Hey Local Guides,
This is the first official meet-up that I have ever hosted. It was a follow up to the local guides program presentation I made back in December 2017 at my alma mater, the School of Engineering at the University of Nairobi to sensitize students about the program and its importance. On 14th April 2018 from about 9:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m, 27 students managed to show-up for the meet-up even though 23 signed up. Some of them were hearing about the program for the first time and the rest already knew about the program from the session in December.
Hosting a meet-up for the first time made me a bit anxious because of fears that no one would show up or the meet-up just not going-on as planned. I am so glad this meet up exceeded my expectations and was overall a very nostalgic experience for me since six years prior, during the Google mapmaker days, I remember being part of such a meet-ups a.k.a mapping parties in the same University & venue (as we used to refer to them back them) that had been organized by some of the Google student ambassadors to map different places in Kenya on Google maps #Goodtimes (see photo below).
I liaised with one student leader and a few other students that I knew to help spread the word throughout the school about the meetup.
For particularly new local guides, it was important for me to introduce them to Google maps contributions in a fun & easy way. I found asking them to make 5 different contributions for at least 5 different places in the campus by adding all of the following for the particular places: reviews, ratings, photos and edits (when applicable), easy and exciting. The meet-up was carried in two sessions: ratings, reviews, edits, adding missing places were done in a lecture room because of the strong campus WIFI, then the last session was winded up by a photo walk within the compound of the school of engineering. I also gave the students a chance to experience Virtual reality through the limited edition Local Guide Summit 2017 Google Cardboard since it was such a big hit during my presentation back in December and also shared some of the souvenirs/ local guides stickers I got from Local Guide Summit 2017.
Some of the highlights particularly under reviews were: the buildings with the fastest WIFI, best cafeterias in the campus, closing/opening hours for various offices within the campus, just to mention a few. At the end of the day, over 100 reviews & ratings were added, 10 or more new places (most of the new missing places were not applied<this need to be investigated), a few edits and several photos were added too.
I look forward to hosting other meet-ups in future.
Please check out a post written by one of the newbies who attended the meetup on Saturday through this link .https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Wake-Up-Call-to-Map/m-p/748606#M206172
The previous post on the presentation made back on 19th December 2017. https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/LOCAL-GUIDE-PROGRAM-SENSITIZATION-MEET-UP/m-p/578491
#LetsGuide
Uon Geo-Walk