This post is about recap of a meet-up I arrange in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). I have invited Local Guides from Jeddah to attend knowledge sharing meet-up. I must accept that this was not a successful meet-up because of lack of interest from Jeddah Local Guides.
Why this meet-up was unsuccessful
Till the last moment only 6 people showed interest to attend that meet-up. First of all I would like to thank all my fellow local guides who showed interest to attend this meet-up.
When I checked the profile of those who showed interest, only two of them are Local Guides from Jeddah, 1 from another city of Saudi Arabia which is almost 1000 miles away from Jeddah and others were not from Saudi Arabia. which make me feel that people are not interested in this meet-up but I still decided to continue with this.
Although people in Saudi Arabia are well aware of the local Guide program, and actively sharing pictures and reviews on the Google maps, and are also very much active on www.localguidesconnect.com and spontaneously answering the questions asked by others on Google maps, but still take this as a normal social media rather taking this as real community service.
Who actually attended this meet-up
When I reached at the agreed place on agreed time, I was not sure who will actually attend this meet-up and even those who showed interest to attend, I don’t recognize all of them by face because they haven’t placed their own pictures on profile. There was no way to contact them as we know each other only via www.Iocalguidesconnect.com. considering all these aspects I displayed the local guide logo and roam around the food court area so attendees can recognize me with this logo. After roaming around for 30 minutes, finally one person @shareit (Mr. Zafar ) out of attendees showed-up and recognized me from local guide logo. So I can say it was not a total failure and at least someone attended. We greet each other and had some fruitful discussion about google maps and about ourselves, and during this discussion we found out that we have some common friends in Jeddah Expat community and we are unknowingly known to each other.
What we discussed
We waited for few minutes and roam around in the food court area, displaying Local Guide logo but no one there recognized us. We sit for few minutes and agreed on some point to enhance the future meet-up experience
- We will make a Facebook page for the local Guides of Jeddah / KSA and promote it via social media so we can create a harmony among the locals and maximum Local Guides of Jeddah could be brought under one Umbrella
- With the consent of all members we will organize a WhatsApp group in future so Jeddah LGs can communicate with each other in a faster manner
- As members grow, we’ll arrange an ‘Edit the Map’ meet-up soon because a lot of new attractions and places are underway to open in Jeddah in near future
Conclusion
Although this meet-up was not a success as expected but starting from two members right now we may grow the community by narrowing the gap with other Local Guides here. Although a lot of people in Jeddah are active on google maps but they are not well connected with each other, my main target for this meet-up was to bring them together to share our experiences, so we can learn from each other and contribute our part to enhance the google maps experience.
At the end I look forward for feedback and suggestions from my fellow Local Guides around the globe that how can we enhance the future meet-up in Jeddah.