Ernesto Ramirez

July 25, 2014

Today’s Tidings dispatch is from Daniel Gartenberg, co-organizer of the Washington DC meetup group. Read below to hear about their recent meetup. It sounds like a great time and we can’t wait to share the videos from these interesting talks.

We had our biggest meetup yet at 1776 – a start-up hub located in the heart of our nations capital.  At the meetup there were three great talks, fun socializing over sandwiches, and lively QS Discussions. We had three wonderful talks:

James Norris – serial entrepreneur and avid self-experimenter gave a captivating talk about tracking his “firsts”. This included everything from his first kiss to his first time meditating on a train.  One thing that James found was that traveling was one of the key factors that impacted his “firsts” – but only up to a limit – where after some time traveling, there are diminishing returns to “firsts”.

Next, Daniel Gartenberg gave a talk on his new efforts to evaluate and improve sleep.  He described a study that he is conducting with the QS community where participants can receive $50 for tracking 2 weeks of their sleep data.  Some participants will even have the opportunity to use a Hexoskin, actiwatch, and galaxy gear.  However, users must have an iPhone and be willing to take 10 minutes out of their day for cognitive testing. Please contact Daniel Gartenberg at gartenbergdaniel@gmail.com if you are interested in participating in the study.

Finally, Daniel Martinez showed off an amazing visualization of more than 1800 days of his sleep data that he calculated using pencil and paper and inputting the data into Mathemetica software.  Daniel created a new tool for evaluating sleep, which included categorizing time as “up and at em”, dozing, sleeping, and awake while trying to sleep.  Using these categories he presented visualizations of sleep and showed a bimodal distribution in his bedtime and a new way to evaluate his sleep quality.

If you’re in the Washington, DC area we invite you to join this great meetup group!