Personal Science Community
People interested in personal science topics often like to share their projects, ideas, and questions with others that have similar interests. Listed below are some of the places these discussions occur.
Online meetups and chats
Open Humans self-research chats
Self-research chats are weekly online videochats that grew out of the Steven Keating Memorial Self-Research Project on Open Humans. Discussion is informal and focuses on sharing self-research projects, tools, updates, insights, and questions. Information about joining chats, as well as notes from previous meetings, can be found in this document.
Show and Tell meetups
Since 2020 several online meetups have occurred featuring Show and Tell talks, organized by Quantified Self Labs as well as local Quantified Self organizers.
Online forums
Quantified Self
The Quantified Self Forum hosts discussions covering a variety of personal science projects, questions, and ideas. Running since 2011, the forum has has accumulated thousands of posts that can be searched and has some long-term contributors with extensive experience in personal science topics and projects.
Some subforums on Reddit feature posts related to personal science topics:
- r/QuantifiedSelf has a variety of posts related to "quantified self" topics
- r/Biohackers has many posts related to self-improvement of health and wellness
- r/DataIsBeautiful hosts personal data visualizations on Mondays (and ONLY Mondays - to prevent these from overwhelming the subreddit)
Meet-ups and Conferences
A variety of meet-ups and conferences have been organized over the years, especially in association with Quantified Self. In addition, Quantified Self has organized some formal conferences that feature a variety of talks and discussions. Many regional meet-up groups are organized via Meetup.com related to quantified self, as well as self tracking, biohacking, and similar topics.
Related to this, Quantified Self organizers recommend individuals share 5-10 minute presentations giving "a first person account of an actual self-tracking project". Talks are recommended a "Show and Tell" format that answers three questions: (1) What did you do? (2) How did you do it? (3) What did you learn?
Video recordings, transcripts, and slides of many Show and Tell talks are available online and are documented in this wiki.