User:Xanderb/Wazume

Narrative:

In the summer of 2010, I purchased an expensive disk to update the GPS maps maps in my car only to find out two weeks later that those maps were already obsolete and not showing the current road configuration in some of the areas of my city. That led me to start looking for something for my iPhone that could get live updates when roads were changed. I found Waze. At the time, the map around me was decent, but not great and I would fix a few things on my route. This very quickly became a hobby of finding and correcting things for my friends and family. After a few months, I had enough edits to apply to Waze for a Managed Area.

I edited for a while and in 2014 the local editors started using Google Hangouts to talk to each other in real time, which made discussing local issues and helping other editors much faster. This made me more involved with working and mentoring editors. I was made the State Manager for Kentucky in May 2015. Around the same time, I was diagnosed with cancer and immediately began treatment. During those treatments, I really got to know how close the community of editors is. They were incredibly encouraging and really helped to keep my spirits up. The chemo and radiation took a lot of my energy, even moving around physically would make me sick, but helping people in the Map Editor (both editors and app users) gave me a sense of accomplishment when I was feeling the worst.

Once all of that was behind me, I have tried to repay that gift I was given by helping the Waze community anywhere I can. As a Country Manager, I have been able to help with our Virtual Emergency Operations Center, closing thousands of roads during weather related emergencies. I assisted in the migration from wiki to Wazeopedia and also led a group for a complete redesign of the US Military base guidelines that are congruent with the current Department of Defense regulations. Currently, I am currently working with the Magic script devs and other country moderators to help editors around the world. I know and understand countries have differences in their local guidance and do like learning how other countries have found what works best for them and why. I have enjoyed working along side editors and Champs in many MapRaids in my country and around the world, such as South Africa, Australia, Venezuela, and India, and even created Validator Localization scripts for some of them.

Currently, I am a Local Champ and the Regional Coordinator for the South Atlantic Region, managing the editors for four states, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. I am part of a small, dedicated team working directly with Waze to localize and correct the TTS voice Jane. I am also one of the program managers for the Formal Mentor program, where we have over 100 Formal Mentors across the country. I appreciate your consideration and am excited about the potential opportunity to help in a bigger way.

Milestones:

• Started editing the map - Jul 2010
• First managed area - Louisville, KY - Autumn 2010
• State Manager - Mar 2015
• Rank 5 - May 2015
• Country Manager - Dec 2015
• Local Champ and Rank 6 - Aug 2016
• Assistant Regional Coordinator - South Atlantic - Dec 2016
• Regional Coordinator - South Atlantic - Sep 2017

Projects:

• Formal Mentoring - Program Management and Mentor
• Edification of Jane (TTS Voice)
• Wiki Master
• Discord Design Consortium - Server Admin on Global and Several Regions
• Slack - Admin of Waze USA, MapRaid, Mentoring, VEOC teams
• Virtual Emergency Operations Center - National Disaster Response since team was formed
• Military Base Guidelines - Project Manager - Led team for complete redesign of Military Base guidelines that are congruent with current Department of Defense regulations
• Place Name Harmonization - National team to harmonize chain business Places in Waze
• Kentucky Highway Rename and Speed Limit - Led 18 month project to rename roughly 30,000 centerline miles of State Roads to match the state's naming format and apply speed limits.
• WME and iOS Beta

Meetups:

• Great Lakes Region 2016 - Indianapolis, IN - Participant
• South Atlantic Region 2016 - Charlotte, NC - Planning Team
• North America 2017 - San Diego, CA - Participant
• Great Lakes Region 2017 - Indianapolis, IN - Participant
• South Atlantic Region 2017 - Louisville, KY - Planner

MapRaids:

• New York City
• Los Angeles
• MegaMapRaid - Washington
• South Africa
• Australia
• Venezuela
• India
• Ohio
• Indiana
• Tennessee
• West Virginia

Script involvement:

• WME Magic - US Country Moderator
• WMEPH - South Atlantic Region Moderator
• Validator Localization
  • Australia - created for Mapraid and maintained until Validator broke
  • Venezuela - created for Mapraid and maintained until Validator broke
  • California
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Kentucky
  • Massachusetts
  • Michigan
  • Minnesota
  • Ohio
  • Pennsylvania
  • Tennessee
  • Utah
  • Wisconsin
  • West Virginia