-centric software to give people actionable data in order to make informed decisions about their health. The first product that we are working on is a sensor embedded sock that tracks temperature, combined with a smart wearable anklet tracking motion that connects to a smartphone via BLE.

PERSONAL DATA BANK – Arkadiusz Stopczynski
Personal Data Bank with SafeAnswers allows users to collect, store, and give fine-grained access to their data all while protecting their privacy. With this infrastructure available as a service, developers can create applications powered by personal data in an easy and scalable way.

PROACTIVE LIFE – Daniel Gartenberg
I work on a variety of projects to track and improve sleep. This includes smart phone sleep trackers, providing different types of auditory stimulation during sleep, and figuring out alertness using simple reaction time tasks.

FITABASE – Aaron Coleman
My company helps researchers use Fitbit data to make discoveries in public health and behavioral science. Stop by and I’ll show you how.

That’s just a sample of the over 130 different sessions at the conference. We’re nearly sold out so register today!