To be honest, I was not that travel-lover before coming to Europe. Precisely speaking, I hadn’t had many chances to travel. However, I could get the chance to work in Poland and stayed almost 1 year. I could get lots of information from Google Maps, not only for the navigation but for photos of many famous places. That was really helpful to stay there and enjoy the places people recommended to visit.
It is totally different between staying there long time and traveling there one day or few days. In Wroclaw where I stayed, I could go some places I liked over and over again. However another cities and countries, there was only one chance to visit which means I had to choose very carefully where to go. That’s the reason I relied on Local Guides to choose the places and food. Of course, sometimes I had a trip without any plan but even in that kind of unplanned trip, Google Maps was my life saver.
I love taking photos so I took hundreds of photos when I went out. And I started to upload my photos on Google Maps. Some places I could get enough information but some of them were not. That was the reason I shared my photos to add more information of the places so that people know better before they visit. I was surprised when I got the email from Google that my photos were viewed by huge number of people which I didn’t expect. Then I realized my upload was useful to someone and felt impressed that I could contribute to something.
I hope that my photos help people evaluate places. The collective intelligence is also useful to know something briefly however, I don’t have any professional point of view to post. In my opinion, I have to be very careful to judge something because everyone has different point of view and different emotion, especially for food. This is the reason there are sometimes totally different reviews people posted. Of course, service area is another topic but I just want to focus to upload the photo itself without any editing to be referred to people who want to go.
After coming back to Korea, I have kept uploading photos of my city. I think I have uploaded more frequently than when I was in Poland. Lots of places are empty in my city as Google Maps is not much popular in Korea compared to its local map application. However, just like me, a lot of foreign travelers are coming to Korea and trying to use Google Maps. That’s one of the reasons I keep uploading photos and reviews of my city so that those tourists and also local people can visit the places where I loved to enjoy, just like I was helped by other Local guides in Europe.
Again, it is really impressive and amazing that people are contributing and sharing their memories on Google Maps without any physical rewards. Also I am grateful to be one of them and hope people can enjoy my photos over and over.
