As a Mumbaikar, who’s had a once-in-a-lifetime experience of getting lost as a child and being rescued by police, I made it a point to know my city and its by lanes as extensively as I could. I have traveled independently using local transport right from an early age of under 10 years in the 80s and 90s without any maps. This inclination for exploring places then translated into my love for traveling. And while traveling, to explore places by foot or using public transport.
The first time I started documenting information about the places that I explored was on my honeymoon when I drew a detailed map of the main market area of Port Blair with the hope that it will help my friends and family who’d visit Andaman Islands in future. This was just a few month before Google Maps was launched as a web application in February 2005. But as is wont to happen for any middle class person, I got sucked into ‘life’ and while traveling continued, documentation took a backseat.
Over the years I have always planned my own trips and used Google Maps extensively to explore and choose tourist spots, restaurants, convenience stores, offices, plan commute, etc. during these trips. Reviews and information shared by other Guides and contributors have played a huge role in me finalizing my plans. In a sense, it is this debt that I mean to repay by contributing as a Google Local Guide. So when I received an email invite, I joined and started contributing a little in my free time. From a beginner, I have now gradually moved to Level 7 and hope to touch Level 9 before the end of this year. The photos that I have shared cover a breadth of things that I have experienced locally in Mumbai, and in my travels in India and internationally. Involvement in the Local Guide Community through Connect is a big area of improvement, and I wish to bring that change going forward. This post being a start. But there is a vision I have for Google Maps, which I believe will unlock its potential to aid our lives in a much richer way, and that is going to keep me motivated in participating as a Local Guide.
This vision is based on the extent of information now available on Google Maps and Google’s AI expertise. I believe Google Maps can evolve from just an excellent discovery and spatial information platform to an evolved travel planning and commerce platform (which it already is to some extent, but there is a lot to do). It is my vision to see Google Maps enable each individual to plan and book their complete travel through Maps. And like in many sectors and spaces, through dis-intermediation, bring power directly in the hands of end consumer. To this end, I believe role of each Local Guide is critical in providing local and global information to the best extent possible, thus creating an extremely rich data set for the AI to help create a personalized, unique travel experience with tremendous convenience for each individual. And hence, I wish to be a ‘Glocal Guide’, i.e. document as much information about experiences and conveniences in my own local area, my city and all places across the Globe that I have and will visit in future, to help connect people with the travel experiences they seek with convenience in one single application. Because I believe we all have the right to grow and seek pleasure through travel.
- Saurabh Gada, 40, Mumbai
#Glocal #Experiences #Conveniences #Travel #GoogleMapTheGuru