Thank you London for being a gracious host city for our UK launch! We’ve had our first taste of the vibrant tech community and the innovation inside the city and are inspired and exciting to kick off the waze community here.

Left to Right: Mike Butcher, Di-Ann Eisnor, Kulveer Ranger

Some highlights from Day 1:

Nice way to start the day: Mike Butcher’s TechCrunch article covering  our launch Waze launches its social sat-nav app for traffic-mad UK drivers

A visit to City Hall: Waze had an opportunity to attend and present at the Digital Advisory Board to

the Mayor of London at City Hall- what an honor! Thx @emercoleman and Kulveer Ranger, Mayor of London’s Director of Environment and Digital as well as the rest of the smart and enthusiastic group!

An afternoon full of: Lots and lots of QA and wazing- even spotted a friend from Google wazing!

Fireside Chat at TechHub: A chance to meet the local tech and start-up community during a fireside chat between Mike and I. Met so many interesting people across politics, technology, academia, art and even one of our most prolific and patient local wazers (we had a chance to discuss recent issues we hope to address right away)! Hours of great conversation and great wine!


When we launched Waze in the US just about 2 years ago one of the most incredible phenomena we witnessed was how other driving communities started popping up (and growing!) on the map in areas where we hadn’t yet launched. One of those places was in the UK. Pretty quickly a hardcore group of early adopters started building and editing the maps from scratch and soon enough the UK driving community was born…

Now, a few years later, we’re finally ready for our consumer-level launch in the UK (today!) and have this initial driving community to thank – big-time. We brought in a basemap to ensure full coverage in England, Wales and Scotland and this committed community of existing Wazers were the ones who helped us to ensure the right local landmarks and addresses were included so new users would get the most optimal experience the first time they try Waze. Again, a big thank you to all you founders of the UK driving community – thanks for *literally* paving the way for those behind you – and a warm welcome to all of you new UK Wazers – we’re really glad to have you on board!

We love it when we see a big bump in users ’cause we get all Sherlock Holmes to try to figure out what caused it. This time around it was a nice, big and bold feature on the Android Market – see above. You guys noticing a surplus of baby Wazers in your areas, as a result? Make sure to give them a nice welcome into the local driving community. When you’re at a red light, ping ‘em and say hi!

On Monday, the TechHub is welcoming a very special guest – our own Di-Ann Eisnor, VP of platforms and partnerships over here at Waze. Di-Ann’ll have a conversation with Mike Butcher, talking about connected cities, real-time data and how it changes maps and makes them actionable. If you’re into this stuff, it looks like it’ll be a real good time.

Doors open at 6:30 and the talk starts at 7pm, sharp. It’ll likely go until 8:30, with a little networking time afterwards. We’d love to invite London Wazers to attend, for free! To do so, register here with the special discount code ‘WazeVIP’. See ya there!