Ian Clements has been self-tracking since 1974 – mostly exercise, weight, and general health indicators. But in 2007 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This set off a more comprehensive mission of self-tracking to figure out which lifestyle changes and supplements were helping him to live longer. In the video below, Ian walks through his…
Today’s breakout session preview for the upcoming QS conference is from Martha Russell of Stanford MediaX. She describes her session “Respecting Digital Identity:” — Many aspects of our daily lives are now infused with digital experiences. We are interacting in digital spaces where, in accessing experiences and content, we voluntarily and intentionally create content. Due to mass…
The QS Conference is coming up next month. As many readers of this site already know, we run our conference with a programming method all our own. We call it a “carefully curated unconference,” which means that we make the program after we see who is coming, by reviewing the web links and twitter feeds…
Today’s breakout session preview for the upcoming QS conference is from Vahe Kassardjian of INM and Rafi Haladjian of Sen.se. Below they describe their session “Crossing the Data Desert:” — Some people base decisions on facts and data, while some people base them on other foundations or beliefs. Let’s immediately forget about this latter group. For the former group,…
A few months ago Quantified Self received an invitation from the Health Informatics Society of Australia to speak to their members at their annual conference hic2012. They wanted to hear a QS perspective on the future of healthcare. I volunteered to go down under, to share some interesting self-tracking stories, and to speak about the possible…
Today’s breakout session preview for the upcoming QS conference is from Nick Gammell, a pioneer in the bright QS startup world. Here is Nick describing his session “How to separate user feedback signal from noise and incorporate into your product:” — A couple years ago when I started GAIN Fitness, I began asking more experienced entrepreneurs and…
My personal science introduced me to a research method I have never seen used in research articles or described in discussions of scientific method. It might be called wait and see. You measure something repeatedly, day after day, with the hope that at some point it will change dramatically and you will be able to determine…
We’ve already published this QS Show&Tell talk by Mark Drangsholt about using self-tracking to identify the triggers of his heart problems, lessen their frequency, and make good decisions about treatment. I’m re-posting it here to focus on attention on the interesting and powerful method Mark used, the case-crossover design, and invite you to think about…
At some point, we’ve all been frustrated with our experiences interacting with the medical community. This isn’t a big secret, especially here in the United States. Many individuals involved in QS meetups around the world gravitate towards news tools and data sources that let them understand and interact with health-related data in news ways. Whether…
Jason Lankow, author of the book “Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling,” describes his upcoming session for QS Conference 2012.
At our last meetup in New York, we had a packed house at NYU’s ITP, one of our great supporters of QS here in NY. Thank you to my co-organizers, Ben Ahrens and Brian Gallegos, who helped pull together this recap for the blog. DEMO HOUR Brad Hammonds and Stan Berkow gave a large-scale, real…
Aarti Vashisht has done some interesting QS-related work for her MFA at Art Center College Design. She designed some prototype sensors that could be worn on our bodies in the future, and interviewed people to learn their thoughts on how these integrated sensors might impact their lives. This is an image of the sensors she…
Daniel Gartenberg, organizer of the Washington DC QS meetup group, describes his session for QS Conference 2012: “Is QS Science? The Role of QS in Scientific Discovery.”
Nir Eyal – Knowing Your Behaviour Type from Gary Wolf on Vimeo. Nir Eyal writes about “behavior engineering” encompassing user experience design, behavioral economics, and a dash of neuroscience. In this Show & Tell talk at the May 3, 2012 Silicon Valley QS meetup, Nir offers suggestions for behavior change design based on understanding the distinction between…
Steve Fowkes, a QS regular, describes his session for QS Conference 2012: “pH tracking for learning about inflammation, sleep, and mental performance.”
In this preview for QS12, Marcin Kowrygo, organizer of QS Poland, describes his session “Your Blue Room: The Neuroscience of Ideation.”
Jakob Eg Larsen and Yoni Donner, who have both created tools for quantifying mental performance, describe their session for QS Conference 2012: “Cognitive Measurements.”
Martin Sona, organizer of QS Aachen/Maastricht, describes his session for QS Conference 2012: “EEG for Self-Experimentation.”
If you had access to free microbiome sequencing tests, to detect and analyze bacteria living in the nose, mouth, skin, gastro-intestinal, and/or urogenital areas of the body, what experiments would you think up? Would you compare oral bacteria in people with lots of cavities vs. people with no cavities, look for differences between people with…
Nick Winter has done some dedicated testing of the effect of different interventions on his cognitive function. He discovered that butter had an unexpected impact on his mental performance, while things like cutting out gluten had no effect. In the video below, Nick gives an entertaining and informative talk about his experimental design and what he…
