Bob Troia was interested in his blood glucose. While he’s not a diabetic and he’s not out of range, he wanted to see if he could lower his fasting glucose levels. He started a long-term tracking experiment where he tested his blood glucose and began to explore the effects of supplementation and lifestyle factors. In…
Tracking diet and weight is nothing new and we’ve seen plenty of talks on the influence of carbohydrate intake on weight and metabolic values. But what about other pieces of daily life that could be influenced by what we eat? Adrienne Andrew Slaughter was testing out a new diet that included carbohydrate restriction. At the…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Jun 1, 2014
Yesterday we posted our first opening plenary talk from the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference. Today we are happy to post our second talk from the opening plenary session. Kaiton Williams is PhD student at Cornell in the department of Information Science. Over the last few years he’s been interested in how people use technology…
When we host our Quantified Self Conferences we put a lot of effort into our plenary sessions. Those sessions open and close each day and they’re the only time that all the attendees are together to listen and learn from speakers and presenters. Our opening plenary is especially important to us. It sets the stage…
Today’s post comes to us from Alberto Frigo who led the Data Future: Possibilities and Dream breakout session at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference. Alberto started the discussion by asking a few questions: As we passionately gather our data, it is striking to reflect about its destiny. Is it going to end up in an attic? Will…
As both a researcher and participant in her local Portland QS Meetup group, Dawn Nafus has been engaging in a process of understanding how people learn about their lives through personal data. As part of this work Dawn and her colleagues at Intel Research have been working on creating Intel Data Sense. In this short…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from May 25, 2014
Today’s post comes to us from Kitty Ireland, who co-led the Telling Stories With Data breakout session at the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference. You’re invited to read her description of the session and then join the discussion on the QS Forum. You can also view and download their session presentation here. Telling Stories With Data by Kitty…
On May 10-11th we hosted the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference. Hundreds of self-trackers, toolmakers, scientists, and enthusiasts came together to share, learn, and discuss how we can create personal meaning through personal data. The conference featured over 100 different sessions that included Show&Tell talks, Breakouts on a wide variety of topics, and inspirational and…
A core piece of our conferences are the numerous breakout sessions that cover a wide variety of topics from social sciences to hands-on workshops on privacy and data security. These sessions are facilitated by conference attendees and they put in a lot of work to engage their groups in meaningful discussion. This year, starting with…
Rob Shields has been wearing a phone around his neck since 2012 in order to take one photo per minute. This persistent lifelogging has come with some technological and social hurdles. At the 2013 Quantified Self Global Conference, Rob explained some of the issues he’s been running into as he nears 300,000 photos. He also…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from May 18, 2014
Arlene Ducao came to QS from using the WiFit to track personal metrics. As a researcher and maker she started to apply the lessons from self-tracking to another one of her interests, cycling. As a frequent bike ride she started with simple customizations like adding LEDs to her helmet. When consumer EEG devices came on…
The 2014 Quantified Self Europe conference is a “carefully curated unconference”. This means that all of our sessions come from the attendees. We are happy to announce that we have more than 100 separate talks and discussions planned. More than 30% of the attendees will be presenting in some way. This conference is for the…
When we organized our very first QS Conference in 2011 we were bombarded with so many proposals from people who wanted to share their projects and self-tracking experiences we decided to add talks to our extended lunch breaks. The lunchtime Ignite session was born and now we can’t imagine a conference without them. Below is…
What did you do? How did you do it? What did you learn? These are the three questions we ask people to answer in their Quantified Self Show&Tell talks. We’re thrilled to see the Show&Tell proposals coming in from registrants for the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference, with topics ranging from blood glucose tracking to novel uses…
We organize our QS conferences backwards: First the registrants, then the program. We like to keep things open to the last minute so we can get a sense of what everybody is working on and thinking about before making the final lineup. But eventually the printer’s deadline looms, and we have to say: this is…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Apr 27, 2014
We’re fascinated by self-tracking projects that extend over long periods of time, and at the upcoming QS Europe conference we’re going to hear from two artists who have been making work out of novel personal data extending back for years. Since 2004, Alberto Frigo has taken a photograph of every object he holds in his dominant…
