Being a Google Local Guides is surely an amazing experience, it gives me a chance to share my experiences to the world easily. And since everything works with Google Maps, features like GPS navigation and traffic information are very useful.
However, it’s not always easy to be a local guide in a city like mine.
Living in a developing country brings several challenges to local guides, from more expensive electronics to less reliable mobile networks make sharing my experience in different places slighly more complicated.
However, I think that once of the most important issues had nothing to do with technology of the global status of the technology market. I am talking about a social issue. In small cities like the one where I live, people already know where everything is, and they do not really use Google Maps to find what they are looking for, this issue gets worse when we add the higher prices for mobile data. People sometimes try to be more careful with what they use their internet for, especially if it’s not a wifi connection. People are not just as used to technology here than people living in other cities like Mexico City, Puebla, or even Cuernavaca.
Also, a lot of people have jobs that do not include a fixed location, since they either sell stuff in the sidewalk, or just walk around town selling goods like bubblegum.
Another big problem in a developing country like Mexico is insecurity, I have met several business owners (especially small businesses) get angry, or nervous, thinking that the information that appears in Google Maps might lure criminals to their businesses. The population of my city just doesn’t trust or relies in this kind of technology enough to be as useful as in other places.
Yet, I love being a local guide, because it gives me both and my city a chance to stand out, to help people who come from the outside to find what they can easily, and I bet that the cheaper and more accesible technology gets, the better Google Maps will get in my city, although an important education campaign might be needed to teach people who have never heard of Google before how to properly use this technology.
I would also like to add some pictures of businesses that I have added to local guides, most of them were actually excited to see their businesses in a platform like Google Maps, feeling like they made their first step into the 21st century.
Keep mapping the world!