[RECAP] Road Mapper Challenge Knowledge-Sharing Meet-Up

[JustJake]

On Sunday, February 11th, I hosted the virtual Road Mapper Challenge Knowledge-Sharing Meetup, co-hosted by my friend @PrasadVR . The goal was to meet with the participants of my 31 Day Road Mapper Challenge and discuss what we learned during the event. It was wonderful to connect via Google Meet with some of the active participants of the Challenge and bring Road Mapper discussions into a live forum.

Participant and guest @ShailendraOjha also wrote a great recap from a participant perspective that you can read here.

Premise:

On January 1st, I created a Road Mapper Challenge to make 31 straight days of contributions to the program. Much to my surprise, several other Local Guides decided to join me. Together, we completed 1,855 missions in Road Mapper and contributed 1,922 Kilometers to the map. Once we completed our Challenge, @PrasadVR proposed that we meet to discuss the Challenge, and review what we’d learned and discovered, as shared in the 200+ comments on the post.

Meet-up Flow:

We started with a brief explanation and history of the Road Mapper program, including the Beta release to the lucky 2019 Connect Live participants, the 2021 release for applications, the Q&A with Karolina Pyszkiewicz about the program, and @Mike_G 's recent announcement of a new application window.

We then looked over the results of our shared contributions in the 31-Day Challenge. Born of our monthlong discussion on the post, LG @Rednewt74 created a Tracking Workbook which he discussed and shared with all of us.

We then got into some tips and best practices for contributing to Road Mapper. We were lucky to have @JanVanHaver with us to share his experience and knowledge from using Road Mapper & having discussions with the Maps team. There was a great discussion regarding fixing/editing roads on the map instead of deleting them.

We discussed identifying roads to draw and add to the map, pros and cons of choosing when or why to do Challenges in Road Mapper vs. editing roads in Google Maps, and some keystroke shortcuts to make editing easier.

We finished up with some plans for possible future Road Mapper focused meet ups, and the invitation for everyone to join the upcoming Road Adding TRAC Meet event from Connect Moderator, @SholaIB - which you can find the details about along with past campaigns HERE.

I’m very grateful to those who joined. Great to see @TerryPG , @ofsanjay , @travellgrapher along with the others mentioned above!

[JanVanHaver]

t was a fun & interesting Meetup - thx for hosting it @JustJake @PrasadVR

[Rednewt74]

@JustJake @PrasadVR ,

Thank you both for creating and hosting this meet up. It was fun and it is great to have faces and voices to connect with usernames.

[ShailendraOjha]

"Productive & knowledge sharing & fun-filled meet-up recap, @JustJake & @PrasadVR Ji my gratitude for the perspectives shared.

[PrasadVR]

@JanVanHaver Thank you sir for joining the meetup. Your insights enriched the event.

[PrasadVR]

@Rednewt74 Thank you for joining the meetup and for your support during the campaign. Your tool is helpful for analyzing our contributions.

[PrasadVR]

@ShailendraOjha . Thank you ji for your active participation during the campaign and meet up.

[AZ_2021]

Awesome and fun recap @JustJake . Love to see you hosting this meetup and sharing the key takeaways.

[Alfred_V]

Good morning everyone, I read this RECAP on road mapper a few years late and wanted to ask you if there is a place (forum, post or other, parallel to the road mapper page where there is no forum) in Local Guides Connect where they talk about road mapper and how to stay updated on this program? Thanks

[tony_b]

Hello @Alfred_V,

Unfortunately the new updated Connect platform no longer has a section dedicated to Road Mapper activities. Some of us still persist with the system, and if you type a search in the Connect search bar you should be able to find recently uploaded related posts by other Road Mappers.

[Alfred_V]

Ciao Tony, si il nuovo sistema di Connect è abbastanza pessimo, tuttavia ho provato già la ricerca ed ho trovato solo questo post ed altri 3 ma non sono per niente aggiornati…altri post risalgono al 2021…Il programma road mapper sta continuando ad andare avanti oppure ci dobbiamo fermare??

[tony_b]

@Alfred_V

Is the road mapper program continuing to move forward or should we stop??

That’s a very good question, Alfred. I’ll tag @KatieMcBroom here, as she was the author of one of the main threads, and appeared to be possibly in charge of the program.

Meanwhile, there’s the other type of mapping on the live desktop editor of Google Maps, which is currently being championed by @SholaIB and @MarcoDavoli in their TRAC 2025 campaign which started at the beginning of this month. (You don’t need to be part of the campaign to use the map editor).

[JustJake]

Hey Alfred, as Tony mentioned, we lost our dedicated Road Mapper forum when the new Connect came online. There were a lot of pretty dedicated contributors, so it is a surprise that you’re not finding more posts. I’m still active on the platform daily. I think there are still a lot of meaningful contributions yet to go, so I hope you choose to continue.

[Alfred_V]

Ciao JustJake, si certo continuo a dare il mio contributo ma non vedendo più alcun post aggiornato o comunque aggiornamenti o novità importanti sul tema, mi sono chiesto se stessi mappando territorio inutilmente (faccio riferimento ad una eventuale ipotesi di abbandono da parte di google del programma, ipotesi sul fatto che non ricevevo più alcun aggiornamento).

[Alfred_V]

Ciao Tony grazie per le informazioni, dove posso trovare un link per questo strumento di mappatura di google maps “TRAC2025”? Dove posso trovare info sull’editor desktop live di google maps per capire come funziona e gli obiettivi di questo programma? Grazie

[JustJake]

Alfred, you can read through the index of TRAC related posts HERE. There is a meetup event planned for the 29th that will discuss our current progress HERE.

And, most of us started out by coming across a post by Ermes at some point. There is a nice summary of how to get started he wrote after hitting 3,000 roads HERE

[Alfred_V]

Ciao @JustJake e grazie per i post. Nell’attesa della tua risposta avevo letto qualcosa facendo una ricerca. Non ho capito una cosa, gli eventi od il programma TRAC, rispetto a RoadMapper, cosa cambia? TRAC è un evento in cui tracciate strade direttamente con auto per creare Street View?

[JustJake]

TRAC was started just to add roads to the live map. Unlike Road Mapper, we have to go and find areas that have not been connected to main roads, yet, and fill them in. You’re using the editing tools right in Google Maps to make these new roads.

[Alfred_V]

quando dici “dobbiamo andare a trovare aree”, intendi trovare sulla mappa (o fisicamente sul posto)? Inoltre, è possibile aggiungerle in qualsiasi parte del mondo, o solo in parti già “preconfezionate” come in road mapper?
Inoltre, non vedo questo tipo di strumenti su google maps, voi avete accesso ad un’altra piattaforma di google maps?

[JustJake]

I mean searching the map, all over the world, for unmapped areas. Hunting is half the fun! If you’re on your PC, a right-click brings up a menu, select ‘Report a data problem’ and click ‘Add or fix a road’ from the next menu. If you do not see ‘Add or fix a road,’ the country you’re trying to edit in may not be available for editing. Try looking around some of the countries you already do Road Mapper in, like South Africa. Once you get started, you’ll understand.