John Amschler

November 19, 2010

This past Tuesday Evening over twenty people attended the first Quantified Self San Diego Meetup hosted by West Wireless Health Institute in La Jolla, CA.

There was a great group of people from varying backgrounds including Bio-Tech, Neurobiology, Engineering, Wireless, Academia, Finance, Philosophy, Physics, Health Care, Medica and many more!

The first talk of the evening was given by Ramesh Rao, a UCSD Electrical Engineering Professor who has been self tracking for a few years.

Ramesh analyzes his Heart Rate Variability information in a way that is familiar to anyone with a signal analysis background – by using the FFT.

Although his analysis is quite mathematical in nature, he is able to verbally and visually explain the data in ways which make it easy to understand what is happening to help us all understand the correlation between signal and feelings.

The second talk of the evening was given by Chris Teague, a Wireless Software Engineer and Open Source Enthusiast. He shared his story of transitioning from non-athlete to Ironman. His engineering background and love of gadgets helped him quickly adapt to utilizing his tools efficiently.

In his talk he focuses on how a Power Tap helped helped him track his cycling power and quantifies that his training paid off by showing how his power capability grew this year.

The evening was wrapped up by Chemical Biologist Jun Yin. During her talk she introduced us to Fitbit. She shared information regarding how the device works, what behaviors she changed due to the information and how she translates the data into her experiences. She also added some interesting commentary about human-device relationships.

The meeting was also sponsored by Float Spa San Diego and Zeo.

Mark and Malou, the owners of Float Spa San Diego, donated two certificates for members of our group to experience their Sensory Deprivation Tanks. Due to time restrictions we did not draw the two winners. We will announce them as soon as we do!

Zeo is offering a $15 discount and free shipping on their device. They were also kind enough to offer support in getting their new Raw Data Library up and running so that self quantifying people like us can begin collecting the data recorded by the EEG headband.

Keep an eye open for a future post on a beginners guide to hack the Zeo and collect your own data at home.

Our next gathering will be mid January – sign up at http://www.meetup.com/QuantifiedSelfSD/ to be notified when we finalize the details!

Videos will be posted soon!