From Trailguru
History
I (Tim Park) came up with the basic ideas for this site on a mountain bike ride in Spain in Parque Natural Alcornocales. There are very few maps of mountain bike trails in Andalucia and even fewer route descriptions. This really frustrated me -- I was sure that there are people out there that have mountain biked in Andalucia before. I was sure that they have some great rides safely stored up in their heads. I was also sure that, if it was easy enough, they would share this information with others in exchange for new ideas from them.
Unfortunately, the honest truth is that it has been very difficult to share this information. God bless Garmin, who make great GPS devices, but wow, MapSource really needs an ease-of-use overhaul and that is only the first step in the chain of pain in sharing GPS information. Likewise, I am appreciative of all the outdoor sites that exist today, from which I have discovered many areas that are interesting to explore. However, the vast majority remain one way instruments -- pushing good information out on the outdoors -- but not allowing users with perhaps an order of magnitude more experience in a particular area to contribute back in order to improve its content.
It was only when I was on a trip to do some of the famous climbs of the Tour de France on my road bike (I do my best thinking on a bike if you haven't figured that out yet) that I finally put together how to approach solving this. I had been contributing to Wikipedia as part of a really specific area of technical knowledge that he had from my day job. I contributed this knowledge to Wikipedia because it was easy to do so. I have a very demanding job and so, although I am a charitible fellow, I wouldn't have time to do this if it wasn't easy -- and bingo I had an idea for how to solve the problem I had thought about on my mountain bike months before.
The premise of this site is to take Wiki and GPS technology and make it work for the outdoor world. We have done more development to make this easier, but I owe the MediaWiki folks the vast majority of the credit for the technology that this site is based on.
However, technology is only the foundation. The real heart of this site is you. The goal of Trailguru is to make it as easy as possible to share and find outdoor information. It is you that will make it work. It is your local knowledge, your expertise, and most importantly, your contributions, that make this site thrive. If you are new to our community, have a look at the Community Portal to understand how you can get started. If, however, you are a long time contributor to our site, then again, thanks for all your help.
See you out there.
Tim 14:23, 12 September 2006 (CDT)