It quite crazy world. I never had an that people can be mad about making and tagging maps on Google Map Maker. Two guys Faraz and Jabran are such an example. They are all crazy about making Google Map Maker better and better. Faraz holds a record of over 50k tags in map maker. It due to these two guys and a few other people that Lahore, Pakistan became the fastest tagged city of the world.
The event of Map Maker was held at FAST NU, Lahore, Pakistan. It was none other than Badar Khushnood, Country Consultant Google Pakistan, who organized this event with ACM, FAST Chapter. The event started with a brief company profile presentation and product display by Badar Khushnood. Then came in the guys Faraz & Jabran telling about Goolge Map Maker and their adventures.
The essence of the event was a bit lost when the conversation was detracted by an old man, arguing on the essence of volunteer contribution and asking Google to pay revenue for the contributions made to Google Map Maker. The man was a hard nut to crack on this one, who never wanted to understand that Google is either not charging the people for providing the map services.
Later in the event, a lab session was conducted by the above mentioned mapping gurus. The attendants had an excellent over view of mapping their world. After the lab it was the tea and networking session. As quite obvious, it proved to be the best part of the event as one got a chance to share ideas with so of the corporate gurus.
To sum up it was an excellent effort by Google Pakistan and FAST NU. A big round of appluse for people who made it happen.
nice writeup. i never know that u also blog.
ReplyDeletebtw read mine at http://mylandpakistan.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-mapping-party-lahore-and-me.html
thanks for the appreciation
ReplyDeleteThanks for the coverage. I must add to your analysis of the event, that there was in fact no pre-planned essence of the event, since I planned it with Badar and the FAST ACM Students. The argument was perhaps the best part of the event- because I wanted to generate debate and discussion, rather than use this for product promotion. Overall, it's thanks to bloggers like you, and many differing viewpoints like your own, that I believe really were the essence of the event. One amazing thing no one realized till after the event- those auditorium walls are soundproof- just geting the wifi working was a feat in itself!
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming and your writing.
Great to meet ya buddy. :)
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