Earlier this week I attended a Quantified Self Meetup session at Wired Magazine headquarters in San Francisco. My takeaways on the event:
- I’m not the only one. I have a keen preference for making data-driven decisions (rather than emotional or irrational ones), after seeing the power in doing so while a management consultant at Bain & Company. For that reason I’m interested in quantifying various aspects of my life – to know myself better and make better decisions regarding finances, health, social time, etc. While that may not be the same thing that’s driving other peoples’ fascination with this field, 100+ of us turned out to discuss tools and methods for understanding ourselves better. Kudos to host Gary Wolf and Wired Magazine for making this meeting of the minds happen and the guests who presented during the “show and tell” session for quenching my curiosity in this space and by introducing me to others with similar interests.
- The ‘net at its best. This was the first time that I’ve attended a Meetup session (which, as the name implies, is the exact purpose of that website: to encourage offline interaction through the efficiency of online organization, event marketing, and logistical planning). The Internet gets a bad knock at times for encouraging anonymous bashing or spreading of misinformation about people, businesses, governments, etc. But it’s also an amazing way of connecting people with those of the same interests and points of view that otherwise would remain unknown to each other. I’ve had luck with this site encouraging others with similar interests to my own to reach out to me, facilitating valuable offline interactions.
- “Sleep” was the night’s big winner. Of the seven “show and tell” presentations, three focused on sleep. (The four others covered electronic medical records, social media influencing health habits, general life data tracking, and medical sensors for real-time handheld medical diagnostics). Of the sleep presentations, one person shared his own personal learnings on sleep habits, along with some near infrared videos of his own sleep patterns (hilarious and very interesting). Another participant shared their Zeo Personal Sleep Coach – a headband-alarm clock paired system that measures one’ sleep patterns and can be set to wake one up when at an optimal, non-deep sleep spot. (For those interested, she liked the data it provided, but was frustrated given an oversimplified interface, no description of the mechanism of action, and an inability to drill down into the data.) And finally two entrepreneurs shared their “WakeMate,” a wrist-based system measuring sleep quality based on movements of the wristband via an on-board accelerometer. Unlike the Zeo, the WakeMate transmits readings to a mobile phone.
- It’s early, but there is something here. Over 100 people showed up to the event on Monday and altogether 400 belong to the San Francisco-based QS Meetup group. That may not seem like much, but this was the biggest event yet (with several newbies like myself in attendance), and the movement continues to gain attention with the push toward electronic health records and the success of products like Mint.com and Nike +. Businesses have made the codification and analysis of data a priority for years. The field of “business intelligence” continues to grow rapidly. There are several reasons for why “personal intelligence” has not followed suit, but my opinion is that we simply don’t have the tools to easily codify and analyze the data most important to our lives. This will slowly continue to change over time, spearheaded by entrepreneurs like those in attendance Monday night.
- A lot of fun: Perhaps driven partly by the communal interests shared in the room and the regular member meetups, there was a festive atmosphere in the room. As our Governor once said, “I’ll be back.”
Man, I’m going to miss that guy.
