Welcome to the third day of the TRAC Community spotlight week, displaying the cultures of the TRAC community.
Unlike other communities in the spotlight of communities that have geographical boundaries, the TRAC community, in its uniqueness, has membership from all continents. The culture of the participants in the Thousand Roads Adding Campaign (TRAC) is defined by its deep ties to the Google Local Guides community, emphasizing collaboration, quality, and a shared mission to improve global navigation and business visibility. Amazingly, just like the physical communities, the TRAC cultures are taught and imbibed in infant TRACians from inception, and they soon form a habit.
Here are some of the core elements of the TRAC culture:
1. Collaborative Community Spirit and Support
Teamwork over Competition: While the initial campaign tracked individual contributions, the organizers led by the captain @SholaIB evolved the campaign in TRAC 2025 to focus on team-based contributions, boosting morale and fostering stronger connections. This emphasizes collective achievement over individual rivalry.
Celebration of Progress: Participants actively celebrate milestones, whether their own (e.g., adding over 1,200 roads) or their teammates’ progress, promoting a positive and motivating environment. The campaign is a voluntary, non-competitive effort built around supporting one another.
Leadership: In any community, culture is not just a byproduct of structure or routine, it is actively shaped by the attitudes, values, and behaviors of both its leaders and members. At TRAC, this dynamic is clearly evident. The strong, consistent leadership of our Captain @SholaIB , combined with the wisdom and experience of our seasoned local guides, has been instrumental in nurturing a culture that emphasizes growth, collaboration, and mutual support. Through their guidance and example, they have cultivated an environment where learning is continuous, contributions are valued, and success is shared. This spirit of growing together has become a defining trait of TRAC, inspiring every team member to strive not just for personal excellence, but for collective progress.
2. Commitment to Quality and Impact
Focus on Accuracy: A key cultural tenet is the commitment to quality over quantity. Participants are strongly reminded that quickly adding a large number of poorly drawn roads is detrimental and creates more work for others. The goal is thoughtful and careful contributions that genuinely improve the map.
Driven by Impact: The primary motivation is the real-world impact of their work. Participants feel inspired by the idea that “Every road mapped means easier commutes, better emergency response times, and smoother travel experiences for locals and visitors alike.” They are committed to “bridging gaps” and ensuring map accuracy for communities.
3. Learning and Skill Development
Educational Mindset: The campaign acts as a learning platform. It encourages Local Guides to overcome the difficulty of road editing and is designed to create awareness and provide the motivation needed to learn new mapping skills.
Sharing Best Practices: Through meet-ups (often virtual) and posts on the Local Guides Connect forum, members actively share their successful strategies, tutorials, and best practices for drawing roads to maximize the approval rate of their edits.
In essence, the TRAC campaign has successfully cultivated a mission-driven culture (improving the map), educational (sharing mapping skills), and highly communal (offering support and celebrating shared goals). Millions of kilometers of roads across the world are still unmapped. To finish this huge task, the collective effort of many local guides skilled in road editing is essential. The TRAC initiative is an important step in that direction.
Hurray !!! @MrFreez well written post. Thank you kindly. We are getting good publicity these days on connect. Our community is very ambitious and goal driven yes. Aside the captain, we have very supportive local guides like yourself and @Kumaarsantosh@PrasadVR@JustJake etc. It’s just a complete set up on TRAC. It’s all about improving the maps and interactions with others
Thanks to @AdrianLunsong our very nice friend and gentleman. Maybe he will work harder on TRAC after the spotlight is all over
Happy spotlight week folks.
Hello, my friend @MrFreez , thank you for this fantastic post! It truly captures the collaborative and supportive culture of the TRAC community. I am humbled to be mentioned in the post. It is a pleasure to contribute to this great initiative. Let’s continue our great work of improving the maps together. Thank you kindly to the planning team @Kumaarsantosh, @jayasimha78, @JustJake@SarathUpendran, and Captain @SholaIB
Thank you @MrFreez for sharing this amazing and inspiring journey of TRAC on TORM. These milestones along with the unmatched leadership and incredible teamwork brings out the best for local guides across the world.
It’s an amazing look through into the soul of TRAC. The team work over competition is a great example of the dedication put forward by the community. The culture of continuous learning and frendship embrace the real purpose of the TRAC community l. Thanks a lot @MrFreez for sharing this amazing spotlight post
Wonderful description of the TRAC Team’s shared goals and mindset, man. It’s funny you mention this road goal. In season 1, my goal was to get to 1,000 roads. Now I’ve got over 23,000 drawn. And, as you mentioned, the team was there cheering every step of the way!
Hello @MrFreez
Thanks for mentioning me with this great post
I’m proud to have been with the TRAC since the beginning. You’re right, competitive teamwork is much more motivating.
This beautifully captures one of the core strengths of The TRAC Community, the spirit of unity that keeps everyone connected and moving forward together. It perfectly reflects how no one works under anyone here; instead, we all work with one another. It’s this shared sense of collaboration, mutual respect, and willingness to help that draws people to be part of such a remarkable community.
And, of course, much of this comes from the thoughtful and inclusive leadership of Captain, @SholaIB, whose vision of togetherness continues to inspire everyone. Such leadership is truly exceptional, a rare quality that makes all the difference. I truly admire his humility and attentive nature, qualities that drew my attention to the wonderful work this community does.
@MrFreez, you have articulated this so beautifully, and it aligns perfectly with the theme of your post, “Embracing the TRAC Way.”
Definitely an important point to stress on!! TRAC isn’t just about speeding through Maps adding roads.. but making sure that the roads added are of high quality and accuracy! Well done to all TRAC members!! And hopefully more will be interested to join your community!!
I love that you highlighted the TRAC culture, and I think this post needs to be part of the onboarding for anyone joining or looking to join the TRAC community.
Honestly every time I enter a new role/company, I always ask about the culture and adamant about getting to know what the vibe is like, aha. So useful and love that there is collaborateive spirit overall!
to you all for your commitment as well as your energy 
.. which impact a lot around here on connect as well as beyond…
it’s clear.. even water from Danemark’s most famous waterfall ..and I’m sure Mr 
