“ Algorithm ” is a word that has become more and more meaningless in our day and age – given how it is thrown around everywhere. If you bring it up with people who didn’t undergo some form of tech initiation – be that formal education or self-learning - it’s easy for them to conjure a picture like the one above: A colourful mess of things, too complex to understand if you don’t have some advanced degree in computer science.

How can we make it easy to add data to Open Humans ? Open Humans lives through its community of members and the projects they design.

President Bartlet of The West Wing is calling his famous “What’s next” to his secretary after managing a task. I just defended my PhD last week, and one question from virtually every person who attended and stayed for the after-party: What’s Next? Which initially felt a bit weird. After all, I already took my next step three months ago when I joined Open Humans as the Director of Research.

Exactly 5 years ago Twitter started offering the option for users to download their full archive of personal tweets. The archive gives you a change to quickly browse through your personal history and find those funny cat pictures you once posted. But there is additional value in the archive, transcending the trips down to memory lane.

The first month in Berkeley – and with that also with Open Humans – is slowly coming to an end. And while much of this time was spent wrangling various forms of organisational and bureaucratic ordeals (finding an apartment; making sure all visa stuff is in order; getting a Social Security Number;