Hi all, I am Amir from Iran and I wanna share my story of what the Local Guides means to me.
Indeed, the Local Guides program affected me a lot since I’ve joined 5 years ago. To me being a Local Guide means being more social and connect with other people to learn and to help them. This is also an encouragement to explore new things and places.
For me, this was nearly a force to join the Local Guides program but a sweet force ? I’m using Google Maps for more than 13 years ago and I was sharing my photos through Panoramio. I’m editing the Map directly since 2010 and after some years as a Map Maker Regional Lead. By helping to complete many parts of the map, contributing to the related forums and training the correct ways of mapping to many people, I count Google Maps as my child. For all local guides, this is a responsibility to keep maps safe by our knowledge but for me, as I described, this is even more responsibility and is a kind of duty.
Because the Local Guides program is based on real individuals and since I’m a shy person that wasn’t famous among mappers by my real name (although my contributions were so well-known for users especially Persian users by my Map Maker username) this was so hard for me to join this program. The situation was the same for many mappers who have experience with Map Maker and so many of them aren’t so active like the past.
But I really changed by the Local Guides program. I joined the program to find out new ways of contributing those introduced by Google and I started a local community for Iran (firstly a supported community by Google) to keep good contributors together and prevent missing relations between the maps experts because a reliable map is only accessible by the help of good users. This was a new age in my life to learn, to connect, and to do many amazing things as a Local Guide.
By being a local guide and connecting with other contributors as real individuals I found many new good friends both from my country Iran like @SamanS , @MehrdadMnf and @siavasht and also from all over the world like @NABILazeez , @OSAMA , @ermest and @JanVanHaver and even some Googlers like @Gus and @TraciC . The local guides program encourages us to be real, to connect as ourselves with other real humans. This is so valuable for me and is a great advantage of the program.
By this, I’m in touch with many users through social platforms like Instagram and Telegram, email, phone and even face to face. I’ve also hosted many meetups (some submitted and some not) and especially this year I’ve had this chance to meet those we’ve become friends through the Local Guides program in some cities of Iran and this was really enjoyable for us. For example meetup in Hamedan with @Hamid_Reza_M , in Isfahan with @Hamidrezababi , in Mashhad with @Mohsen_M and many other friends.
The other aspect of the Local Guides program is its sub-programs those suggested by Google or even by users and cause us as Local Guides to be more effective for society. The sub-programs are very helpful activities we can do together as millions of good users around the world. For example the Wheelchair-Accessibility program by Google, the LG Clean The World by @ermest , the LG Clean The Map by @JanVanHaver and other global and local programs. These not only have a direct effect to reach the main goal of the sub-program but also brings social responsibility for us.
For example, for disasters like earthquakes, floods, or even this recent pandemic Coronavirus, as part of the Iran Local Guides community, I try to help society based on the map. In the recent case, we’ve created a My Map of official medical centers for diagnosing and care against Covid19 and this map suddenly became popular on social pages. This brings me and my fellow community in Iran a good feeling that we’re helpful for society through our activities.
One other good thing that the Local Guides program brings for me is a good feeling from walking and exploring different places. This is really lovely for me to walk across the city, roads, jungles, deserts and each places to enjoy and find new things. I think the Local Guides program has an important role in this feeling. It helped me to have attention to different aspects of the places from a general overview to details, from services to the staff because only in this way we could write a genuine review. Also taking photos and videos from different angles even with a simple cellphone helps us to discover more and this is very interesting.
For example, shooting this general view of a tourist-friendly city
eating a meal in a new vegan restaurant:
visiting a new art gallery
eating traditional foods with Local Guides friends in a historical hotel
and enjoying from a historical place
These all hadn’t a feeling like what today I have, without being a Local Guide on Google Maps.
My final note is that the Local Guides program is not only a Google product. But like what Google Maps did by its born, the Local Guides program also starts a new era in the engagement of people with the map. It connects society together based on the map and helps people to be more real on a virtual platform to help others by their real experiences and explores. Thanks to those who cooperating to make this great community wider and more effective from Googlers, moderators, engineers, and all good Local Guides.
