Hey everyone!! I am super excited to announce this community driven initiative as part of the “12 months of celebrations”! What better way to close off 2025 than to celebrate the amazing community!!
As you may know already, the Local Guides program is pretty special and yes, we have an amazing team at Google that has provided us with Connect to, well, keep us all connected! And through the years, they’ve kept us on our toes with fun challenges and we’ve even seen the return of official meet-ups this year in New York, Tokyo and, soon, Bengaluru.
But, this program wouldn’t be what it is without the amazing people (you, you and you!) that make up this fabulous community! When the pandemic happened in 2020, it really changed everything and the community came together for Community Live, an event led by Connect Moderators!
This year, I wanted to propose something slightly different; I wanted to really put the spotlight on all of you, so that we can truly appreciate the communities that make up the program! So, for 2025, we are going to do Community Spotlights!
What are Community Spotlights?
For the months of November and December, the Local Guides communities will take turns each week to introduce their community, share some exciting posts about their community or past events, and organise fun meet-ups! We want you to really promote yourselves!!
Local Guides communities (by my own definition) are usually grouped by countries (e.g. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, USA) but you can also group yourselves by geographical areas (e.g. United Kingdom, Europe, South East Asia, Americas) or even by language (e.g. Spanish, French, Chinese). It’s for you all to decide how best to represent yourselves! 
What’s the schedule?
I’m hoping to find 12 communities to participate in these initiative. If there’s more, we’ll be able to fit you in so don’t worry!!
But, with 12 communities, the current plan is to spread you out as such:
| Week # | Dates (Mon-Sun) | Plans |
|---|---|---|
| 45 | 3-9 Nov | Communities 1 + 2 |
| 46 | 10-16 Nov | Communities 3 + 4 |
| 47 | 17-23 Nov | Communities 5 + 6 |
| 48 | 24-30 Nov | Communities 7 + 8 |
| 49 | 1-7 Dec | Communities 9 + 10 |
| 50 | 8-14 Dec | Communities 11 + 12 |
| 51 | 15-21 Dec | Big Party meet-ups (everyone is invited!) |
| 52 | 22-28 Dec | No plans.. just Rest & Relaxation  |
What to do during your community week?
A community spotlight will take place over 7 days!! Here’s an example of how a community can plan out their week:
| Day | Ideas | Prompts/suggestions |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | Post #1: Introduction | Where are you located? How big is your community? What past events have the community hosted? What achievements are the community most proud of? Community stats to share? A teaser for what’s to come during your spotlight! |
| Tue | Post #2: Places/Country | Tell us more about your country What are the famous places? Share top reviews from the community highlighting these places |
| Wed | Post #3: Food/Drinks/Culture | What are the famous food/drinks/culture? Share top reviews from the community highlighting these places |
| Thu | Post #4: Members spotlight | Who are the members (up to 5?) in your community that you would like to spotlight? |
| Fri | ?? | ?? |
| Sat | Meet-ups | Host virtual/hybrid/in-person meet-ups Host virtual quiz/games (State Challenge based on your posts?!?) Host local community parties |
| Sun | Meet-ups Post #5: Summary |
Same as Saturday meet-ups A final last hurrah post with a video message from the community members |
Edit: Can I just say that it would AMAZING if each community could produce a brief video to showcase their members; if you’re a small community then a short message from everyone will do.. if you’re a huge community, maybe you can do a screen recording from a Google Meet call.. I’m sure you all will figure out something wonderful!!
Again, this is just an example! What activities/events to hold and how you would want to organise them are entirely up to your community! The general idea is that the community themselves will manage all the various activities; you’ll be acting as a group and not an individual!
Some tips:
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get together with your community to discuss this initiative and decide if you would like to participate or not (please do participate!!)
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form a committee or elect a leader to help manage the community and coordinate tasks
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plan out your posts/meet-ups; what topics to write about, what sort of meet-ups do you want to host
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this is a group effort and if you have a big community with lots of members who may want to contribute, you’ll need to split your tasks into smaller sub-tasks and delegate!
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for posts, you can do collaborative writing e.g. for a post on the top 10 places to visit, you can assign 11 Local Guides to work on this post; 1 Local Guide to write on one of the top places (so 10 Local Guides for 10 places) and the final 11th Local Guide to write the intro/summary and package everything up in a single post. Please remember to credit everyone!!
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coordinate your efforts!! Do not swamp Connect with 100s of posts during your community spotlight week. Work together!! At the very least, there should be 3 posts; an introduction to your community at the beginning, something about your country/areas, and a summary post at the end to wrap things up.
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for in-person meet-ups, use this opportunity to celebrate your community! Give yourselves a pat on the back!
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for virtual meet-ups, this is a perfect time to promote your community to the rest of the world! It could be cultural showcase or something light hearted and fun like a karaoke perhaps!!
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use this initiative to get newer members in your community to step up and take an active role in the various tasks. The more senior members can help provide guidance! Yup, it’s also a great opportunity to help grow your community and build solid friendships!
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your posts and events should embrace the elements of the Local Guides program; writing reviews, adding photos/videos on Google Maps etc. so at every opportunity, think of ways to utilise Google Maps e.g. sharing links to reviews, creating a shared lists or Google My Maps, using StreetView to help your audience immerse themselves in your environment.
What’s the Big Party meet-up event in Week 51?
As the first 6 weeks are all about the various communities, I thought that it would be great to bring everyone together into a big virtual meet-up(s). I am thinking that we will need to have 2 meet-ups.. one for the Eastern hemisphere and one for the Western.
In each Big Party meet-up, there will be a host(s) that will help to coordinate the meet-up. The host(s) will spend some time to introduce the various communities (or let them briefly introduce themselves). We can run the meet-up in a more casual festive way to just celebrate the end of the year and the 10th birthday.. maybe even use it to get some feedback on what to do for 2026! Again, it has to be super simple and brief (1-2 hours). The host will need to manage time properly and give the various communities a chance to participate.
Who are these hosts? Well, at the moment, I honestly don’t know! Chances are it might be a Connect Moderator to help pull it all together! 
Who can participate and how?
Anybody in the Local Guides program can participate, including Connect Moderators. Connect Moderators can certainly help out and step up if nobody wants to take charge.. but I’m really hoping that they can just enjoy this community initiative and play a more secondary role. 
So, if all of these madness sounds appealing to you, get in touch with your communities and start chatting away and figuring out how to make it work!! Connect Moderators can certainly help to get this moving!! Oh yes, they have been informed about this already 
Summary
So, I hope that everything is pretty clear. If you have questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below or send me a Private Message. I really do hope that the community will be excited about this. My role is just as an overseer and to do the overall planning/scheduling/marketing/coordinating amongst the various participating communities.
Deadline: 1st October
Please let me know by this date if your community is participating and who is the point of contact
Please remember the community guidelines (basically, be nice and respectful to each other!). This is a bit of fun that I hope will be a lasting positive memory for all!
And a reminder to fully utilise the community t-shirts and logos for your activities/events courtesy of @ShifaAymal, @Rakshith_LG and myself!!
Good times.
!!!
1-2 is certainly too few. The alternative is to join up with the USA community? Granted both countries are huge and there’s so much to talk about already… but I think that both communities have not had much localised meet-ups. There are global virtual meet-ups for sure.
Hope all is well!! I do hope that you’re able to take part in your community!!