There’s some history as to why I started contributing towards Google’s Local Guide program and that history starts with my family visit to the city of Kashmir, India (often called heaven on earth)
During my school years, I once visited Kashmir with my family, Kashmir has been in a state of controversy and subject to several terrorism activities since the partition between India/Pakistan during the 1947 British exit from India. When I was visiting Kashmir with my family, I was a very young adult but active as a tech enthusiast. I used Google extensively to figure out areas around me, maps, and I would read reviews posted by people to understand if a particular area was safe to visit. During those days internet on mobile was not a very common thing in India, so I would do all this preparation over our hotel’s WiFi network and then write it down on a piece of paper or store it offline in my phone’s messages or Notes app and then use that information to see around the local place.
In this way and then later in many more situations such as during my visit to London for higher education and then during my first visit to SF for work and so on, I relied very heavily on Google and was totally awed by the accuracy of information provided by Google. Such experiences kept encouraging me to contribute as much as I possibly can back to this ecosystem. I am now often known and pinpointed amongst my group of friends to be the first one who takes pictures, writes reviews of places and often times goes to new places around me just so that I can gather some information and then post it on Google via Local Guides program so others around me can benefit from it especially in times of need when they are stuck somewhere and they badly need information/photos/reviews, etc.
Thank you Google for what you have built and allowed everyone to contribute to, I am a proud member of Google Local Guides and will continue to remain so for the foreseeable future.