CREATING AND SHARING YOUR CULTURE THROUGH MAPS

If you could share and map great "campfire" stories from your area, what would you say? What would you show? What would you write? What would you teach? If you could easily do this online, with friends and colleagues, where would you start?

What would you share about the elder, for example, who still collects rare plants in the area to make native medicines? Or the music historian who has collected local folklore and songs from the past? Or the author who writes about long-lost, ghost towns? Or the lady who makes periwinkle soup? Or the farmer who teaches how to make rich compost in eight weeks?

Destination tourism consultant and guru Roger A. Brooks once wrote "Great Stories Make the Campfire Memorable" in his book "The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism". If you want to entice visitors you must share interesting stories.

"Generic" map and images of the area around Argyle, Nova Scotia, that can be customized.

Google Map Maker lets you customize a map and post such stories with friends and colleagues, and now share them with the world (text, images, audio, video, links).

You share the map with those you want to help build it. You display the map with those you want to see it. People can comment on the map. They can review/correct the map. They can provide further/new information about the area. 

Google has just made community mapping and sharing easier, so your culture, heritage, geography, industry -- your stories -- could be shown to the world. It's like crowd-sourcing an "organic, breathing map" of your area, making the map richer, more complete and current.

What's your next community map?