Waze - Editor Community Blog: Waze - Connecting to Your City! (and Places update)

Waze - Connecting to Your City! (and Places update)

You may have read about it or seen it on TV - We recently launched the connected citizens initiative, in a fun and successful event in New York.

We also had a great launch for version 3.9 with the places feature exceeding our expectations, and as always we have a Wazer in the spotlight: Our Finnish champ, karihoo.

Connecting Citizens All Over the World

Waze launched the W10 event in New York last week, and it was a blast. What's W10 you ask? well: Waze is working with countries, cities and states all over the world, to make the driver's life easier. The W10 was an event to celebrate the first ten partners, among them Florida, Rio de Janeiro and Tel Aviv.

Launching W10 in NY!

The partnership is all about data exchange. Each side provides the other with traffic info, that his counterpart may not have. Waze provides info about jams and incidents. Cities and states share info about construction projects, planned closures and special events - info they have in advance and we don't...

The pros are clear - the user, either in Waze or using the partner's different channels, gets more traffic info. Some of our partners use our information to identify dangerous intersections, problematic roads and so forth. And rest assured - there are absolutely no private details about users being shared by anyone here.

Places are Booming

The places feature was introduced in the recent 3.9 launch, and it's huge. We have new places added to the map at an amazing 5 digits daily rate, and the result is a backlog of places waiting for your approval and moderation.

NYC, lots of places there!

To handle that we encourage the community to take a look at places in your neighbourhood, and are also working on improving the UI making adding details and approving them smoother and easier. For example - adding a button that will automatically take you to the next place that needs approval near the location of the place you've been handling.

We appreciate the community's effort, and you can look forward to more improvements and surprises.

Wazer Spotlight:

karihoo, Finnish local champ

What do you do when not editing maps?

karihoo, Wazing manually

My job history includes two different professions since I had a severe “going-to-burn-out” experience. Therefore nowadays I solve IT-infra-problems and also make my fellow commuters’ life easier by driving the bus towards the capital of Finland (and of course back).

Which car do you drive?

My present car is a Volvo V60 (my first brand new car).

How long have you been a Wazer?

A little over a year.

How did you get hooked on Waze?

A former colleague told me about it. First I just took a look and thought what-the-heck-is-this? Some more studying gave a deeper understanding into what is going on. Then I was thinking “we need to do some upgrades” and here I am…

What's your favorite part about the community?

The expertise of fellow Finnish Wazer Champs when editing is just stunning!

...And the worst part.

Nothing really :).

What's your best Waze tip for newcomers?

Always drive with Waze on. Here in Finland we have several black or grey "holes" with poor map coverage, so this will help us create a decent map.

What do you listen to when driving your car (aside from the Waze app messages, of course)

Mostly I like Acappella music (singing without instruments). Here in Finland we have several groups performing excellently (Club For Five, Rajaton etc.)

That's it for now!