This post is intended to share some incredible lessons and knowledge gleaned from my interactions with the moderators of LCG and a few Googlers as well.
Many of us joined the Local Guides program because we love something and wanted to share it with the world. I haven’t yet met someone who joined with the first reason being professional gain.
My meetup last Friday taught me one very important lesson about the Local Guides program - to the outside world, we are professionals. We are professionals that many business owners love, and which even more business owners do not understand. Amongst ourselves, we organize BBQ crawls and photowalks. We Clean the World and finish up the afternoon with a cold beverage. We support each other in our endeavors, even if those endeavors are as localized as correcting a business listing halfway around the world, in the community of a person we have never met.
Whether we intend it or not, by the subject matter and nature of our participation in Local Guides, we are professionals of some capacity in the eyes of many. This is a responsibility.
Last Friday I met one business owner who essentially despises Local Guides. I spent over an hour in her business explaining the program to her - how it works, the rules for photo submission, and the spirit of the program which practically requires altruism as a motivating force for its participants. It was a long and slow education, and one which is certainly not complete. She brought up so many problems she had with the Local Guides program, most of which were based in misunderstanding, and many of which reflected her deep passion for ensuring the image of her business matched the spirit and branding she worked so hard to put into every piece of work she produced in the digital world and the real one.( I will share more details on this interaction in my recap - the symphony between Google Maps, Local Guides and Google My Business is simple (to us) from the inside but complicated to others at first glance.)
Businesses are not fully aware of what we do as Local Guides, and when they feel they do not have control, they can view us as adversaries instead of advocates. It is our duty to contribute quality content which sheds light upon the places we review. This does not mean we have a duty to be falsely positive, but that we have an obligation to remember that Local Guides and businesses are allies, and we set the tone for that relationship, both in participation and education.
The more involved I get in Local Guides and the community that surrounds it, the more I have had to learn about separating personal and professional. For bit of background, I am primarily a stay at home mother. The extent of my corporate education comes from free classes offered online by Google, and one life-changing educational conversation with a certain Local Guide on a 1.5 hour bus ride last year. In my life, personal and professional are almost always the same. I work with people I have known my whole life, and the list of formal introductions is short, but growing. I have spent so much of my time evangelizing to my friends about Local Guides, so that to me, there is no difference between Local Guides as a proper volunteer effort, and Local Guides the past-time.
Separating personal and professional in my own life can be a challenge. When my Local Guides activity is viewed as professional by the outside world, this makes the professionalism of my Local Guides activity even more important.
The more friends I make in the Local Guides community, the more I interact with them on other forums. So often, we feel our voices are louder on other social media outlets - which we are more familiar with, and where we know better how to acquire a megaphone. It is so easy to message, post, and discuss in other places, topics which belong here. In this area of mistakes, I feel I hold some sort of record for required corrections. My communications surrounding Local Guides are FULL of good-hearted errors. At least 5 times in the past week, my LGC family has been kind enough to help me redirect my queries to the LGC forum, where, unsurprisingly, they were addressed. I’ve even been fortunate enough to receive the most sincere personal/professional separation and redirect in my personal history. (I requested permission to borrow the language, and have already gotten to use this adapted script to my professional benefit twice already!)
The deeper the friendships we make in Local Guides become, the trickier it can be to separate our conversations as friends from our conversations about our Local Guides work. This separation is important, as our commonalities in Local Guides is what makes us such natural friends, but is not a reason to begin addressing Local Guides issues outside the LGC forum. Solving our issues in the proper arena is essential, as the discussion and ideas generated here are all accessible by the team that builds the product we love. We have a responsibility to keep the conversation here whenever possible, and redirect it here, so that the richness of our contributions can be utilized instead of languishing in a private chatroom.
There is so much more to be said on the subject, but these few little lessons are the heart of the issue which has been so prominent in my own experience recently. With all the excitement and buzz generated by applications being open, our behavior on other websites is even more important at this time. We have the opportunity to bring more people to the program, direct more Local Guides towards activity on the LGC forums, and grow Local Guides by our example.
For some of us, juggling the pseudo-professional nature of the Local Guides is second nature. Not to me. Not to many others. The main requirement to be a Local Guide is the desire to participate in the program. There is no required knowledge on codes of conduct or etiquette. There is no quiz. There are FAQ pages, rules and posts on the forum, but how many of us read and internalized these guidelines when we first signed up? Those parts all come after, and the community which is already so active is responsible for teaching others these essential behaviors.
To other Local Guides: Use the Local Guide program and these forums to hone your skills in communication. LGC can be a training ground for bettering yourself - your communication, your ability to meaningfully contribute to the discussion, your language, grammar and your accountability. Do not be discouraged. Do not be negative. Do not allow yourself to feel poorly if you require correction. Every effort here is volunteered, which means that the intention is for your benefit. This opportunity is an incredible gift.
To the the Mods, Googlers, and passionate Local Guides who maintain communities on other forums: Thank you. I am receiving a corporate education from you in a kind and growth-focused environment which my life has not provided to me elsewhere. Local Guides continues to enrich my life in so many areas I never expected, and for that I am deeply grateful.
Anyone else reading this - what has Local Guides done to enrich your life in areas you didn’t expect? Where else has your education here been applicable? There are as many ways to use this program as there are Guides and it is so exciting to see the unexpected growth it can stimulate.
(The recap for the meetup I referred to is coming when the last few Street View tours process through the system and can be viewed. Soon!!)
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