Greg Pomerantz was curious about the effect of carbohydrate intake on his various health indicators. After eating a low carbohydrate diet for a few years Greg wanted to see what happened if he reversed course and switched to a high carbohydrate diet (mostly fish and rice). Watch this quick talk, filmed at the New York…
How well do you know your city? Your neighborhood? The patterns of our daily lives typically dictate what we see and experience in our local environments. We travel the same roads, go to the same shopping centers, see the same sights. What would happen if we made a conscious effort to experience the entirety of…
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.
How will children respond to a world where personal data is ubiquitous? Bill Schuller is starting to find out with his two young children and will be sharing his story at the upcoming 2013 Quantified Self Global Conference. Bill started tracking his exercise and weight in 2010. His preschool-aged son, listening to his father talk…
While some people are using their data to help solve or, at least, alleviate seemingly intractable health issues, others are using their data to stave off issues before they occur. Daniel Rinehart talks about using sleep, happiness and biomarker data to keep himself in various “optimized zones” for his long-term health (filmed at the Boston…
At our Quantified Self conferences we focus our show&tell talks on personal, first person narratives of self-tracking and self-knowledge. But what if first person is actually two people instead of one? Well, that’s when things get interesting! At the upcoming Quantified Self Global Conference we are excited to have Dr. Rosane Oliveira talking about her…
If you’ve followed along here on the Quantified Self website or attended a meetup in your community you know that self-tracking isn’t limited to using gadgets or apps. Some of our most interesting talk come from individuals who are exploring their lives through the lens of personal data collection. That is, data that and methods…
John Schrom is a data scientist, graduate student, and avid self-tracker. After taking a look at his historical weight data he decided to dig a bit deeper into the story. Luckily, in addition to collecting his weight (via a Withings scale), he’s also been using Foursquare to collect his geolocation history. With these two data…
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…
For about a year QS Labs has been working on a small scale project to learn how we can get more meaning out our personal data. The program involves small group discussions in which participants share data in advance, collaborate on visualization and analysis, and discuss the results. With a research grant from Intel, we’ve…
“Papa, what should I read?” Sometimes a simple question can lead someone down an interesting path towards self-tracking and understanding. In the case of Rajiv Mehta, his daughter’s interest in reading led him to start tracking his own reading behavior. In this wonderful talk, Rajiv walks us through his method for tracking his reading as…
We’ve showcased a few great talks from Steven Jonas, from his exploration on learning to how he became interested in tracking stress. In this insightful talk Steven walk us through his process for tracking and responding to his stress in realtime while at work. Low-level, seemingly mild stress still drains my energy, and many of…
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.
I’ve been organizing Quantified Self Meetup groups since 2011. After every meetup, another woman says something to me like: I wish we could talk about [ women’s specific health topic ]. I’d like to give a talk about [ … ] , but it doesn’t feel like it would fit in. My tracking isn’t quantitative enough…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Jul 14, 2013
As you’ve probably read here before, our Quantified Self Conferences are special events. We spend a lot of time hand crafting the program to make sure we enable the human-to-human connections that we value and love. At our last two Global Quantified Self Conferences hosted in the bay area we’ve had the opportunity to bring…
Data gave me power to talk about the issue. We highlight a lot of great show&tell talks here that focus on personal medical mysteries and understanding one’s own health. Well, this one really hit home for me. I’m a runner and I’m constantly battling minor injuries and recurring knee pain. It’s nothing terrible, but it’s…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Jul 7, 2013
Biomimicry is an interesting topic and one that we’ve started to see creep into our Quantified Self tools and visualizations. While recovering from surgery, Pete Denman, an interaction designer at Intel, became inspired to start to explore biomimicry as a way to show data. In this short Ignite talk from our 2013 European Conference, Pete talks about…
There is nothing quite like having to unexpectedly deal with your own mortality. Mark Leavitt experienced that “wake up call” when he spent Thanksgiving in 2007 at a cardiac cath lab. While he didn’t have a heart attack, he left with 3 stints and new outlook. He decided to take a hard look at his “comfortable life”…
