A panel discussion on Data Visualization and Meaning with Joel Goldsmith (Abbott Diabetes Care), Jana Beck (Tidepool), Doug Kanter (Databetes), and Stefanie Rondags (diabetes coach and blogger) hosted at the 2015 Quantified Self Europe Conference in Amsterdam, delves into role of visualization and the data derived from self-monitoring and experimentation in advancing diabetes care.
Do you have a Quantified Self idea that can help ease the burden of pain? On November 5th, 2015, we’re convening the first QS Symposium on Pain and Innovation Challenge on the campus of Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. For this meeting, we’re trying a new kind of…
A year ago we released QS Access, a simple app that allows you to see your healthkit data in a table. Our idea was to make it easier for people to explore their data using familiar tools, such as Numbers, Excel, or any spreadsheet program that can open a .csv file. We’ve really enjoyed hearing its…
Eleven days and counting! On September 18th and 19th the Quantified Europe conference returns to the beautiful and affordable Casa 400 hotel in Amsterdam. If you’ve been before you know how special this conference is. The dozens of high-handled guest bikes waiting just outside the hotel door suggest it’s going to be hard to stay…
In the nearly 10 years since direct-to-consumer genetic testing was pioneered by 23andme, regulators have grown more watchful over the claims companies can make about the benefits of knowing your genome. In response, direct-to-consumer testing companies have changed their game plan, emphasizing ancestry and fun facts over physiological insight. Meanwhile, at Quantified Self meetings and…
I first got a look at the Oura ring at the Quantified Self Public Health Symposium last May. I was surprised that the Oura engineers had managed to get sleep and activity tracking into a bit of jewelry the size of a ring, and ever since I’ve been deeply curious to experiment for myself. Although…
Two hundred sessions. Two thousand people. Thirty thousand square feet of exposition space on a San Francisco Pier. Did we really do that? Over the next weeks we’ll be posting videos, photos, interviews and essays inspired by what happened last week at #QS15. But for the next day or two we’re just going to recover…
We’re interested in the Apple Watch. So you might expect there to be a bunch of interesting self-tracking projects using the Apple Watch presented at QS15: The Quantified Self Global Conference and Exposition. We expected that too. But, as you might have noticed, even devoted Apple fans are still (mostly) waiting for their watches to…
Mark Wilson will be presenting his project at the QS15 Conference and Exposition. I wonder if we could get Tehching Hsei to present his?
On Wednesday this week we learned that the QS Access app we submitted to the Apple store was approved. This means you can download the QS Access app on iTunes. We hope you’ll find it useful. Our app is a very simple tool for accessing HealthKit data in a table so that you can explore…
We recently released our QS Access app, which allows you to see HealthKit data in tabular format. Not very many tools feed data into HealthKit yet, but Apple’s platform does pick up step data gathered by the iPhone itself. I have step data on HealthKit going back about two weeks. When Ernesto Ramirez and I…
Someday, you will have a question about yourself that impels you to take a look at some of your own data. It may be data about your activity, your spending at the grocery store, what medicines you’ve taken, where you’ve driven your car. And when you go to access your data, to analyze it or…
Our friends in Southern Oregon had their 3rd Quantified Self meeting yesterday at Rogue Hack Lab, a makerspace in Medford, Oregon. Dr. Dawn Lemanne, who organized the meeting, recorded the event on her mobile, and we’ll post it as soon as it arrives. One especially interesting note from this meeting: We hear from Dr. Lemanne that the attendees had…
My friend Seth Roberts, pioneering self-experimenter and personal scientist, died last Saturday. Seth’s sister Amy, made the announcement yesterday on his blog. The news was unexpected and very sad. A few things Seth taught me: Doing lots of experiments keeps you supplied with new ideas. With sensitive and reliable measurements, tiny experimental effects can yield surprising…
Sesame Street has been teaching kids to count since 1969. It was a big part of my childhood and I always loved it. After all, children get measured a lot: weighed, evaluated, tested. If we adults sometimes wonder how the powerful techniques of quantification can be used for our own benefit, rather than merely serving…
In 2013, Kate, Ernesto, and I created a Friends of QS program to help fund our work at QS Labs, which includes putting on our QS conferences and events, maintaining the web site and video programming, and creating opportunities for our vibrant global community to connect. We reached out to friends in our network of…
Let’s end the year with this fun, short video about building your own QS devices. Thank you to Mike and Lisa Winter for giving us a look at what’s possible, fresh from your amazing studio. WE WISH YOU ALL A CREATIVE AND INSPIRING 2014! Please join us in Amsterdam for our 2014 Quantified Self Europe Conference on…
In this video from the Boston Quantified Self Show&Tell, Matthew Ames describes the self-tracking project that dramatically changed his weight and fitness. Beginning with simply measuring his weight daily using a Withings scale, he added together a number of common QS tools, including Weight Watchers, Runkeeper, MyFitnessPal, Garmin Forerunner watch, and the Nike+ system, to support his self-transformation.
Ever since we started QS in 2008, the toolmakers, inventors, and entrepreneurs who create self-tracking instruments have been an active and essential part of our community. I know from working with many of them directly that they enjoy contributing and benefit a lot from our active and diverse community. We recently started a program to…
In this wonderful talk from the Bay Area Quantified Self Show&Tell meeting, Ashish Mukharji, author of Run Barefoot, Run Healthy, describes doing three years of continuous happiness tracking, using a single number.
