It’s amusing that about a week after I derided Google’s Mapping Party concept, I was invited to attend one by Aileen Apolo, the Philippine country representative of Google, in behalf of Dante Varias and Leonel Foronda, who are apparently the two most productive Filipino Google Map Maker contributors. The event happened last June 3 at the Bubba Gump restaurant in Greenbelt 3 and it was attended by local bloggers and developers. (I guess I was invited because I am a blogger, a developer, and a Map Maker contributor all at the same time!)

While the event was marketed as a “mapping party”, I hesitate to call it that since there was no actual mapping or even demos involved, unlike what is suggested by Google’s Mapping Party Kit. I would actually say that this party is simply the community edition of the media event that Google held last March 12. I guess it was a reunion of sorts for the Map Maker contributors, which includes physician Leonel Foronda, civil engineer Dante Varias, Chemical Engineering graduate Wayne Dell Manuel, call-center agent Bernardo Arellano III, and businessman Rally de Leon, who actually shifted to OpenStreetMap primarily since he can’t get back the data he contributed to Google Map Maker, unlike in OSM where you can even get a Garmin (a brand of GPS devices) routable map of the Philippines. I actually met Bernardo before at iBlog5 and Rally at the Tagaytay OSM Mapping Party.

The event’s agenda basically had Leonel, Dante, and Wayne discuss their activities in contributing to Google Map Maker and sharing their experiences at the first ever Google Map Maker Conference held last April 20–21 in Bangalore, India (the birthplace of Map Maker). They also fielded questions from the audience regarding the details of contributing to Google Map maker. I’m not sure if actual mapping was on the agenda (Aileen adapted the Mapping Party Kit’s presentation for that night’s audience) but if it were, it was definitely scrapped since the restaurant’s Wi-Fi connection was crappy.

Pictures follow!