In the history of my life, ne'er hath my face been reproduced in such bulk quantity as on the fateful 20th of February, 2012. After waking and tending to my usual gathering of self and possessions for French class, I left my apartment and:

Nearly spat out my coffee when I saw myself on the news rack this morning. Hacking Health is on the front page of the Globe & Mail!

— Matthew Huebert (@geoshift) February 21, 2012

Obviously I was aware that my photo was taken--this was arranged, and I was duly expecting coverage, somewhere between the business section and the obituaries. But the editors in Toronto had something else in mind:→ Read More

I am one of the organizers of Hacking Health. On February 24th-25th, healthcare experts and technology innovators will gather in Montréal in an effort to bring tech innovation to our healthcare system–the first event of its kind in Canada. In this post I will share how the event came about, and what we’re planning.

An Idea is Born

One of the first people I met in Montréal was Jeeshan Chowdhury. Jeeshan is an MD/PhD Rhodes Scholar who arrived in Montréal last fall fresh from Oxford, where he was studying the digitization of information systems in hospitals. I found him hanging out at tech events, soaking up hacker culture and trying to build a team to address challenges in the healthcare system. → Read More

I wanted pizza, so I left my apartment and began walking to an Italian restaurant just down the street.

Three blocks in, a guy angled toward me on the street. He was young and dirty and I thought I heard him mumble about money, but I wasn’t sure.

He looked like a fellow who had approached me last Sunday. I was drinking coffee in the sun on a sidewalk when he asked me for money. In truth I had only brought along the exact coins necessary for a cup of coffee, but he didn’t believe me. He pointed at my coffee, and kept asking. There was contempt in his voice and eyes. I repeated that I had no money until he left. → Read More

Given that it appears Overlap.me has escaped the obscurity of a private beta and launched, ever-so-softly, into the public consciousness, I figure I should explain what it is and why I’ve built it.

The frustration I’m ultimately trying to solve is how to meet new people.

Not go on an internet date (though that would be ok too).

Meet. New. People.

Why, in 2011, is this still such a problem?

I don’t believe any of the three dominant social experiences online — not Facebook, Twitter, nor the plethora of dating sites that exist — have yet nailed the social dynamics of new human connections. → Read More

This is where I learned to swim:

Photo: Aaron Wolcott

The pool is filled with algae because it was abandoned; it was abandoned because of war.

I didn’t experience this war; when my family moved to Nyankunde, Zaire (now DR Congo), it was 1987, and I was four years old. My parents had a teaching assignment, and we stayed for 10 months.

I was nineteen when the email arrived: “Wearing crowns of leaves and screaming war cries… tribal fighters overran a mission hospital in Nyankunde, killing patients as they lay in their beds.” I had spent the rest of my childhood in a small, quiet town in rural Saskatchewan. → Read More

So I’m sitting at Startup Drinks in Vancouver last night when Delano Mandelbaum , the singular human force behind website monitoring tool BlameStella , lends me a productivity tip which I think might just change the world, if only it can be paired with a great user interface.

The trick is simple: whenever you find yourself consciously wasting your time ( time, you recall? that precious gift of life that brilliant modern moguls make it their explicit goal to absorb, sponge-like…), switch your computer screen to grayscale.

→ Read More