I had originally planned a regular meetup for the second weekend in April. However, because of Covid 19 pandemic and national shut in stage 3 state of emergency directives and social distancing for Victoria, I changed my plans to a virtual meetup. As it turned out, I was so glad for being ‘nudged’ to do a virtual meetup because of the richness of the international flavour that came from it.
This was my first local guides virtual meetup on Zoom. To begin with I logged in with the wrong meeting ID and wondered where everyone was as 8 pm came and turned into 8:05 pm. So I checked my meeting ID and lo and behold, I was in the wrong place. LOL. Thankfully the patient local guides were very forgiving.
It was 8 PM in Melbourne and the Gold Coast but 5 AM in California, 11 AM in the UK and Cameroon and 4 PM in Mumbai and Sri Lanka and 6 PM in Shanghai.
There were 11 of us altogether and 8 of us most of the time as some had to leave earlier and others dropped in along the way.
We shared some of our funny experiences and highlights of being local guides as well as how we all started. A common thread in our stories was how connecting with more mature local guides who taught us the ropes had made such a difference in our journey as local guides. These more mature LGs challenged us and guided us about the program and taught us to see things through different lenses and to pay attention to things that we would not have noticed before. Participating in accessibility meetups and joining others in their meetups are all learning opportunities. Now we live and breath Local Guides and it seems almost as if it is tatooed all over our bodies shared one LG.
We also found out how different LGs can be in different places which can affect how easy or challenging meetups can be. One shared how much effort went into organising a meetup and 4 people turned up at her second meetup. It was very disappointing when the pandemic changed her plans for her 3rd meetup which had also involved a lot of effort to prepare.
Another interesting story was about going to an underground bar in order to write a review – where the contact met her at a big dumpster and then led her down dark stairs and walked behind her all the way. The story had a very happy ending and she lived to tell the tale, or more importantly, to write about it and also to share her photos.
Another LG who was so determined to connect with other LGs even searched up famous popular sites in her city to get the names of LGs in order to look them up on LinkedIn, FB and Instagram. She eventually had a WhatsApp group with a sizeable number. She was so happy after she met a Connect Live attendee who showed her the ropes of organising her first meetup where 5 LGs turned up.
We shared stories of the first meetups we had organised and it was not uncommon to have no one turn up. The host still carried on with the edits she had planned however and didn’t give up.
Another LG had to change their meetup location at the last minute because the University Orientation day was cancelled. They relocated to a citadel, a famous site in their city, and because they had not checked out the place earlier, had the choice of walking back 3 km or walking through the mud in their white shoes to the meeting place.
Another had his first geowalk organised for the 19 April 2019 in Sri Lanka. And that was the day before the Easter attack on many churches. He and his LGs worried for days afterwards that they would be picked up by the police for questioning as they must have appeared very suspicious walking all around the city taking photos the day before.
One LG shared about her 360 degree photography experiences and how it has led her to consider having a drone license to enhance what she can do.
Another shared about how when he first started using Google Maps there were myriads of errors in it in his city – there were duplicated businesses and wrong locations as well as ineffective photos. He was kept very very busy cleaning up Maps information for his city.
We also talked about the challenges of uploading photos to Google Maps while travelling with limited or no reliable data. We shared how using an offline version of Maps and Google Photos albums plus photos of restaurant menus with the address on it might be helpful.
It was an interesting meetup with ideas and stories abounding and 10 PM (AEST) came to an end way too soon. As I only have a free Zoom account we had to log back in several times after we got bumped off after 40 minutes. Logging back in was done quite smoothly and didn’t interrupt the discussions much. We considered what we could do for future virtual meetups and concluded our evening with a group photo with our cuppa – both cold and hot!
Thank you @TheRealKristin , @DaveBikkie , Alpha, @Lily_Asongfac , @willsonleecn , @user_not_found , @ravindus , @user_not_found , @LeyleyS and @TanTurner for being at my first virtual meetup and for being such awesome participants and generously sharing your stories and journey with the group. As mentioned, please share your photos and observations etc of this meetup here below in the comments of this post. Look forward to reading your take of the session.
I used little tripod to keep the phone steady during the meetup. That tripod really handy as it has flexible legs. Thank you for have me in the meetup