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

Happy 9th Birthday Connect community!! Time certainly flies and I can’t believe it’s been that long!! Boy, do I feel old now! :rofl:

I love this task set out by the Google team to find out more about our ‘relationship’ with Connect!! Here are my 9 responses!

Where are you from?
I’m from Malaysia but currently splitting my time between the UK :united_kingdom: and Malaysia :malaysia:.

When did you join Connect?
Searching through my emails, my first contact with Connect was in June 2016!

How did you learn about Connect in the first place?
I was previously an assigned moderator (i.e. selected/recognised by the Google team) for the Manchester community under Google+. So I was invited to join a beta testing group just before Connect became public to everyone!

What time of the day/week do you like to check what’s new on Connect?
Historically, it is probably from early evenings until late with no set days. Currently, my available time is all over the place but I’m trying to reorganise myself and get back to a more regular routine!

Have you attended or hosted a meet-up on Connect?
Yes to both. I enjoy meeting other Local Guides both in person and virtually as they are always fun to hang out with!

What’s your favorite moment on Connect?
Ooh…too many favourite moments to choose from…but since we’re celebrating Connect’s birthday, I would say that Connect’s 5th Birthday celebrations were great fun! As always, @KashifMisidia was also very active in promoting meet-ups and celebrations so we had quite a few fun things going on then! Check out these posts:
A month long celebration of Connect’s 5th Birthday
Happy 5th Birthday Local Guides Connect!
Needless to say, I predict next year’s 10th Birthday is going to be wild!!! :partying_face:

Tell us about one Connect feature that you love.
I love the Meet-ups board where I can see all the meet-ups organised by the global community and then look for meet-ups that I can join in when I can! I feel that meet-ups are a core part of the community because it allows us to meet other Local Guides to share our passion, exchange ideas and learn new things or just to celebrate each other! It’s always fun and super positive! :heart_hands:

What one feature would you add to Connect if you could?
I would love to explore the Connect community via a world map; all posts are represented on the map as a pin! There will be different pin types/colours for the different categories and we can filter posts by a date range. This means all posts need a location but to protect privacy, we can assign posts to only state/region. And every pin is clickable so that we can jump straight to the post to read it! This would create a fun way to visualise new posts as they are published and to allow the community to zoom in to certain areas to discover posts from there without having to use the search function.

Tell us about one thing you’re planning to share or do on Connect this year.
As part of the 10th anniversary of the Local Guides program, I am ‘running’ a 12 months of celebration project. November and December is dedicated to the community and this will need quite a bit of planning and coordination so I am hoping to kick off work on that area soon! So stay tuned…

And those are my responses! :blush: Now, I’ll need to spend time reading as many responses from the community as I can!

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