Adventures with what3words in 2019

Getting to travel so much for work at what3words has always been exciting and interesting (and sometimes tiring…), but in 2019, things have been a little closer to home. 2019 was the year that UK emergency services adopted what3words at scale.

The BBC covered some of the stories back in August of those who had been found with the help of what3words.

Since then, it’s been pretty incredible to hear so many stories each week from people who had used what3words when calling for help, and from first responders who have found it makes their jobs easier and saves precious time on a call out. 

I grew up in rural Wiltshire, so I know first-hand the issues with postcodes that cover huge areas or with trying to report accidents or breakdowns in the middle of nowhere/on tiny country roads. For many years, my family has walked/hiked around the Wiltshire countryside, including the Westbury White Horse, and seeing Wiltshire emergency services use what3words in their rescue work actually felt pretty touching to me personally:

Our emergency services team at what3words has worked tirelessly to make sure responders have the tech and training they need, and we’ve all been incredibly impressed by the first responders up and down the country who work so hard to bring new technology to their operations to help them save more lives (seeing one of them, Trevor Baldwin, get honoured by the Queen a few days ago for his work was brilliant).

UK momentum 

The momentum in the UK has started to feel unstoppable - every day, we hear of new ways companies are using our apps and APIs to help deliver things, reach people in need and share locations for events, meetups, sports fixtures and more. 

Winter Wonderland, with its millions of visitors in December, used 3 word addresses for each entrance. They added 3 word addresses to their website and maps, their accessibility guide, and even the signs pointing the way to each gate on site.  

The AA, the UK’s leading breakdown provider, not only accepts what3words but used it successfully to rescue American Gods author Neil Gaiman on a country road (this Tweet was definitely a personal highlight for me this year):

And companies up and down the country are adding 3 word addresses to booking confirmations and websites, to make sure guests and visitors can always find their way. Sykes Cottages, for example, makes sure you can find their holiday cottages easily, while CoolStays gives the entrance to amazing sites for off-grid/hot-tub/treehouse experiences. 

And as of December, Premier Inn will be helping millions of visitors find the door to reception every time with what3words: 

The world of mobility 

Mobility and automotive have been big for us in the last few years - this year has been no different. Cabify and EasyTaxi launching with what3words has meant millions of customers across Latin America can enter 3 word addresses for pick-up and drop-off. S-Ride (a fellow Sony-backed company) in Japan having adopted this means tourists can use 3 word addresses in their own language when visiting Tokyo next year for the Olympics. And here in the UK, Havn, Jaguar Land Rover’s electric car-hailing app, has integrated what3words, so you know your ride will start and end at exactly the right place. 

In the world of automotive, we launched with Ford, Tata became the first Indian OEM to bring what3words to its vehicles, Subaru invested in what3words (joining our other auto investors SAIC and Daimler) and we announced our first Chinese car integrations. 

Our work on Alexa also went live - now you can order an Uber to a 3 word address using just your voice. 

Asian expansion

Launching in the Chinese market this year was a key part of our expansion in Asia - Mercedes unveiled what3words in Chinese using Cerence technology at the Auto Show in April. 

And seeing TimeOut sharing 3 word addresses for sporting activities in Beijing in the summer this year felt pretty great after all the work from our tech, product and languages teams on our China launch. 

Korea continued to be a big market for us, with KakaoMap integrating what3words, so its millions of users can discover, share and navigate to 3 word addresses all within the Kakao app. 

South Africa

Elsewhere, our team in South Africa continues to power ahead, with e-commerce adoption continuing to grow at pace there - customers provide 3 word addresses on checkout pages to make sure their products arrive on time, with no more lost couriers trying to find their door. The AA and emergency services in South Africa are also adopting what3words - this video from ER24 perfectly explains why this is so necessary:

what3words Products

This year, our brilliant tech, product and localisation teams launched a suite of new features to help make the most of all this momentum. We’re now live in over 35 languages thanks to our fantastic localisation team, who work with hundreds of linguistic experts around the world every time we launch a new language. 

Our app also now features what3words voice, so you can simply tap the microphone and simply speak in the 3 words (much faster than typing). You can get a widget to display your current 3 word address on your phone’s home screen or download our app for Mac to use what3words on your computer. 

The new OCR feature means you can instantly scan any 3 word address - ideal for printed things like Lonely Planet (which just brought out a new guide to Oman and the Arab Peninsula that includes what3words) or TimeOut Japan’s guide for walks in Tokyo.

And I personally love something our product and tech teams worked hard on this year - a totally new developer site, to make it even easier for developers to integrate what3words’ API into their products. You can check it out or sign up for an API key here.

If you need some inspiration, our new products page showcases many of our favourite apps/plugins that have what3words inside - from ViewRanger and PocketEarth for hikers and adventurers, a Lightroom Plugin for photographers, or HeliosPro for cinematographers who need to know exactly where to set up their shots. 

Seeing what3words hit the no.1 spot in both Apple and Android app stores earlier this year was a pretty great feeling and testament to the brilliant work of our tech, product and marketing teams over the past few years. You can read more about the work our team does on Medium - check out a blog on localisation by Niki Forecast in our product team, one on Kubernetes from Andrew Vaughan and this behind-the-scenes on what3words voice from our Head of Product, Josh Wigmore. 

Looking ahead to 2020

We’re excited for significant expansion in our e-commerce and logistics work in 2020, aided by a freshly-minted partnership with GBG on their Loqate product. With thousands of checkout pages in the world using Loqate, e-commerce sites can now accept 3 word addresses from customers (///filled.count.soap), and use this address to autocomplete the remainder of the traditional address (Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Rd, London W2 5EU). It means fewer clicks on checkout for customers and a delivery location that’s accurate to 3m x 3m. 

We’re also looking forward to further expansion in India in partnership with Tata and others, and are launching more languages spoken there (we’re currently live in Hindi, English, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil, with Kannada, Malayalam, Kannada and Urdu launching shortly). And after many requests (and some rescues in Wales using what3words…!), we’re working on Welsh, which meant our Head of Languages, Jamie, brought into my life a favourite new word - cwcw. 

Our what3words team 

My favourite thing about this year, other than seeing what3words be used in so many rescues, has been working with our phenomenal team. 

I got to go back to Mongolia this year to spend some time with our team there, which was definitely a highlight, and which reminded me of how far we have all come over the past few years: 

We’ve grown a little more this year, getting to 120, but the bulk of our team has now been with us for quite some time. We’ve got to know each other pretty well over the months and years, and worked incredibly hard - things taking off in so many ways this year has been a testament to the dedicated, passionate and determined group of people assembled at what3words. We have exceptional people all around the world - from South Africa, where our small team achieves big things and constantly breaks new ground, to Ulaanbaatar (a city that seems to be full of multilingual Business Developers), where we’ve set up a Business Development hub to work on our Japanese, Korean and Chinese expansion.

In December, our team came together as a whole to learn from each other, play football, do Jack Waley-Cohen's famous Christmas quiz and celebrate what we’ve done this year. It’s a remarkable group of people to work alongside and makes me feel very lucky that I get to spend so much time around such interesting, bright and curious people.

We have quite a few roles still open - especially in Business Development and Tech - so if you’re up for a challenge and love the idea of solving problems with what3words, please check out our jobs page: what3words.com/jobs/ 

Thank you to everyone who's been part of making this all happen so far - we're pretty excited about what's to come in 2020.