Rome Trip for Google Earth Community Members

Google recently invited some top contributors and volunteers for the Google Earth Community to a user summit. The Google Earth Community is an online discussion forum and meeting place to discuss content found or created for use in Google Earth. Over 1 million people are members of the forum from places all over the world. Since Google Earth is all about geography, and its volunteers and top contributors are from all over the world, it is only logical that Google have the summit in a unique and interesting geographic location.   This year, Google invited over 30 top community moderators and contributors to Rome, Italy. It was a chance for many of these people, who have been participants for years now, to have a chance to meet one another face to face. And, we got to meet a few of the Google Earth Google people as well. As part of the summit, future directions of the discussion forums and of Google Earth itself were discussed. Google Earth Blog was invited to Rome as well. Although Mickey couldn't make it, Google was kind enough to bring me all the way from New Caledonia to Rome for the week-long event. My wife only allowed me to go if I brought her along, so we both made the long, but worthwhile, trip to the event. Google also organized some tours of some of the top attractions in Rome. So, we got to see things like: the Colloseum, the Forum, the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. I also gave a short presentation on our travels with the Tahina Expedition and how we are using Google Earth to share our trip. You can read more about our trip (and see some photos) over at our Tahina Expedition blog. Google recently updated the 3D buildings layer for Rome to add much more detail to this beautiful city. And, we got to hear from one of the Googlers behind the effort to convert the detailed 3D models of ancient rome which you can view in one of the Google Earth layers. A big THANK YOU to Google for bringing some of the world's most enthusiastic Google Earth users together to such a wonderful place! You can read more about this in the recent post at Google LatLong. You can also read about an earlier similar meeting held in Washington, DC in 2007.