Best Practice: Industrial Zones

[JanVanHaver]

One of the most satisfying experiences during the trips you make as local guide is being able to make a lot of meaningful contributions in a short period of time. But in the city center this is often not easy, as most POIs (points of interest) are already on the map there, and lots of them have sufficient pictures. There’s always a correction to be made or an up to date picture to be added here and there, but with an ever increasing number of local guides out there (which is great of course) you sometimes have to find and explore multiple POIs before finding one where contributing makes sense.

You could then decide to make local guides trips in more rural areas to avoid this problem. But then you come across another difficulty: in rural areas there are simply much less POIs to be mapped (hopefully a policy change on what is mappable can improve that - but that is still wishful thinking at the moment), so you might need to cover a considerable distance to make a high number of contributions.

The perfect solution to this dilemma is visiting an industrial zone. OK, it’s usually not the most exciting environment, but there’s often a lot to contribute and improve there, with a lot of mappable places on a relatively concise area, but with a relatively low average data quality. A lot of POIs do not have any pictures at all yet (great for getting the pioneer badge!) and quite a few have no category or a very general one (listen to the LetsGuide Podcast episode on categories for tips on how to deal with that), An additional advantage - as most local guide contribution trips will probably take place in the weekend - is that you can often quite easily take suitable pictures without ‘disturbing’ elements such as parked cars where you would need to blur the license plate.

So those are all LG points just waiting for you to collect!

Other posts in this series:

Best Practice: Find new places to add to the map

Best Practice: Fix inconsistencies in chains

Best Practice: Learn to be patient

Best Practice: Find the right category

Best Practice: Reporting duplicates

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, based on my hands-on experience as local guide, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.

[PaulPavlinovich]

Hi @JanVanHaver whenever I find myself in industrial areas I too often find things to contribute, missing phone numbers, entrance in the wrong place, no photos. You’d think these people weren’t actually in business sometimes.

If you want to blend in wear a hi-vis vest :).

Paul

[JanVanHaver]

Quite so @PaulPavlinovich , I have already come across situations where 1 in 4 or so had the map marker in the middle of the street.

[LeeBee-SA]

Thanks @JanVanHaver

I’ve been trying to come up with new ways to add info to Maps, I was concentrated more on the rural areas of South Africa but your post actually makes more sense for me at the moment as there are plenty of industrial areas in and around Johannesburg as opposed to the truely rural areas.

Thanks for the heads up

[PaulPavlinovich]

I still like to work in rural areas when the opportunity presents itself too @LeeBee-SA as you can impact a community positively by adding the business to Maps. Country people are curious and usually ask what you’re doing this helps promotes Maps. They tell their friends of the interesting things they saw happening e.g. 360 images then the use of Maps will spread throughout that community. While the people of the town probably know their own local businesses pretty well the new Maps entrys will help bring out out of towners.

Paul