Yes.. Top of everything for me Local Guides program is a great social responsibility… Whenever I am doing any activity from local guide point of view, I feel this for may reasons. First of all your comments and photos and posts are open to the whole world. It’s a very powerful social tool as quite possibly your contributions may assist in making decisions, opinions, doing some planning by someone to whom you even don’t know. Your posting may involve the social appearance or say a gesture of certain geographical location. In that case you have to be genuine, justified and creative. It’s always a fun to move around, take photographs and share your experiences, hear opinions for your postings from the people around the world. Writing good is always welcome but equally or I say it is more welcome to enter bitter experience and findings to spread alertness.
When I started as a local guide three years ago, it was a fun. Enjoying the things, posting to map, say something and that’s all. But when it started receiving queries from people and increasing number of views then the approach started changing slowly. Casualness in the act started vanishing and a feeling of responsibility started coming up.
Somewhere someone is looking to your photos, reading your views, and comments. His or her decision may be sometime based on or supported by your contributions. Then a feeling rose inside that your contributions as a local guide must be a careful and responsible observations. Your photos may not be just a good snap but it should show something, it should explain and talk something about the place. Good things will always be said by people but you must also mention the drawbacks or shortfalls in that particular spot.
Initially I use to take some snaps here and there but now I take meaningful snaps which will capture exact details expected by the viewer. Rather than only concentrating on subject matter, I started capturing the surroundings also. How the surroundings look? How is the cleanliness? How are the restrooms? is parking available? How about wheelchair access?
If you are going to a restaurant or hotel then how is the place? is it comfortable for family, children? How is the ambiance? How is the kitchen’s cleanliness and quality of food? quantity and cost? Menu items are spicy and hot or moderate? How is the staff there? Lots of things eyes are ears started capturing in addition. All these gets reflected when I post it to map.
Recently I started creating lists. Taking a title of people’s interest and creating a list is a very responsible job. Due to title it is likely that many people may refer the locations in the list. In that case a responsibility lies that you create a list of genuine locations. You must have experience of that location. You might have visited the location sometime back but while creating a list you must ensure that the activity is still live on that location. You must keep attention of the changing surroundings and issues like parking etc because of it.
Same applies to any post you are putting on Local guides. e.g. say Travel. The location of travel you are mentioning, might be already visited by many people. Lots of information about that tourist place may also available on web. Important point is how your information makes difference by including details like current issues, problems in reaching to destinations, care should be taken, tips and tricks to manage with extreme climate conditions and surroundings etc… My recent post on Mount Kailash travel may be a good example of this.
Many other things to mention but these are the reasons why I called the Google Local Guide means a “RespoFun” means “Fun with responsibility” for me. So buddies happy postings …