Hello everyone,
Now that the campaign has come to an end, I would like to share a little about my journey.
First of all, I am grateful to have finished the campaign with a road count that I am truly proud of. Looking back, this experience was about much more than numbers. It was a year of learning, experimentation, challenges, and personal growth.
The campaign took place during some important periods of the year for me. It started during Ramadan, when I had planned to spend more time reading the Quran and attending prayers. Thankfully, I was able to balance both my religious commitments and road mapping. Then came Eid al-Fitr, followed by Eid al-Adha. I expected these occasions to slow me down, but somehow I kept mapping. At this point, I think it is safe to say that road mapping has become part of who I am.
Before TRAC, I had heard about the campaign but never really understood how it worked. At that time, road editing was not available in my country. When Google finally enabled road editing, I immediately started contributing around April 2025.
The beginning was not easy.
I worked completely on my own, with no guidance and very little understanding of why my edits were failing. Many of my roads were rejected immediately, while others remained pending for 90 days before disappearing without approval.
I would spend hours mapping every possible road in an area, only to see the same outcome again and again. After finishing one area, I would move to another and repeat the process. Each time I asked myself the same questions:
What am I doing wrong?
Why are my roads not being approved?
Most of what I learned came through observation, trial and error, and persistence. Eventually, I decided to seek help from the Local Guides community. I had previously asked for advice about place editing, so I thought it made sense to ask about roads as well.
Thankfully, ErmesT and Morten were incredibly generous with their knowledge. They helped answer many of my questions, especially about interpreting satellite imagery, dealing with shadows, trees, and different ground colors. Their guidance helped me understand mistakes that I could not see on my own.
One of the biggest lessons I learned was related to my previous mapping habits. Because of my experience with Map Editor, I tended to draw very long road segments. Sometimes I would map an entire village as one connected project and spend one or two hours working on a single submission. Over time, I learned that this was not always the most effective approach.
When the campaign started, I was assigned to Team Singapore under Jake’s leadership. One day Jake mentioned a tool developed by gncnpk that provided keyboard shortcuts for road editing. I had also seen another tool from the same developer that helped with filtering and numbering edits.
At first, I struggled to understand how the shortcut tool worked. But after spending time learning it, I started reading the code and customizing it for my own workflow. I modified it to better suit my left hand and created a setup that allowed me to work much more efficiently using only a few fingers for most actions.
Later, I saw Marco mention that he was not a programmer but had successfully built a website. That inspired me to experiment further. I began improving the tool almost daily, using AI to help implement new ideas. Over time, I combined features from multiple tools into a single workflow that dramatically improved my productivity.
The difference was remarkable.
Before using these improvements, I could complete around 50 roads per day. After optimizing my workflow, I was regularly able to map around 400 roads per day.
Because the tool helped me so much, I tried to share it with others. Unfortunately, it never received much attention. Perhaps I was still new to the community and had not yet built enough connections for people to trust my recommendations. Even so, I continued encouraging others to try it because I genuinely believed it could help many contributors.
I am still hoping to share it with more people in the future. I have discussed it with Prasad, and I hope to spend more time showing it to Marco once he is less busy.
One thing I had hoped to find in TRAC was a stronger environment for mentoring and knowledge sharing, especially for beginners. I imagined more discussions about techniques, best practices, and lessons learned. Instead, much of the competition felt like individual work, with only occasional opportunities to connect.
That said, I met many helpful people along the way. I would especially like to thank ErmesT, Morten, Marco, Jake, gncnpk, and Prasad. Every piece of advice, every answer, and every discussion helped me become a better mapper.
A special thank you to Marco as well. His professionalism, politeness, and willingness to respond to questions earned my respect throughout the campaign.
In the end, the greatest reward was not the number of roads I mapped. It was everything I learned during the journey.
Thank you all.
to the entire team of Roaders for collectively adding 138K roads to the map.
congratulations 
