Meeting Notes1st Map Maker User Conference - Bangalore, India (April 20 & 21)
Day 1 - April 20
All participants of the conference arrived at the Park Hotel, Bangalore.
Lunch was at the Monsoon Restaurant at the Park Hotel where all the participants form different parts of the world and from different parts of the country were able to meet and mingle.
After lunch all the participants had an opportunity to take in the sights and sounds of the beautiful city of Bangalore through an event organized by Google. The event went by the name 'Bangalore WALKS' and true its name started with a short walk across the road to the Holy Trinity Church in Bangalore.
The Walk provided an historical context to the evolution of the city of Bangalore over the ages, through the British occupation before Indian Independence. Participants were able to pick up interesting tidbits about the Great Trigonometric Survey of India along the meridian arc from the south of India extending north to Nepal, a distance of approximately 2400 kilometers. This was championed by George Everest, under whose name the highest mountain in the world is named after
The walk also introduced participants to other important, significant landmarks in Bangalore and eventually culminated at the 13th Floor, Bartons Center where the eventful day ended with a sumptuous dinner!
Day 2 - April 21
The conference got underway at 9 AM on April 21st, 2009. Here are the meeting notes:
All the participants of the conference introduced themselves and conference was officially kicked off by Lalitesh Katragadda, Founder and Eng Lead, Google Map Maker & Lior Ron, Senior Product Manager, Google. Participants also described their addiction to mapping and Map Maker in detail. Lalitesh said that all of the users in the conference room put together had more than 150,000 edits on the map. The impetus in creating the product had been that there was a need to create something that would be useful world-wide but something which would impact locally as well.
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Insights on Google India - Lalitesh Katragadda
Lalitesh spoke about how Google's focus in India has been driven by the ultimate aim to make Internet relevant to all in terms of content, usability, language, and awareness as there is always going to be a demand for local information.
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Google Maps History and Future - John Hanke, Director of Product Management, Google Maps
John spoke extensively about building the Mirror World. He highlighted the importance of the content that users were adding by showcasing examples of how it was impacting the world community
- Search and rescue operations around the world depended upon maps
- Forest fires could be located because of relevant maps available
- Floods in Myanmar and the on going flood relief operations were due to extensive maps
He presented a brief update on the initial days when Google Earth came in to being.
He also spoke about the direction that Google is headed in:
- Overcome the access barrier (Maps search , SMS search, Phone search etc)
- To overcome the Language barrier (transliteration, Search Suggestion, Keyboard options)
- Usability (Create relevant applications, search and social appearance)
He mentioned we can provide better satellite imagery in response to user's request to help them map better
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Google Map Maker Product Update, Progress, Upcoming Features - Lalit Katragadda, Founder and Eng Lead, Google Map Maker & Lior Ron, Senior Product Manager, Google
The session started with users getting in to smaller groups which also included members from the product team, the quality team, and the moderation team. these focus groups were encouraged to discuss about various questions, suggestions and feature requests they had for the Map Maker team. In all, there was 57 questions and 31 suggestions posted to Google Moderator pages during this discussion. The most voted questions and suggestions were discussed by Lalit and Lior. This was followed by an open house discussion between the users and the product team. The snippets of this discussion are included below:
- Users requested for key board shortcuts to help map making faster. This was flagged by the product team as relevant and a member from the team shared the shortcuts online
- Lior urged all users to create profile names so that their contribution can be acknowledged on maps
- Lalitesh updated the group that the number of moderations made by would also be displayed as part of the profile page
- Anand from the product team spoke about the time taken for user generated maps to be visible on maps.google.com. The current time is 6-8 weeks but the product team is working towards getting it down to 3-4 weeks.
- Lior and Lalit spoke to the group about mapplets, map APIs, google gears, and the link on Google Maps
- Lalit promised the group that whenever new imagery is available on Map Maker for a region, the information will be posted on the user help forum
- Lior spoke about Map Maker plans on mobile phones (initially POI marking capability). Users also felt that this would be an important step forward as this would improve their ability to contribute
- The product team took a note some key user requests like ability to edit offline maps, improvement in zooming and panning on the UI, easy to use info buttons under attribute tabs, making district boundaries visible for better editing, etc.
- User also came up with innovative suggestions to popularize Map Maker. Suggestions included integrating Google Map Maker in to social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, etc. and also having links to Map Maker on Google Maps and Google Earth
- Lior ended the discussion by stating that the aim is to create a global community of map makers that enjoy using the tool as much as the conference participants are
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Lunch at Google Cafe, Bangalore
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
User presentations about mapping in their home countries & Mapping Party Kit by Lalitesh
This session had 4 users from different parts of the world sharing the experience on using Map Maker
- CNR Nair from Kerela, India made a presentation about Kerela, how he mapped it and also highlighted some of the difficulties he encountered
- Wayne Manuel from Philippines spoke about the engagement of users in Philippines. He introduced the gathering to a groups and sites pages that are specifically dedicated to discuss local issues in mapping Philippines
- Zohir el Idrissi presented about the old imagery in Morocco and the need for it to be updated. He also spoke about better representation of historical sites and airports on Map Maker
- Keshav from Nepal made a presentation requesting for the ability to split/merge roads. His presentation also included inputs about how to use Image overlays on Map Maker
Lalitesh introduced to the group the “Mapping Party Kit” and encouraged users to have mapping parties locally and create maps as a community where Google can encourage users by giving out Tees or help in other ways. This was received enthusiastically by all the participants at the conference
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Early Days of Google Earth Community - Brian McClendon, Engineering Director,
Google Maps & Robin Ziegler, Community Development Specialist, Google Earth
- Moderation the BBS way - this is the moderation community for Google Earth
- This was the UI for Keyhole before it was acquired by Google
- After Google acquired Keyhole the number of users for the product increased exponentially
- Moderating this community became very important considering the reach of the product
- Robin shared interesting anecdotes on how he worked closely with the community to improve their awareness of the product and also recruit power users to act as moderators for posts on the community forum
This session helped all the participants understand the reach of a trusted user/moderator and set the context for the next session which was exclusively about moderation
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Moderation Discussion - Open house discussion on moderation and how we can take this to another level
Users were describe any issues they had faced with moderation and were also reqeusted to come up with suggestions on how to make moderation more user-friendly and better
- One user mentioned that he initially had faced some difficulties with moderation as the comments from moderators were not very clear, but acknowledged that the quality had improved significantly ever since
- Users felt that there was a communication gap between them and the moderators and they felt that moderators should strive to keep asking for more information without denying a feature under assumption
- Users felt that regularly reading up posts on the user help forum did help them keep abreast with the changes in the product
- One user pointed out that even when they tried to moderate features, they never got published instantly.
- Lalitesh wanted to hear users opinion on having visible tags associated with power users (e.g., bronze, silver, gold stars). All users felt that this will help in identifying a long-term user and will also help all users to stay motivated by adding more data on Map Maker
- An user felt that editing on Map Maker was a bit tedious where one had to find a feature amongst a mass of other features and then open the feature to edit it. They felt that it should be able to right click and change name, addresses, attributes, etc. at one go (similar to the road runner tool - ease of use)
- Some users felt that some moderators were not aware of bugs/limitations of the tool. They also felt that the moderators were a bit aggressive at times.
- Only 2 of the 18 users present at the conference had read the user help site before editing data on Map Maker. They felt that the user help site to help a new user should be made more prominent
- Users have also volunteered to become trusted moderators with mentoring and guidance from the moderation team
All these points were noted down by the moderation team and the product team and some of these have been implemented
A few other general suggestions that came up during this discussion are listed below:
- Ability to map 3D buildings on Map Maker
- Upload railway/bus schedules at one go
- Allow marking of waterfalls as POI
- Allow more inter changing of categories
- Streamline interface for adding new categories as free text
The conference ended with Lior thanking all those present in making the effort to come to Bangalore for the conference and also everyone involved in making the conference happen |
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