By Nicholas Pescod – AfricanBrains
Recently, Google hosted the Africa Map Developers conference in Lagos with the goal to better understand the challenges and to generate new ideas that would improve their performance.
According to allAfrica.com, during the two-day conference Google Map Developers, from various African regions, learned about new developments from Google Maps. The conference also gave opportunities for regional map developers to share their problems in map creation.
Senior Product Manager, Google Map Maker, Mr. Jayanth Mysore, said the conference was the latest in a series of mapping community forums that Google had been holding across the world in the past year.
“The maps pass through various editing and must be accepted by all developers from the particular region from where the map was developed,” Mysore said. “Before getting Google’s approval for uploading on the Google Map.”
According to Mysore, there is no formal business relationship existing between Google Map Developers and Google itself.
Google Africa Community Manager, Mr. Evans Arabu spoke highly about the conference.
“Regional conferences create opportunities for volunteer map developers, community leaders, and Google team members to meet each other and discuss how to strengthen the mapping communities in their neighbourhood. We are thrilled to see that the mapping efforts in Africa have been greatly supported by different countries.”
It was announced at Lagos the conference that the country of Lesotho became open for editing with Google Map Maker. It was also announced that an extensive mapping initiative is underway for all university campuses in sub-Saharan Africa. Universities that have already been mapped include University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, Benson Idahosa University (BIU) and Ahmadu Bello University.
Google Map Maker allows users to add and update geographical information for users of Google Maps and Google Earth.
“You can use Map Maker to make updates and improve the comprehensiveness of the areas you are familiar with in more than 200 countries and regions worldwide,” Mysore said, “By sharing information about business places in towns or building names on school campus, it paves way for accurate mapping of the world around people.”
Nicholas Pescod attended Iroquois Ridge High School in Oakville, Ontario and graduated in 2007. After deciding to return for an extra semester of high school he attended the University of Guelph in 2008. In 2009 he transferred from University into Centennial College’s journalism program and graduated in 2012. Pescod has been a contributor to the East-Toronto Observer, and he currently contributes to the North Shore News’ entertainment section. While at Centennial College he created Radio Nation, a weekly Internet radio show with a focus on indie music. Since Radio Nation began in November of 2010 there have been over 70 different live guests. In 2011 Pescod received a Global Citizenship award from Centennial for his work on Radio Nation. The show has regular listeners from around the world. Email: nicholas.pescod@africanbrains.org
Tags: Africa, Africa Map Developers, Google, Lagos, Mapping
