A few weeks back, a Google Mapping Party (GenSan Mapping Party)  was conducted in General Santos City with the Tuna Capital’s very active bloggers in attendance for an afternoon of fun, learning and advocacy.

But first, what is a Mapping Party?

A Mapping Party is a gathering where you invite your friends who have laptops to a venue with fast internet connection, and together, with the use of Google Map Maker  and aided by an instructor, map out and name your locality’s streets, roads, highways, establishments, housing, etc.

In this case, Bariles, through his network of online journalists, the Soccsksargen Bloggers group, gathered  20 of the best ones from General Santos City at one of GenSan’s newer coffee shops, Cafe Amoree.  Lending his expertise to the exercise if GenSan Blogger and UP Diliman student, Mikko Gozalo.

This Google Mapping Party lived up to its slogan “Mapping GenSan for the world: Now no one gets lost in General Santos City again!” by being able to insert more than a thousand names for the the map of the Tuna Capital collectively.  It was one notable project of the Soccsksargen Bloggers and hopefully, will not be the last of its kind for their beloved locality.

Here are more photos to show for it.

"BLOGGER MIKO GOZALO EXPLAINING THE GOOGLE MAPPING PROCEDURES TO THE SOCCSKSARGEN BLOGGERS AT CAFE AMOREE'S FUNCTION ROOM"
"A CAMERAMAN OF ABS-CBN FILMS THE SOCCSKSARGEN BLOGGERS AT WORK. THIS ACTIVITY WAS FEATURED ON THE LOCAL KAPAMILYA NEWS PROGRAM."
"THE SOX BLOGGERS AT WORK DILIGENTLY ON THEIR MAPS"
"THE SOCCSKSARGEN BLOGGERS AT THE MAIN DINING AREA OF CAFE AMOREE AFTER THE GOOGLE MAPPING PARTY"

The attendees, by the way are the following bloggers:  Orman Manansala, Ariel Lalisan, Mark Aethen Agana, Gilbert Tan, Mikko Gozalo, Donna Mae Congson, Emman, Mandi Nicolas, Rain Cindy and her friend, Hannah Espinosa, Rabsky Villanueva,  Arnel and Rosilie Lim, Gay Carillo, www and her husband and yours truly, Bariles.

A million thanks goes out to the owners of Cafe Amoree, especially our good friend Ricky and his lovely wife and to Orman for facilitating their hosting of this first ever and historical GenSan Mapping Party.

Shout outs of gratitude to Ate Aileen Apolo-De Jesus for the Google shwags, to K101’s Kabayan Joe for the mousepads with wristrests and Mr. Mandi Nicolas for the Adobe Photoshop freebies.

And to the people of GenSan who are into mapping the city, and making it easier to circumnavigate, thank you for sharing our very own home with the rest of the world.