Gary Gale joins what3words following a career spanning HERE to Ordnance Survey, strengthening the service that gives everyone & everywhere an address
9 July 2015, LONDON, UK – Gary Gale, the British geocoding expert and former Director of Places at HERE, has joined the innovative global addressing company what3words as Chief Technology Officer. The boost to what3words’ management team comes as the company enters a new phase of global growth. Gale joins what3words from the Ordnance Survey, the UK’s national mapping agency, where he was Head of APIs.
““As our business and consumer base is fast becoming global, Gary’s experience integrating geo-technology at an enterprise and national government level will be invaluable, as we expand how organisations and consumers can interface with 3 word addresses„Chris Sheldrick, co-founder and CEO what3words
Gary has worked in the mapping and location space for more than 20 years. Before joining what3words from the Ordnance Survey, he was the geo-technologist at Lokku (where he devised and launched the OpenCage Data geocoding service), and Director of Places and Director of Global Community Programs for HERE. Before joining HERE, Gary led the Geo-technologies group for Yahoo!.
A regular keynote speaker, Gary has written for The Guardian, GPS Business News, Coordinates Magazine and The Cartographic Journal, and appeared on The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast and BBC Radio 4’s The World At One.
“I’m excited to join what3words at this crucial stage in the business’s growth, and continue their work to integrate this solution into more and more mainstream services across the globe. What this company has done is revolutionary: it has developed a coordinate system that is truly user-friendly. what3words will make a huge difference, especially in poorly addressed parts of the world, where people right now are struggling with addresses based on landmarks and directions„Gary Gale, CTO what3words
what3words is a global address system based on a grid of 3mx3m squares. It uses an algorithmic engine to give each of the 57 trillion squares a pre-assigned and fixed address of three dictionary words. The use of words means non-technical people can find any location accurately and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with fewer errors than any other system. Words can easily be remembered, written, said, printed or shared digitally.
Poor addressing is costly and time-consuming in developed countries and limits growth and threatens lives in developing ones. So wherever people need to pinpoint and easily communicate a location – whether it is a sprawling slum, an earthquake zone, a water point in a remote rural location, or simply a music festival such as Glastonbury – what3words is a ready-made, multilingual and easy-to-use solution that even works offline.
In June, what3words won the prestigious “Innovation Grand Prix” at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, and was named “London Innovator of the Year” as part of London Technology Week.