This post is for the purpose of applying to CONNECT LIVE 2019. You are all welcome to read and give feedback.
What I love sharing most is the new places that are not yet listed on the maps. I moved to Saudi Arabia 5 years ago, before that I lived in Jordan, and lived in France for a while. During my time in France google maps helped me a lot find my destinations, helped me locate restaurants, bus stations, helped me find the bars where my friends where hanging out during the weekend, etc. I used google maps almost on a daily basis.
So, when I moved to Dammam, Saudi Arabia. The first couple of weeks I relied a lot on google’s help as usual, I am in a new city, where I know no one, where I know nothing at all. Google maps once again helped me find the best places to eat, the most interesting activities nearby, helped me commute in the best available routes from home to work daily. And after a while, when I finally was able to move around without google map, did this mean that I no longer need to use the application? No way, I started contributing myself, I started helping others, and helping google maps become better, just like google helped me every single day in the past.
I spent my first 2 years in Dammam looking for a Chinese restaurant (oh how much I love Chinese food), 2 years of searching and asking and trying every Chinese place I come by. But, none of them was really impressive, non of them was listed in google maps at all. Did that mean I will give up finding my dream Chinese resto? Hell no I won’t give up.
Suddenly, out of no where, I was going with a friend of mine into a hotel to book a room, and BANG, there’s a Chinese restaurant inside the hotel. I have to give it a shot. And surprise, it wasn’t just a great place to eat, it was the best Chinese I’ve ever had !! I shared this news with all my friends, and encouraged them to try this place, and then I opened google maps, looked if there was an option of adding new places to the maps, and there was. I added the restaurant’s location, pictures, working hours, the menu, and gave feedback on the food. After a short while I started getting feedback from other people (local guides), I started receiving questions about the place and started answering them to help others, hundreds of people were looking for such a place, and by doing this simple thing I was able to help hundreds of people in my city and make them smile. I talked to the restaurant manager and informed him that I’ve added the place on google maps, later on, when I visited them again, he thanked me and informed me that the place is accepting many more customers after I added the place on the maps, he was grateful for my help, and I was grateful that by doing this I did contribute to my community, I helped people find an amazing place, and I helped the restaurant itself become successful.
From that day on, I started contributing more and more, adding missing places, posting pictures, modifying wrong destinations or wrong working hours, answering questions and giving reviews, it made me feel happy helping others, and made happy being able to pay google maps back for its help along the past years.