9 questions about your journey for Connect’s 9th birthday 🎉

Connections & celebrations
130

  1. Where are you from?
    Belgium

  2. When did you join Connect?
    Long time ago - my oldest post on Connect I can still see is from August 2018, but I must have been there quite a bit earlier, as I still very clearly recall applying for Connect Live 2018 and NOT getting selected (the team must at the time have checked other parameters as the ones I thought to be deciding :wink:). My best guess would be late 2017.

  3. How did you learn about Connect in the first place?
    Excellent question! Honest reply: no idea. Best guess here: a mail from the Local Guides team all contributors.

  4. What time of the day/week do you like to check what’s new on Connect?
    The weekend is obviously the period with most Connect-time (this reply is written on a Sunday morning), but as moderator I often make quick checks on weekdays too. And when there is an @-mention of course… I can’t resist checking what that is about the minute the email catches my eye.

  5. Have you attended or hosted a meet-up on Connect?
    Yes on everything. Attended and hosted multiple meet-ups, both Google-organized and community-organized, both virtual and in-person. And I can testify from experience: MEET-UPS ARE FUN! In my view meet-ups are the ultimate community building tool. For in-person meet-ups the travel distance is often a problem to bring a lot of local guides together for a couple of hours, but I’ve seen connections created on Connect and then strengthened in virtual meet-ups lead to local guides traveling long distances to attend in-person meet-ups.

  6. What’s your favorite moment on Connect?
    Whenever the team releases a post to announce something new.

  7. Tell us about one Connect feature that you love.
    The mere fact that there is an official forum to exchange ideas with other local guides.

  8. What one feature would you add to Connect if you could?
    An easy way to find other local guides living near me.

  9. Tell us about one thing you’re planning to share or do on Connect this year.
    For the 10th anniversary of the local guides program, I am preparing a special podcast episode where other local guides can answer 1 or 2 out of 5 selected questions. The deadline for submitting clips is actually today, and so far about 50 clips have been submitted, so it will take some time to process them all - but I will post on Connect of course when the result is there.
    And of course I keep monitoring if new categories have been added to Maps and then reporting about that here on Connect.

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