Do you remember that scene from High Fidelity when John Cusack is asked ‘how is your vinyl arranged?’ and he answers ‘autobiographically’? If so, you may laugh if I refer to my submissions as a Local Guide ‘comforting’ - but it’s really what I love sharing the most.
You see, I started as a Local Guide around the same time I became an expat. As I started preparing to move abroad, I realized how ephemeral the information I had accumulated was. For example, while my photos of the Great Ocean Road in Australia meant a lot to me - I’ve printed one and used a few more as desktop photos - the beauty and information captured in those photos was of very little use, as they were sitting unused on my hard-drive 99.9999% of the time.
It was at that point I decided to start uploading my “B-roll” to Google Maps as a local guide. Sometimes I thought I had a great photo and wanted to share it, other times no photos were available so I reasoned I’d provide a bit more data while I was there. One-by-one they have been uploaded and each has met with varying degrees of popularity (views) - but all of them have been used by at least one person (or bot) who was able to get more value out of the photo than if it hadn’t been shared.
Nowadays in Prague, I believe it’s amazingly helpful to know if a restaurant is child-friendly. So whenever I’m sitting in a restaurant (and have the data readily available) - I try to record it. This serves both selfish and benevolent purposes. The next time I want to find a child-friendly restaurant, the combined data helps inform my decision.
Two years ago I was focused on populating other data into Google Maps (businesses, operating hours, phone numbers). Today it’s whether a business is accessible (to wheelchairs or strollers), child-friendly, or ‘how crowded was [my] tram’? Two years from now I’m sure my interests will be different and my new favorite data to collect will be something else. I’d like to thank everyone (in advance) whose shoulders I will be standing on and hope that the information that I found useful will provide a ‘step up’ to others.