My experience with Local Guides has been over a decade in the making. Since 2004 I’ve had a camera everywhere with me and took pictures of my experiences hoping to someday add them and share them with others.
For a time, I posted videos and social media posts to share with friends. That led to the creation of my persona named Yegventures, to become a local social media influencer in Edmonton where I live.
Once Local Guides came around, I finally found a full platform where I can geolocate my experience with others who are at that location as well. I posted pictures and reviews everywhere, even before I knew about the Local Guides point system.
I never really knew how much I’d rely on Local Guides until I went on a 14 city, 11 country pilgrimage last year to coincide with World Youth Day. Along with other Google mobile apps, my entire trip was planned and mapped out based on my emailed flight reservations, calendar bookings, and places from the trip app I viewed on the map. I discovered many interesting places using the apps which I definitely wouldn’t have found simply by word of mouth of friends and family. Having everything on my phone, it was really efficient to find a place and select the transit mode to get to the destinations. While I was on the trip, Local Guides was always on my mind, as I retroactively added many of my destinations with regular and 360 photos.
I also do a lot of neighbourhood walks and I love exploring new places and ones with history. There’s so much local history I want to add to Local Guides, from the Catholic history of the central Alberta region, to historical Edmonton.
I look forward to seeing what else Local Guides has in store, how I can be part of the community to improve it, how to integrate it into blogs and other social media posts, support local businesses and organizations in my community, and to making Local Guides the place to go for everything.
Here’s some pictures I took of where I’m from. Since this is a place to connect with other local guides, send popular landmark of your city to say hi back. 
