HERE Expert Community Program – Thailand & Philippines by Lilian Quek

7 Apr 2015

In the second part of this 3-part series on the Here Expert Community Program, we featured Indonesia and Malaysia and shared the amazing contributions the community has been cranking out. In an earlier post, we took a look at the Program in Singapore too. For today’s finale, we are proud to feature the ‘Land of Smiles’ and the ‘Pearl of the Orient Seas’.

The Land of Smiles – Thailand……our story so far

Thailand community membership almost trebled during 2014 and accounted for around 14% of edits in the South East Asia Region. HERE Thailand communities are widely distributed across Thailand – North (Chiangmai), North-eastern (Ubonratchathani), Central (Nokorn sawan), South (Chomphon) and lastly with Bangkok being the core center of the communities group. 80% of the Thailand communities are aged under 25 and are mostly developers, smartphone users, university students, travelers and techno geeks.

In 2014-5, HERE awarded 7 top influencers in Thailand with the ‘Map Master’ title, recognizing their excellent contributions. We continue to work with the Map Masters to build our relationship and share ideas.

Achievement

In Thailand, the Map Creator tool is regarded by the communities as one of the most advanced technology tools for data contribution. There is a great sense of pride among the community in knowing that their contributions to HERE play a vital role in bringing the freshest and most updated map to everyone. We have established a strong working partnership with the universities and government units and are focused on providing top notch training to the communities on the usage of the Map creator tool.

2015 and beyond

For 2015, we would like to invite more users to join the HERE Thailand Expert Community Program, participate actively in all our activities and campaigns and contribute to creating a more rich and complete map for Thailand. We are aiming that our community data will be used for the new generation of cars (autonomous cars) and the Thailand community will grow broadly and steadily with our HERE API development supported for integration into location-based service (LBS) applications.

Contact:

For more information about the HERE Thailand Expert Community Program, join https://www.facebook.com/groups/HEREExpertCommunityTH/ or contact thecpteam@here.com

Cruising on to our last stop is the Philippines, better known as the ‘Pearl of the Orient Seas’.

Our story so far

Philippines community membership almost doubled during 2014 and accounted for around 6% of edits in the South East Asia region. HERE Philippines communities are distributed across the 3 regions of Philippines – Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Philippines Communities are mostly engaged with university groups and government units. They have also partnered with one of the biggest telco leaders in the Philippines – SMART Communications, Inc for many map creator based training workshops and competitions.

In 2014-5, HERE awarded 8 top influencers in the Philippines with the ‘Map Master’ title, recognizing their excellent contributions. We continue to work with the Map Masters to build our relationship and share ideas.

Achievement

In 2014, the HERE Philippines Expert Community partnered with SMART Communications to hold the first HERE Hackathon in Manila, showcasing the endless possibilities that innovative strategies can bring in a short period of time and how different mentalities brought together in a high-pressured environment can take innovation to another dimension. In addition to that, a five day training course ‘SWEEPx’ was conducted over five different cities in the Philippines to help university professors create their own mobile apps with the integration of the world’s best maps.

2015 and beyond

For 2015, HERE Philippines will continue to pursue its main objective of building locals as experts in their hometowns and making the best map of the Philippines. Continuous engagement with universities and local government units for mapping activities is in the pipeline and there are plans to reach out to specific developer groups for sharing HERE APIs to create fun and useful apps.

Contact

For more information about the HERE Philippines Expert Community Program, join https://www.facebook.com/groups/HEREExpertCommunityPH/ or contact phecpteam@here.com