This is part of Connect’s 5th Anniversary celebration initiated by @KashifMisidia in his postUnofficial LocalGuidesConnect Worldwide Birthday Celebrations.
Caption: An accessible pathway in the middle of the mountains, the avatar of Erna & Ermes on the sides of Accessible Life Logo, and the text "How to Work with Google My Maps. On the bottom, the text created by Adrian for Connect Fifth Anniversary (photo compiled by @ErmesT )
Let me start with a BIG thank you to @ErmesT for being willingly having a meetup in celebration of the 5th Birthday of Connect with me and a BIG thank you to the attendees who all of you stayed till the end.
I posted my first project for Accessible Life in Google Earth, it was not 100% perfect, it needs a lot of improvement.
The project was started by @ErmesT I was asked by some Local Guides about my post. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to have a meetup with the person who is an expert in this subject. I contacted Ermes about the idea and he accepted it (you have no clue how happy I was, Ermes – Thank you!). The meetup was scheduled for Saturday, July 17th @1 pm EST for one hour and it lasted for almost 2 hours. What a perfect time to celebrate the 5th Birthday of Connect.
Let me tell you a story from my college years. Not many people liked to take the Statistics class. They would postpone this class till the end because it is difficult. I love a challenge so statistics was not a big deal for me. I can see the concern in the students’ eyes worrying that they will fail the class. On the first day, the Professor promised us that he will make us fall in love with Statistics. I questioned how in the heck he would make that happen? To my surprise he did!. In the class, no one wanted to get up from their seat after the bell rang. This professor reminds me of @ErmesT , he is wonderful!
The meetup attendees were coming from different continents: India ( @RosyKohli ), Kenya ( @Zuhralc ),Bangladesh ( @NasimJoy ),United States (KeithLaBeau and @jayasimha78 ), Nigeria ( @Sagir ),Brazil ( @CSouza ),Mexico ( @LightRich ),Argentina( @SebaasC ), Indonesia (IndahNuria and Miftahul Iman). This covers South America, North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Photo of the meetup hosts and opening cover (by @ErmesT ) with collage photos of attendees (by Erna_LaBeau)
Top (L) is Ermes’ biodata. Top (R) and bottom photos are some of Ermes’ presentation (source @ErmesT , collage by Erna_LaBeau)
What a beautiful project, Ermes started with just a thought of what he can do and what the other people can do. How to invite others to create an accessible place. How can he give others the tools on how to navigate the area, and how he can put everything together.
Accessible life is a project created to help people explore natural and public places no matter their mobility, said Ermes. He wanted to give visual knowledge to the person that wants to visit the place for them to see and decide if they want to go to the place or not.
Why do we have to use Google My Maps? Because with Google My Maps we can give much more details than what we can do with Google Maps, explained Ermes.
*Photo source @ErmesT *
Ermes stated that Google Earth is a search engine. With it, you can explore continents, states, countries, cities and go with a funnel deep for the place you want to see. In Google Earth, you can share the place, pictures and you also can navigate inside so a person can really understand the place. While My Maps (this is the tool that every Local Guide can use) can give you the exact location of every single point of interest and every photo. Also able to add a video or link the 360.
Since I am so new to Ermes’ project, my post is far from perfect but I learned so much from his advice and explanation. I have prepared some questions that he responded to in the meetup.
Below are Questions (by Erna) and Answers (by Ermes) I believe will help beginners:
Q: What app do we need to do the project?
A: Google My Maps
Q: What is the correlation between Google My Maps and Google Earth
A: Accessible Life is a project created to help all people explore nature and public places no matter their mobility with the ability to share these accessible places on Google Earth. The project is very dynamic and evolves day by day with the contributions of Local Guides from all over the world. While Google Earth is the search engine for exploring accessible places around the world, the real focus of the project is Google My Maps. It is using My Maps that everyone can contribute, creating and sharing accessible outdoor areas to add to Accessible Life.
Q: Is it difficult to do the project?
A: Many think that Google My Maps is a mysterious program, and complicated to use. In reality, it is very simple and allows you to create customized maps, maps that can then be shared, integrated into a website, and even displayed in Google Maps.
During the meetup, Ermes shared with the participants a step by step tutorial of creating engaging my maps.
One of the participants, @LightRich also spoke about how easy his project was and showed us his beautiful public park in Mexico City. Thank you, Ricardo!
Ermes also explained that the project in Google My Maps is yours, you can modify, add new photos, update the details, etc because you are the owner of every specific project you’ve created. Ermes is only organizing all the projects together inside Google that’s why you send your project to him and he will link it in Google Earth.
To tell you the truth this project is so easy to do but takes more time than just clicking photos and doing reviews. More thoughts will be involved in it, more like a hobby.
Please also remember, since this project is initiate by Ermes, please tag him on your post so he can add them into Accessible Life in Google Earth
I encourage other Local Guides, especially those who are interested and have a passion for accessibility to start adding their country to this project. Let’s fill up Accessibility Life in Google Earth with different countries and regions. Let’s take this project to the next level.
Any questions can be addressed to Ermes or myself (with the condition I am able to help).
Once again THANK YOU, Ermes!
HAPPY 5th Birthday, Connect!!!
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and wanting to learn more , because my 2hrs were not in vain.
. And finally I got a chance and learned something . It was indeed an informative Meetup. Thanks 
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, both the clean the world campaign and Accessible life in google Earth 