In September we return to the scene of QS Show&Tell #2, the spacious, comfortable, and conveniently located offices of our generous friends at the Institute for the Future in downtown Palo Alto. Just a few steps from the Caltrain stop, across from the main entrance to the Stanford campus, this is the most convenient meeting yet for all you Page Mill and Sand Hill characters wondering what the fuss is about.

Okay, don't take that too seriously. Really, we're just going do it again. Join us for another interesting, fun night of self-tracking presentations, sharing ideas, and showing tools. As usual, the first hour, from 6-7, will be for socializing. If you are self-tracking in any way - biometrics, mood monitoring, life-logging, DNA sequencing, etc. etc. - come and share your methods and results. Typical presentations are under 10 minutes, and there is no need for slides unless you feel like it.

At the last meeting long time QS participant Paul Sas made an important critical comment about self-tracking that I have been thinking about ever since. He said that he noticed a lot of "write once/read never" approaches to self-tracking. Data collection - is it an end in itself? Or do you want to do something useful and interesting with your data? I propose this as the theme for our next meeting. So if you are are self-tracking, and are going to present your project, think in advance about what is meaningful about the data you are gathering.

Seth Roberts, another long time QS attendee, sometimes pipes up with this question: "what did you learn?"

We will take that as our provisional headline for this month's talks.