Two and a half years ago, the Google Maps platform and the Local Guides program kindled my interest to disseminate information, to a wider community. As a travel enthusiast, I always liked to know as much as I could, about my destination and the world wide web was my ‘go-to’ resource, for such information.
Just as how I found all the online information useful, I felt that, being a Google Local Guide, was a great opportunity to ‘give back’ my share of information to the community in various ways. A vast majority of my contributions have been either in the form of Answers and Photos. The ‘Answers’ category seek responses to very specific questions in the form of a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response about places or businesses. I have felt that these are the questions which come to people’s minds, while getting to know about a business or a place of interest. ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ and so do the photos posted by local guides. I’ve always kept this in mind while clicking photos of businesses or tourist spots, as the picture needs to be useful to both the viewer and the business owner.
Two themes stand out in terms of my contributions of photos on Google: vegetarian dishes from restaurants across the globe and the exteriors of public toilets in different Indian cities.
Being a vegetarian, I’ve noticed in many restaurants that vegetarian dishes get only a small portion of the entire menu card. In my opinion, posting a picture of the dish helps both the viewer and the business. It conveys the presentation skills of the restaurants and viewers get an idea of how these dishes actually are, on the table. It is quite likely that vegetarian options which may get overlooked in favor of other menu options, get visibility through these pictures.
It also intrigues me how the same dish gets prepared and presented differently, in many restaurants across the world.
Another area which, in my opinion, benefits the community, is information on public toilets. In India, there is an ongoing mission to construct new toilets and maintain cleanliness in public toilets. I do my bit in providing information I see, through pictures of the exteriors of public toilets. According to me, a picture of a public toilet exterior tagged to the map location helps people locate them quickly and also give them an idea about the cleanliness levels in the surroundings of the toilet.
