A 23-year-old “citizen cartographer” from the University of the Philippines bested 700 other contestants to become the winner of the first Google Map Maker Global Competition.

Wayne Dell Manuel won a US$50,000 donation from UNICEF for the Philippines after adding more than 1,500 qualifying map features and made hundreds of moderations in Google Map Maker. His edits, which were primarily of local public schools, were judged to be the most numerous and accurate entries in the contest.

“I’m so excited to have won this global competition because it represents a win not just for me, but also for the Philippines,” said Manuel. “To be frank, I entered the competition to win the US$50,000 for our country, and I hope that my win encourages more Filipinos to contribute to making the online map of our country even better. We Filipinos are known for our spirit of bayanihan, and this is a great way for us to come together in the Internet era to make life better for our fellow kababayans by literally putting their communities on the digital map.”

The competition was launched to encourage the use of technology for community development by asking users to map universities, schools, hospitals and medical clinics in their home countries. The goal was to help humanitarian organizations better deliver services, respond to crises, and adapt to change in the countries they operate by enabling access to accurate digital maps.

Manuel, a software developer at the UP National Telehealth Center, started using Google Map Maker in 2008 and initially edited streets, establishments, and municipalities in his hometowns of Tuguegarao and Baguio City. Later, he added most of the roads in Tarlac City, Tarlac; Angeles City, Pampanga and Tacloban City, Leyte. He has been recognized globally as one of the top 10 all-time mappers with nearly 35,000 map edits under his belt.

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Sa ngayon, abala ako sa aking training (OJT) at sa pag-aaral. Problema lang ay late na ako nag-start mag-OJT at may mga subjects pa akong papasukan. Tuwing nag-ttraining ako iniisip ko kung kalian ko matatapos ang 800 hours requirement sa OJT, kapag nasa klase naman ako ganun din ang na-iisip.

Kia and I decided to meet up at 7 o’clock in the morning; both of us are 30 minutes late. We went off to Ayala Avenue and walk our way to the office, we still asked every administration buildings that we saw, trying to increase our chances of winning but we only got 2 office spaces. Just when we arrived at the office (around 9AM) up to 2 or 3 PM we did nothing but finalizing the list and calling admin buildings. We passed our list, and just hope to win. We can already see that we’re losing. Abigael is the one who will tally the result, she haven’t finished tallying the result so the winner will be announce by Monday as well as the price. As of the time that I’m writing this blog, the result is not yet announced. We already said congratulation to the other team but still we keep our fingers cross.

To get better number of office spaces, we decided to start early. We decided to meet at school by 7:30 AM, this time I arrive early but this time, Kia came late. We arrived at the office around 9AM and started looking by around 9:30 to 10AM. The other team got to the office earlier than us but it looks like they don’t have any plan to go around their location and they’re just typing the list of office spaces that they’ve found. We just got a chance to glance at their list, and it is much way more than ours. As we leave our office, Kia and I are talking about our chances of winning, and it seems way to low.

Our team will meet up at school by 8:30 AM, and I was late. We just started gathering information on how to get into Salcedo village, we got information from our classmate but it’s still not clear. We arrived at the office around 10 o’clock and we just prepare our things that we need while wandering, then we off to look for the village. Right in front of PBCom Tower when my phone rang and it was Abigael, she told us to return to office, and so we did, we went to 21^st floor and there was an additional task for us, we have to take a picture of a unit, they provided the camera then we went to the building, we just decided to do the additional task first.

It was just an ordinary afternoon in the office, we’re doing what we usually do -- SEO. Everyone was busy and the entire workplace was so quiet, but not on skype, we’re chatting and working that time until Abigael told us through skype that she have something to tell and it was a challenge. I’m not into challenge thing and always want to do a thing in the easiest way but I love doing the things that I don’t usually do. Our SEO OJT Team Leader came down together with Abigael, they called me and 3 other OJTs (Mark, Dona, and Kia) and briefed us about the task.