Building a community of Local Guides

[PaulPavlinovich]

36 Walk Group PhotoBuilding a community of Local Guides is a challenging thing to do. I was inspired to write this article after interacting with an LG that was lamenting the lack of swag in today's Local Guides and blamed that for not being able to build a local community.

Community is not about swag. Community is about common thinking, common goals, common rewards and good fair leadership over a healthy democracy of its members.

A community built around physical reward will be motivated by greed, and when that source of rewards dries up so will the community. I speak from experience here, when I first started leading Melbourne Local Guides which had been established by Google in the old "Official Community" days, the swag train regularly dropped off stuff to give out and the people came. When that stopped happening most of the people were no longer interested in the community. Very similar happened with the g+ based Photograph Melbourne community which was supported in the early years by the g+ PR team with t-shirts, lens cloths, etc.

It has taken me a long time to recover the Photograph Melbourne and Melbourne Local Guides scene and now we have a small but strong community of people who are there because they have an altruistic motive, they want to help other people just like them by making sure that Maps has recent up to date data, photos and reviews and they love doing it together. This helps others in the exact same way that others help them by doing the same. Slowly but surely thanks to like minded Local Guides such as @MariaNgo who also bring in new people we grow once again.

Over the last couple of years, I've transitioned a small Melbourne based event The 36 Walk into a global community of Local Guides who are interested in developing their photography skills and in turn contributing better imagery to Maps. This has been helped through strong promotion here on Connect backed up with external socials. This global community has never had any kind of reward other than the joy of meeting and being together sharing common goals. Each year this Meetup has grown and I'm really looking forward to the 2019 version.

The people in this image came together for a special edition of The 36 Walk at Local Guides Connect Live in San Francisco this year. Many of them have run walks in their home areas and I'm hoping those that have yet to do so are now inspired to run one back home when the time comes.

So in closing, if you want to build a Local Guides local community, go for it, it is challenging. It is difficult. You will personally grow doing it. There is a lack of locality based tools to make it easy. However, you certainly can do it. It takes time and it takes quite a lot of effort but I strongly encourage you to do it. As long as you do it for the right reasons it will succeed. If you do it for ego or greed it will fail. The Googlers in the Local Guides strongly support building of Local Community here in Connect and as Connect matures it is becoming much easier to find local people and to connect with them. I expect that this will continue and that some of the ideas that community leaders have discussed with Googlers will come to fruition.

Regards Paul

[HiroyukiTakisawa]

Thank you for sharing this @PaulPavlinovich

This is a good lesson for us.

We, the Japanese community want to follow you. And someday we want to catch up with your awesome community:-)

Thank you!

[YasumiKikuchi]

Hello @PaulPavlinovich
Since communication in Japan is quite complicated, there are various obstacles before people become friendly.
I do not know whether that is the cause, but I heard that the Japanese community before I participated was greatly collapsed.
I am working actively because I want to change the situation.

[PaulPavlinovich]

The complexities of local custom and language are really good reasons for the leadership to be local @YasumiKikuchi @HiroyukiTakisawa - already you have a community because there are two of you. In all cultures, we start from a position of

• Who is that person who wants me to do things?
• Why do they want to do that?
• What is their motive?
• Why should I trust them?
• Can I trust them?

Gradually over time as the community is established and grows the answers to those questions will become apparent to each person. Those answers are probably different for each person too. If I tried to start a community in Japan I imagine it would fail because I have little understanding of your local customs. Perhaps it might succeed as a novelty because of the gaijin leader but not likely.

Every culture will have different challenges. As an example, In Lagos gatherings of people (especially with cameras) require a permit from local authorities and is viewed with suspicion. At least we don't have to worry about that! We all have our challenges and those challenges help us grow as leaders while our community grows.

I wish you the best luck and success with your journey to Japanese Local Guides Community.

[YasumiKikuchi]

@PaulPavlinovich

I learned informative from you🔍
Thank you so much!

[HiroyukiTakisawa]

I see. We'll consider your advice well.

Thank you @PaulPavlinovich 😉

[MariaNgo]

@PaulPavlinovich

I second what has been articulated in the article about community. 

When I first joined Local Guides it was for the fun of connecting with like-minded people who enjoyed photography and also enjoyed sharing their photos (and views) of places that would assist people in making informed choices for themselves. 

It is interesting that the issue of swags as rewards and incentives to facilitate this hobby has cropped up. I can see pros and cons to this. I was speaking to someone recently who had been very active as an Amazon reviewer and how that compared to Local Guides as far as 'relationships' and 'community' (or rather the lack of it because of the competition for the prize) played out. 

In that field, each reviewer did it for the monetary incentive.  The competitiveness and the shenanigans that came about from that spirit of competition was not very healthy. 

He commented how he had made more friends in the short time he had been a LG as opposed to a reviewer with the on-line seller.  

I think the value you promote and reward is the kind of culture that you will build. Sure, there can be times when 'rewards' can be used for effective results, but it must not come at the expense of community. At least not in this context I believe. If anything, it should complement rather than replace or usurp community. 

There are some very profitable and culturally healthy network marketing companies that I have encountered and even participated in in my time. The ones that have been able to endure have managed to navigate the fine balance between incentives/rewards with community/relationship well. We can either build a spirit of collaboration, community and camaraderie, or we could be cultivating a spirit of unhealthy competition and greed.  

At the core of the human need and condition, is relationship, connection and community. I see LG as a positive contributor to meeting this human need. 

No, I'm not arguing for the removal of all 'rewards' or 'incentives' because if we did that, Connect Live would not exist and the friendships and community that has emerged from that with it. But I do think we need to examine our motives for our participation and also the reason for our participation. Because if I was asked to choose which category being a local guide sits, I'd put it in the 'hobby' category. Sure there are machinations that go behind the scene that keep the balls rolling and things chugging along, and we all know that involves financial investment, but as far as Local Guides is concerned, at the grassroots level, community must remain a core and primary value if it is to work well and work effectively. This however, does not in my mind, preclude any assistance that could be given to moderators who do shoulder greater responsibilities to enable community to develop. 

[RenataH]

Very impressive, @PaulPavlinovich. I truly appreciated all the details in your post and the hard work you put into it, in sharing with us.

Particularly, being a student of history, I liked the part of your early experiences with Local Guides.

Hope you keep your remarkable posts coming.

Best, Renata 

[PaulPavlinovich]

Well said @MariaNgo - I think that sums up my thoughts very well and articulates some of them better than I did :).

Your discussion around Amazon reviewers is interesting, there is a similar program to LG known as Yelp and I hope the challenges that program faces never happen to LG. Yelpers became very well known for seeking incentives (free meals, free products) in exchange for a good review and some would even threaten a negative review if they did not get this. That led to stated Yelpers being banned from many businesses on principle. I occasionally hear of things like that happening with LG but I'm very pleased to say that LG has a strong set of rules and community expectations that are designed to prevent this issue. Google are very swift to move on LG who step outside the rules in a major way. Could you imagine losing access to Google? Life changer and not worth the small gains one might make.

[PaulPavlinovich]

I agree, history, even recent history is so important @RenataH - knowing the history of yourself helps me to learn to not do the dumb things that I did yesterday :). A simple change to the way you word something can lead to a better outcome. The only way to modify your own behaviour and thoughts is to be aware of the now and the moments past.

Regards Paul