Level 9 and Master Director & Fact Finder - achievement despite adversity

[nigelfreeney]

@TerryPG @tony_b @MortenCopenhagen @Annaelisa @TravellerG @LudwigGermany @JustJake @AdamGT @ErmesT @Rednewt74 

Hi All,

You may have noticed a drop off in my participation lately. There have been two main factors.

Firstly, in the last 6 months I have had three separate COVID infections - each with a different set of odd effects on my health. I am currently working my way back to fitness for the third time.

Secondly, with all the issues with Google Maps, I made an active decision to not regularly comment or search for small points of change - it was simply too energy draining. As far as I can see, nothing was gained in playing that game - except frustration and going around in circles.

What I can see is that I have now been a consistent increase of my photo views, each day, for 10 days - that's it. Really not very exciting.

What did keep me interested in uploading was my New Years Resolution goal which I shared in TerryPG's thread

I felt it would be possible to reach Level 9 and get my Master Director badge - Both achieved today! I had also been awarded my Master Fact Finder badge with the recent updates to that badge's criteria.

Caption: @nigelfreeney profile screenshot showing newly attained Level 9, plus Master Director, and Master Fact Finder

 

My focus has been on posting new and unpublished videos. I posted nearly 400 videos in April! It just happened, that in the process of attaining this target, I also added a substantial number of contributions which lifted my points over 50,000 - Level 9.

This has been therapeutic in my recovery from my COVID illnesses. It gave me something that I could focus on for very limited amounts of time. This helped  my concentration levels and helped me to remain positive.

Only another 49,847 points until my Level 10 - not something I will be actively considering for the time being. However, the remaining two Master badges are looking achievable in the next couple of months...

In that time I have also broken two Insta360 One RS 1 Inch cameras (£800 each). Both were caused by my weighted monoped toppling over, fortunately both were covered by insurance. As a result I have identified a hybrid monopod and tripod setup which has a really small footprint in the images but has the stability of the tripod to keep it safe - I will detail this in another post in case it can help anyone else avoid the loss of such an expensive piece of kit.

Of course, now I have gone up to level 9, I will suffer in some of the Top 100 Local Guides tables. I will also need to get my VIP Level back up to 10 so I can make the most of the details that AdamGT's T100LG tables provides.

I have also been using LGStats to review my LG performance. The presentation is similar to T100LG's tables but can give an interesting overview - it has no connection to AdamGT. The funniest thing was ending up as the 2 top video uploader for the last 30 days amongst Italian LGs. This is because it identifies the country that you have uploaded the majority of your images from for that 30 days. 

[Rednewt74]

@nigelfreeney, 

It's so good to hear from you; and big congratulations on your master director and level 9 achievement. I had a bout  of covid in February and I can't imagine going through two more.😳 I've only added a few videos in the last 2 or 3 months so my master directors badge is still quite a ways off. During this uncertain time I've taken to mapping and I am about to hit 1300 roads. Something fun to do without leaving the house! Congratulations again and welcome back.🎉👍😍

I think the video competition is tougher at level 8 than at 9.

[tony_b]

Congratulations on your 1,000 videos @nigelfreeney. I'm now 14 away from 100, so that will be an upgraded badge for me too. Congrats also on attaining Level 9. Hope to be with you soon, but I'm getting there by drawing roads. It has made a big difference to my numbers. Need another 10,272 points

I can certainly relate to your COVID experience. I got it last week at the end of a 15-day trip overseas. Zero energy this week. The only positive is that I have a lot more photos and videos to upload than usual, and I'm posting them one location per day. Should keep me busy for a while even if I don't get out to capture more local photos soon. 

Get well soon, Nigel. 

[Annaelisa]

@nigelfreeney 

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu Level 9.

Ich wusste nicht, dass Corona immer noch 

grasiert. Hier bei uns ist es kein Thema.

Auf jeden Fall wünsche ich allen 

gute Besserung und Gesundheit.

@Rednewt74 @tony_b 

[MortenCopenhagen]

Great to see you back in action, @nigelfreeney .

I had a sore back for more than a month which is finally working well again. 

In parallel to you I have also been seriously affected by the failure of Google to fix the photo views issue and their decision to not respond to the reasonable questions and criticism related to this.

I'm afraid a few new badges or a level will not fix my frustrations and loss of motivation.  But I'm happy it works for you.

Cheers 

Morten 

[MortenCopenhagen]

@nigelfreeney 

I once successfully asked the guy behind lgstats to manually move my location after a vacation.

His email us on the site.

Cheers

Morten 

[Kumaarsantosh]

Hearty congratulations @nigelfreeney on your bunch of achievements including Level 9 of Local Guide.

Hope you are fully recovered now. Take plenty of fluid and good rest.

[PrasadVR]

Hello @nigelfreeney  Congratulations for the achievement of Level-9 and Master director with 1008 videos. I am curious to know what is your video views impact.

[AdamGT]

Hello @nigelfreeney 

Sorry to hear about your stoush with COVID and hoping you win this and get back up to speed. Yes I did notice a drop off in your participation lately so thank you for explaining why.

Regardless of the size of change in points or views etc, I recommend that we each always update. As well as recording your own personal history, it gives us a good macro view of what's happening.

Congratulations on reaching Level 9 and getting your Master Director and Master Fact Finder badges and I do wish you the very best in achieving the remaining two Master badges!!!

Sheesh you posted nearly 400 videos in April alone! I'm sure that in time we'll see the success of this on one or more leaderboards and hopefully not just in terms of the number of videos.

Jumping onto a higher Top 100 leaderboard is always risky and this is discussed in some detail in the leaderboard documentation.  Good luck there.

Regarding the VIP details you briefly mention, new things are in the pipeline....stay tuned.

Get well soon!

[TerryPG]

It so good to see you back @nigelfreeney  I had noticed you were much quieter than before, but right now so is everyone.

So sorry to hear about the covid. Wow 3 different times. I know how much it knocked me out 2 years ago when I contacted it. Get yourself healthy.

Congratulations on the Level 9 badge and the master director's badge. In that post of mine you mentioned one of my goals was to hit the 1000 videos and the directors badge before April30th. Alas when the slow down of videos and photos acceptance and views hit us all, I like many other guides also slowed down my contributions. I am at 738 videos posted and hope to achieve the badge before June 30th.

Also sorry to hear about your broken cameras, glad they were covered by insurance. I'm glad it was just the cameras that got broken and not you.

Welcome back my friend and get healthy. Be careful on that bicycle of yours.