Dear QS Friends,
QS is changing. Self-tracking has gone from avant garde to mainstream, which means the small but relatively united community of people deeply interested in what we can do with self-collected data has splintered into recognizable domains with their own traditional resources. Academic research, digital health, consumer wearables: these all have their own publications and institutions that give some attention to topics that we used have “all to ourselves” in the Quantified Self community.
That’s a good thing, and something we long expected to happen. And yet, the core idea of the Quantified Self hasn’t caught on yet. That’s the idea that the tools of science and empirical discovery can and should be useful to everybody as a way to explore their own questions. Steven and I are committed to maintaining and developing the resources we’ve created to support this idea: the QS Forum, Quantified Self website, and Show&Tell archive, and to continue to convene and support meetings when this becomes possible again. Our new foundation, the Article 27 Foundation, is a US nonprofit created to organize support for this work. Our sister nonprofit, Stichting Article 27, is headquartered in The Netherlands to support work with EU collaborators.
So, now, we could really use some help. If you’ve been actively contributing to developing and maintaining QS resources, you’ll no doubt hear from me directly. But if you have technical skills and are looking for a way to contribute, please reach out. You will find a very open, collaborative, and positive group of people who enjoy working together, learning, having an impact, and —when there is no other way—even willing to invent new approaches. It’s a great service opportunity, and I’d welcome to chance to learn and work with you.
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