Google Map Maker on Campus

As part of the recent US Map Maker launch, the Map Maker Community team has begun a series of campus visits across the US.

Our first stop was the University of California at Berkeley, where we gave students and faculty a chance to learn about Google Map Maker and work with Map Maker team members in person to map their campus.


Even though the map of Berkeley and the UC Berkeley Campus on Google Maps were already well mapped, students still identified many opportunities to add their local knowledge to the map. Edits included moving location markers, tracing building boundaries, and adding names of campus dorms. The Google Map Maker community team was on site to guide these new mappers and note their thoughtful feedback.


Participants were excited about making corrections and contributions to the map in their area, particularly the U.C. Berkeley campus, and seeing the edits they made appear on the monitor that had been set up on the big screen at the front of the room to show real-time mapping.

Everyone has local knowledge they can add to the map. Help us make your school look even better! Check out your college campus at mapmaker.google.com and leave your mark on the map by drawing walking paths, adding details to your school's buildings, and more.

For more information on how to get started and to connect with other mappers, check out the Google Map Maker community forum. You can also reach out to the Map Maker community team at mapping@google.com.

Happy Mapping!

Posted by Andrew Kornblatt, Map Maker Community Team

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Google Map Maker Visits Chicago

(Cross-posted from the Google Student Blog)

The Google Map Maker campus tour recently visited the Windy City to talk to students about how they can use Map Maker to map their campuses and make updates to places they care about on Google Maps. While in town, we also hosted a Map Maker event at the Google Chicago office to share the tool with folks working in the public sector. We had a great time meeting so many enthusiastic mappers from the area, and look forward to seeing how they put Chicago on the map.

Our first stop was the University of Chicago campus, a beautifully historic area with architectural gems galore. Students who attended this event were excited to map not only their campus, but neighborhoods near the university, showing the diversity and development of the population and culture.

Our second stop was Northwestern University, where a packed room of students learned about mapping while sampling some traditional Chicago style deep dish pizza. Delicious! Students were particularly interested in adding details to their campus, naming the buildings, adding locations of the sororities and fraternities, and marking the building outlines or footprints of their favorite restaurants and stores nearby.



Our Google Map Maker team loved partnering with Google Student Ambassadors from these campuses, who creatively and passionately helped plan these events. You guys did an amazing job! The Google Student Ambassadors from Northwestern University had this to say about the Map Maker visit:

“Our event brought together over 120 Northwestern students who were eager and excited to learn about how they could make an impact by adding to Google Maps using Map Maker … Map Maker was a welcome product that put the power to shape the map in our hands. All in all, it was an incredibly fun and engaging experience!”

-Sourya and Minjae, Google Student Ambassadors at Northwestern University

The last event—a meeting with public sector officials at the Google office in Chicago—gave us some great insights about how Map Maker can be used for large metropolitan areas. University educators, Department of Transportation employees, Census Bureau representatives, Chicago Health Department folks, and many more shared how they would like to see Map Maker applied to what they do. We really appreciate all their feedback and suggestions, as well as their enthusiasm for how this tool can help them share their work with each other and the public.

Chicago and the surrounding areas were such enjoyable places to visit, full of vibrant and passionate people. We look forward to visiting other campuses in the fall, but don’t wait until then to leave your mark on your campus!

Posted by Catherine Moats, Program Manager

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Updated Help Center for Google Map Maker

As part of our ongoing effort to answer your questions about Google Map Maker, we’re introducing a newly designed Help Center. In the new Help Center, you can find clearly documented policies and information about how to make edits and review others’ edits.



This Help Center, available in 20 languages thus far, includes tips and tricks to help ensure that your edits get approved quickly. Where possible, we also provide a rationale for why you’re asked to fill certain attributes or make edits in a particular way.



In addition, we’ve organized the Help Center into five guides, each addressing a key aspect of Map Maker:

• Getting Started - Become familiar with the basic usage and functionality of Map Maker.


• Points: businesses, landmarks, and more - Learn how to add and edit places marked as points on Map Maker.


• Lines: roads, trails, railways, and more - Learn about adding and editing roads, trails and other line features.


• Shapes: buildings and boundaries - Discover how you can map locations such as your campus, buildings and other places as shapes.


• Reviewing options - Find out how you can become a Reviewer and keep track of the changes happening in and around your region.

Each user guide article follows a consistent format so that you can easily find and skip information with which you’re already familiar. Links to related articles are also provided where appropriate.



Please let us know if you have feedback about the new Help Center on the Map Your World forum, as that will help form our next round of improvements. Your tips and best practices for Map Maker are also most welcome.



You can get to the new help center via the Help link at the top right corner of Map Maker or visit http://www.google.com/support/mapmaker.



Posted by Nadeem Ahmed, Map Maker Community Team Lead

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Map Maker mapping workshop and competition

On May 21 and 22, 2011, we hosted a series of Google Map Maker events in Rabat, Morocco. The events included presentations at the g|Maghreb developer days, and a mapping workshop which took place at the nearby Fondation Mohamed VI. The same evening, we launched a one-week online mapping competition (read on for the results!).

This year’s mapping workshop in Rabat built on the success of a similar event, which took place last year in Casablanca. It was organized by Amine, Mounir and Zohir, official Map Maker advocates from Morocco, in partnership with Evans and Jannine, Googlers working in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.



The objective of the event was to introduce Map Maker to new users and illustrate that many Moroccans all over the world are helping to improve Google Maps through Google Map Maker. The audience was comprised of over 130 attendees - mostly students, young professionals and developers. They learned how anyone can use Google Map Maker to add to and update maps in over 180 countries and regions. The result is more comprehensive and accurate local maps for millions of people to see in Google Maps and Google Earth. These amazing time-lapse videos of Rabat, Casablanca and Fes show the impressive progress of mappers in Morocco.

The day kicked off with an introduction from Evans. He welcomed the audience and introduced our official advocates, who then took the stage. They engaged the audience with powerful stories of how they got involved with Map Maker and became top mappers. Their passion and enthusiasm was clearly infectious. They also led a demonstration with the audience participating actively, asking and answering questions. We also recognized major contributions made by some of the power mappers in the audience by honoring them on stage.

“I was astonished to discover that my city is not mapped. There was only its name, so I felt a little bit sad and excited at the same time, because I will get the chance to contribute in making my city known around the world.” - Siham K.

Before ending the day, we announced a one-week online competition open exclusively to attendees of the mapping workshop. It concluded just a couple of days ago with impressive results. We are thrilled to announce the winners -- congratulations to Jalal L. in first place, Ilyasse M. in second place, and Mohammed Y. in third place!

It is not too late to register for and participate in another online Map Maker competition focused on mapping Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria (click here for more information and to register).



Congratulations again to our winners! Thanks again to everyone involved in this event -- please stay tuned for more about Map Maker and future mapping workshops in the region. You can view more photos here and find more information at mappingmorocco.com or on Twitter.



We invite you to join a local Map Your World community forum and start mapping at google.com/mapmaker. Happy Mapping!

Posted by Jannine Versi, Product Marketing Manager

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More Building Maker cities and a new competition, too

[Cross-posted from the SketchUp Blog]

It’s a great day for the citizens of Argentina -- and for Canadians in the nation’s capital. We’ve released new Building Maker imagery in six new cities:

• Buenos Aires, Argentina


• Córdoba, Argentina


• Mar Del Plata, Argentina


• Mendoza, Argentina


• Rosario, Argentina


• Ottawa, Canada

...but that’s not all! To help these cities get modeled, we’re having the first ever modeling competition for Building Maker. Starting today, you can create models in these six cities to win prizes in two different categories: Best Model and Most Models. The first place prize is a GPS-enabled digital camera; second place is a Building Maker shirt; and third is a Google travel mug. Have fun!





Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Geo Community Program Manager

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