If you haven't noticed GIS (Geographical Informantion Systems) have taken center stage in the last few months. What used to be the realm of city planners has now expanded into the daily lives of millions of normal people (not that city planners aren't normal... well maybe their not...) think Google Maps, Google Earth, GPS enabled phones, Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc... etc...
The fact is if you are a developer and not currently writing this functionality into your applications you're being left behind. We've been geocoding (converting street addresses to latitude / longitude) all the addresses in our membership system for well over a year. This allows us to look location relationships amoung our attenders (about 25,000 in the system, 10,000 attending a week) in real time. An example of this is how we assign registrats to small groups. Once a person completes a registration our system determines the best small group by assessing the closest group to their home, that meets on the night they selected, also comparing the average age of the group and leader to their age preference. If a good match is found, bam... they're assigned... otherwise the system leaves it for the small group directors to assign. (For more info on this part of our system see this article)
This is just one way that we use GIS technology in our applications. We're working on a new project that will bring dynamic mapping into our application with no client software. This will support several new initiatives for outreach and small group building in neighborhoods. I'll post more on that in a few weeks.
If you're not currently researching this new technology I recommend that you start. It could lead to big changes on how you plan your ministry.
Cool stuff, Jon! I look forward to hearing more about what you are doing.
By the way, thanks for the response to my email. Recently, I cleaned out my inbox and inadvertantly deleted your email before I responded, so I wasn't able to respond, but I do want to let you know I appreciate it.
Posted by: Jim | July 01, 2005 at 07:44 AM