Being a Local Guide can mean many different things, but all with one thing in common: Google Maps.
What never changes, our fundamental principle, is the idea of doing it to help others.
We can do it with our reviews, with our photos, with edits that allow you to have constantly updated information, essential to facilitate the encounter between two different aspects: who offers a service and who uses it.
However, the limit of what we can do, the limit of the ways in which mapping tools can help change the lives of others, is entirely up to us.
If we have an idea, and we believe it enough, we can do things that we would not have even imagined yesterday.
So it happened to me, and so it can happen to each of us.
When I joined Connect, on September 20, 2016, I had so many ideas that I thought were useful and important, but I never imagined that five years later I would be invited to talk about them in an “official” way, in what is the biggest event of non-profit mapping of the Google universe: Geo For Good.
What I never imagined is to find myself in a panel with two of my myths (Sasha and Alvaro), and to talk to them about how, through mapping, we can make the world more accessible.
It took almost four years to transform an Accessible path discovered almost by chance in the Sibillini mountains into a robust and consistent project: Accessible Life. Sometimes I ask myself “what if there was no wind that day? We would certainly have taken another path, and that path would have remained unknown". I would never have written that post, @TraciC would never have replied by talking to me about Alvaro, and I would have done something else.
If we believe it, we can do it.
But it happened. This teaches us that we cannot know when an opportunity presents itself, but when this happens, we must seize the opportunity that is offered to us. If we believe it, we can do it.
For those who have never followed Geo for Good, I invite you to visit their website, to find out how many other ways there are to help others, from studying climate change to developing Plus Codes. Climate, Crisis and Social inclusion are the main topics of the event, and Accessible Life fits perfectly into this, presented from the very beginning of the summit in "What’s new in Earth?" highlights.
All this would not have been possible, without that strong and clouds wind that made us change direction on 17 September 2017.
All this would not have been possible if Google in 2018 had not given me the opportunity, after Connect Live '18, to try out Google Earth Web as a preview
All of this would not have been possible if I hadn’t believed in it, and worked for months, to create a scalable and structured platform.
But I want to add that “all this would not have been possible without others who believed in this project”. Others that I want to mention one by one, because it is they who have transformed it into a living and dynamic thing. They are the heroes and, like you and me, they are Local Guides.
Tomorrow, your name may be on this list too. Because of the question “What’s new in Earth?” there is only one possible answer: YOU
So thank you @Erna_LaBeau , @Jesi , @LaloPadilla , @LightRich , @jayasimha78 , @NareshDarji , @AnshukMitra , @Globe_trotter_Ish , @SebaasC for believing in this, and for continuing to believe in it.
And after so much seriousness, to close with a smile I’ll try to answer the question you haven’t asked me yet: was there really a lot of wind and clouds that September 17th 2017?
Well, you answer. Be careful, the volume of the music is really too high.
