How I Like To Help People Visiting

Google Maps contribution stories
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I wanted to tell you a little bit about why I started to contribute to Google Maps through the Local Guides program, this is my story: I’m a born and raised Swede, originally from a small town on the east coast. Already as a child I was quite tall for my age 187cm at merely 10-11 years old, so whether I liked it or not I had to get used to being the center of the room.

Now, what does this have to do with the Local Guides program? It’s quite simple actually, when moving to college (to another small city in the south) I learned the value of being in the center of attention, people asked you things. I had to be very social whether I liked it or not, and I had to learn, or at least try to figure out, the answer to the questions the people were asking. This happened at every event, party, night out, basically anywhere people could use guidance. I don’t know why people (strangers) where comfortable around me (Swedes normally keep quite the distance in regards to interactions with strangers). Was it my voice, my laughter or simply my length (hey, there’s someone lets

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ask him).

But this became even more obvious to me when I moved to the 2nd largest city in Sweden, Gothenburg. Tourists comes up to me all the time, and I literally have had to study to learn the names of streets and public places to at least have a chance to give them a proper answer. This is where Google Local Guides really comes in, I think it might have been an promotional e-mail from Google or maybe my first review, but I realized I wanted to help people in more ways than accidental run-ins ont he street, but what should I review, food, social places, anything? Well, food has always been a passion but I’m more about the people so I figured that a good combination was to ask myself (when visiting a restaurant or any other place):

  1. Would I want someone else to experience this place?

  2. Was this a good experience?

So reviewing places from a tourist perspective giving them a chance to visit the best places and avoid wasting time while visiting our country is my goal, and it makes me so happy to help! :

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