Author: Ernesto Ramirez

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Mark Drangsholt on Understanding His Heart Rhythm Disorder

March 6, 2014

Mark Drangsholt has been dealing with an issue with his heart since he was a young man. Since his early twenties, when he as diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial tachycardia he’s had to deal with irregular heart rhythms. In this talk Mark explains how the transition into adulthood negatively impacted his health and then how he…

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Ian Eslick on Self-Tracking, Self-Experimentation, and Self-Science

March 3, 2014

In order to manage his psoriasis, Ian Eslick used a self-tracking technique of making mental notes to himself on triggers and symptom severity. Surprisingly, Ian found that these mental models actually informed more consistent and rigorous tracking methods. In this talk, Ian describes his research on exploring how to help people create and engage with personal experimentation.

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Enrico Bertini on Tracking Focused Work

February 28, 2014

We’ve all come face to face with tracking some aspect of our life only to realize that we’re not quite sure how to get started. Enrico Bertini encountered this roadblock when he began thinking about tracking the amount of time he spends engaging in “focused work.” As an information visualization researcher at NYU he decided…

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An Introduction to the Quantified Self

February 26, 2014

A big piece of our work at QS Labs is supporting our worldwide community through the over 100 Quantified Self Meetups (see our sidebar at right). At our local meetup in the Bay Area, and others we’ve had the pleasure of visiting, we are consistently observing that nearly half of the attendees are new to…

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Ulrich Atz on Tracking on Paper

February 25, 2014

“If I look at this, I have these memories, and I remember this was a good year.” Collect it and forget it. This could be be hidden mantra of many people engaged with self-tracking, myself included. I will readily admit to buying a device or application with the hope that I can collect enough information…

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Nick Alexander on Running in the Cold

February 24, 2014

Science. Someone makes an observation, creates a hypothesis, tests it, then analyzes the results against the hypothesis. Hopefully once a conclusion is reached it is tested again and again for validity and reproducibility. With self-tracking, the world of personal science and experimentation is opening up real-world personal laboratories to test the findings, claims, and promises…

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Bethany Soule on Beeminding Beeminder

February 21, 2014

In this short talk Bethany Soule, founder of Beeminder, a goal setting and commitment tool, describes what happened when they started using it to “mind” the development of the service itself.

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Mike McDearmon on Things I Run Into

February 20, 2014

There are no shortage of apps and devices to track our various physical activities. Going for run? A few laps at the pool? An early morning hike? All of these are trackable with data delivered and archived in a variety of different ways. Mike McDearmon loves to get outdoors, and he also loves tracking his…

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A Look Inside the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference

February 17, 2014

At Quantified Self Labs, we create and host events that bring together our community of trackers, toolmakers, researchers, and other individuals interested in how self-tracking is shaping our culture. We focus mainly on  meetups and conferences. With the 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference coming up in May, we thought we’d let you know what makes it a unique and rewarding…

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Kevin Krejci on Tracking Parkinson's

February 13, 2014

Kevin Krejci was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease last year. At a recent Bay Area QS Meetup, Kevin shared his story of how he’s using self-tracking applications and devices to help him monitor different symptoms and outcomes related to his diagnosis. Watch his talk below to hear about his triumphs and challenges.

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Rob Rothfarb on Tracking My Blood

February 11, 2014

Rob Rothfarb has an artificial aortic heart valve. It requires him to take anticoagulation therapy so that he reduces his risk of blood clots. It also requires constant monitoring to ensure that he is within target ranges. Rob learned that different lifestyle factors and genetic susceptibility was related to how effective his therapy was so…

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Kendra Albert on Tracking Reading

February 10, 2014

At the beginning of 2013 Kendra Albert set herself a very ambitious goal of reading five books a week. After tracking her reading by using Goodreads and writing short book reviews she realized that what she was reading wasn’t matching up to what she wanted to read. Watch her short talk with and the Q&A…

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Katrina Rodzon on Celiac Discovery

February 6, 2014

Katrina Rodzon thought she was a relatively healthy person until she realized that seemingly disconnected symptoms pointed towards something real, a gluten intolerance. She took this hunch and decided to test it out using a simple elimination diet along with tracking her weight and subjective bloating and mood ratings. Watch her great talk from our…

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Quantified Self Europe Conference Spotlight: Sara Riggare

February 5, 2014

In three months we’ll be gathering again in Amsterdam for our third Quantified Self Europe Conference. Since 2011 we’ve seen this event grow into an amazing experience. We spend a lot of time working with attendees to find those special projects and experiments that show the diversity of the self-tracking experience. We’ve been honored to…

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Stephane Marceau on the OMsignal Sensing Shirt

February 4, 2014

With a projected 90 Million wearables to ship this year, it’s no surprise that different form factors are entering the marketplace. At our 2013 Global Conference we were excited to have Stephane Marceau, the co-founder and CEO of OMsignal, give a short talk about their technology and how he’s using it to track his life….