Alexandra Carmichael

December 12, 2012

This post was kindly sent in by Peter Lewis and Florian Schumacher, translated from Arne Tensfeldt’s original post in German.

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The first Show & Tell meetup of theBerlin International Quantified Self Group took place on November 22nd. The Berlin QS Group had been founded several weeks earlier for the English-speaking Berlin community. With around 70 participants, the meetup was the largest to date in Germany, having been announced and covered by a variety of Berlin blogs and news sites. The meeting began with the standard “three word introduction,” in which everyone present introduced themselves with just three of their interests or other descriptive words. The variety of chosen descriptions and interests reinforced the wide range of the QS movement and offered a good preview of the subjects that would be discussed over the rest of the evening.

After this introduction, Steve Dean (head of the NY Quantified Self Group) began with a keynote speech about the founding of the Quantified Self movement as well as his own experience in preparing for an Ironman Triathlon. Through the measurement of his resting pulse every morning, recommended by his trainer, he was able to predict when he would get sick from overtraining and reschedule his workouts to allow more rest at the right times. He then discussed a second self-experiment that was also shaped by his athletic pursuits: after the end of his intensive Ironman training, he suffered from an inflammation of his eyelids. After countless unsuccessful treatment attempts, he learned from careful self-tracking that the regular exposure to chlorine from swimming had been keeping this problem in check — and after a long break, resuming his visits to the pool led to a recovery from the infection. His slide presentation can be seen here.

Max Kossatz, CEO of Archify, showed the data he had gathered from his company’s newly developed browser plugin. Archify tracks each website that a user visits, saving all text content and capturing a screenshot. This leads to a type of digital “mindfile” which can be easily searched in the future. Max presented an analysis of his own online content in his personal project “My Online Life for the Last 8 Months.” In addition to showing his preferred sources of information, this data also made it possible to recognize patterns like the drastic reduction of online time during his vacation, or an increase in online activity during his preparation for important business events. His presentation can be seen here.

As the third speaker, Peter Lewis (co-organizer of the Berlin QS group) showed his experience with spaced repetition algorithms to optimize learning efficiency, which he had used in learning languages. As a starting point, he set up an experiment in which he (as a native English speaker) tried to acquire all the new vocabulary he found in a German novel — about 900 words — within a period of one month. He demonstrated the use of software that allowed him to track his progress through decks of digital flashcards. With an excursion into theory and algorithms, as well as practical explanations and tips on the current state of the technology, he gave a comprehensive overview of spaced repetition software applications and and the different ways to use them.

After the lectures, the attendees had the chance to view demos from some Berlin startups in the QS field and to make new contacts as well. The event was also recorded by the TV show Planetopia; their episode on QS aired on Monday, December 3rd.

The organizers of the Berlin group are already planning their next meeting: in January’s Show & Tell there will be numerous speakers on subjects like genome sequencing, health and biohacking, as well as another Demo Hour with projects and startups from the QS scene.