November 2020
Hello Communities!
Welcome to our 14th edition :)
In light of the constantly evolving situation with COVID-19, we hope everyone is safe and healthy. Thank you for helping each other navigate to safety by editing in the WME and being active community members. Read on to find out what our communities have been up to recently.
Waze Communities Team.
Brazilian Mega Meetup coming up!
The Brazilian Mega Meetup is coming up, on Sunday, November 22nd, 9am Brasilia time!
The last Mega Meetup of 2020 is going to be held in Portuguese, and will include exciting staff presentations, Office Hours breakout sessions and more! If you speak Portuguese and would like to attend, please SIGN UP HERE.
Read all about it in this forum post.
Prepare the map for Falcon Snapper!
Falcon Snapper is a new locationing mechanism, which significantly improves the app's ability to identify unexpected changes in your location, and update your route accordingly.
To leverage the Snapper's capabilities, we asked the community to prepare the map for it.
Around 30 communities from around the world have already started running a "Falcon MapRaid" - a joint effort to adapt the map to Falcon Snapper, in a limited amount of time!
Some have made amazing progress, like the Australian community, who created this beautiful dashboard to keep track of the almost 40,000 elements they plan to modify for Falcon!
Several communities like Indonesia, Mexico, Portugal have already finished their MapRaid!
Want to run or join a MapRaid in your community? Contact your local community!
Let's talk about it over coffee
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, we had to stop all face-to-face Meetups and move to online events. We miss seeing each other and while we can't connect in real life, we want to do it as much as possible online to keep our community bonds strong. We're happy to share that with Waze Virtual Cafes, we can have fun together, eat or drink as a group, while everyone is in the safety of their own home. Read all about this new format here and contact your community leader if you'd like to hold one!
Subscribe to the Waze Communities YouTube channel!
You can now find the recordings of many online events, like the Office Hours sessions and WazeOn keynotes, in our brand new YouTube channel! Make sure to subscribe so you'd be notified when new content is uploaded or when a live stream is coming up!
New community looking for a boost?
A new community role was recently introduced - the Community Booster. A Booster is an editor involved in guiding or mentoring a community that is rather new or looking to develop.
Want to become a Booster? Read all about the new role in this forum post.
Several Boosters are already helping and mentoring communities in other countries! Thank you for your help!
Meet a Top Contributor - Ronald from the Netherlands
Ronald, AKA rdnnk, started using Waze 8 years ago when his local map still needed much improvement, so he took up editing almost immediately.
Ronald is now a Coordinator, Booster, Beta and Localization community member and has contributed several very helpful Slack scripts.
A top Waze experience for Ronald, was acting as the Coordinator for the Slovenian community, he and the Slovenian editors edited the entire map of Slovenia in one day, making thousands of changes in a short time, so that the toll road vignettes could be activated. The effort amounted to a wonderful result when the changes were updated seamlessly in the app and everything worked perfectly.
Ronald's advice to new editors is to keep in touch with the community so that you are not put off by highly locked segments. "Ask for an unlock. Don't be afraid of the high number of edits you need to obtain a higher level."
Thank you for all your wonderful contributions, Ronald!
License plate restrictions
Licence plate restriction programs exist around the world and are meant to moderate the amount of cars driving in popular parts of the city, to prevent heavy traffic and pollution. Waze supports this effort by allowing wazers to set their license plate in the app (Settings → Vehicle details). Where this feature is supported by the local community, drivers are routed according to their local guidelines.
In Bogota, Colombia, the Licence plate restrictions program was recently reactivated. The local community was very quick to respond by editing the map so that drivers can follow the local guidelines and avoid getting tickets.
We want to hear from you :)
Share your community's story, be featured in an upcoming newsletter or tell us what you think about this newsletter in this form!