Hi LGs,
Hope you are having a great week. Or are you worried about the Connect Live 2019 application, haha?
Today evening I have successfully hosted my very first meet-up. You will be surprised to know that, I have not hosted a meet-up before this one just because I used to think that only a local guide community can host meet-ups. Another thing I was wrong about meet-up was, I thought to submit a meet-up I need to confirm a minimum number of attendees otherwise they would not approve my meet-up. From Connect, I have learned that every local guide can host meet-ups. Now, I am planning to host regular meet-ups. Iâd like to thank @PaulPavlinovich for this post What happens if no-one comes to my Meetup, because this post has inspired a lot and I immediately made my mind to host one soon.
Meet-up details
Title: World University Intro Meetup
Location: World University of Bangladesh
Date: March 23, 2019
Duration: 1:20 hours
Guests: 10
Theme of the meet-up
The main theme was to share information about the Local Guides who are completely unaware of the programme. The aim was to make new local guides.
What we have done
The interesting thing is if you check the RSVP link of the meetup you will find that almost all of them are new/level 1 local guides. Most of the people all who have RSVPed have not attended. And who attended most of them couldnât RSVPed earlier as they have not joined Local Guides yet! They were completely unaware of the programme and they didnât know they can contribute to the maps. They thought what they see on maps are added by Google itself! ?
So as was my target I have briefed them about the programme first. I have discussed the following topics.
- What Local Guides is
- Why we should contribute
- What impacts it will have on us
- How to contributes (add, edit, photos, reviews etc.)
- Points, level and badges
- Perks
After knowing about it they got excited about the programme. Then I have shown them all the basics of how they can add a place, photos, how to edit a place and how to write a good review.
Achievement of the programme
After creating the meet-up I have reached out to my university friends and shared about local guides with them. Many of them were interested in and was eager to know more about it. And several of them have signed up for the programme instantly. And rest of them have joined the programme in the meet-up today. And sweet thing is one of them just called me to know how he can report a duplicate listing! Can you think of the quick impact of this small meet-up? I always think it is better to try to make more local guides than hosting meet-ups with the existing ones. Flowing are the key achievements.
- 50+ people have come to know about the programme from the promotion of my meet-up
- 15+ people have signed up for local guides programme
- Who are already local guides felt an urge to be more active on the programme
What I have learned
People are very interested. They want to work to see their community on the maps. There are still many things we can do to promote Local Guides programme to the people who are unaware of this programme. We should promote it more to make more local guides.
What is my future plan about meet-ups
I am really motivated seeing their eagerness and excitement about the Google Maps and Local Guides programme. I am planning to work with the ones who have attended today to show them how they can do a quality contribution. And from now a meet-up will focus on a specific thing. I hope to host regular meet-ups at our university so we can bring more students to this programme. It doesnât matter if it is only one student who joins the programme in each meet-up. Because every addition to the programme will have a good impact someday.
Now the photos
Here are some photos of the small meet-up.
Thank you for reading the recap. Do you have any suggestion about how I can bring more students to the programme? Any suggestion would be highly appreciated.
Best,
Saif
Thank you so much.
