Re: MUG Map clarification
Re: MUG Map clarification
- Subject: Re: MUG Map clarification
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:54:11 -0400
I know what you mean. One of our members was quite "into" population
forecasting and such before he retired, and a few years ago he did a
dot density map showing the distribution of our membership by either
postal or census geography. It was useful at the time because we were
considering moving our meetings to a new site that offered a LOT more
bang for the buck in terms of things like free Internet access, audio-
visual stuff, and even a lockable storage room where we could leave
stuff in between our meetings.
So we plotted our current and proposed meeting sites on top of the
distribution of our membership, and I recall that it was very obvious
that the proposed new site was way off to one side of the membership
distribution, whereas the original meeting site was (as expected)
smack dab in the middle of the membership dots. Well, we moved
anyway, thinking that we would probably lose some existing members
but would make them up from prospects living closer to the new site.
Turns out we should also have compared the two sites to the overall
population density because what actually happened was that we took a
licking over a couple of years in losing memberships and did not come
anywhere near replacing them from the population living closer to our
new site, mainly because the population density around the new site
just was no where near as high as around the old site.
So it is not surprising that, in September of this year, we moved our
meetings back to a site very close to our old site. It would really
be interesting to now plot our membership distribution every six
months or so, to see if it gets more dense (more members) or simply
shifts (lose some, gain some).
Jim Foster
On 17-Oct-05, at 4:20 PM, Paul Richards wrote:
Jim, I don't know about Canadian postal codes, but there are
databases that translate US ZIP codes to latitude and longitude on
the web. Not sure how accurate they are - center of a zone maybe?
Anyway, I started playing around with them several years ago
thinking much the same as you - mapping out the UG members. It all
got shoved aside, though, because I really didn't have any time
available to carry it along.
Paul Richards, Ambassador
Syracuse Macintosh Users Group
Syracuse, NY, USA
http://www.iSMUG.com
On Oct 17, 2005, at 10:31 AM, Jim Foster wrote:
It would be cool if they were able to extend that right down to
street or postal address. I think there could be all sorts of
applications for that kind of map, and that folks would probably
be prepared to shell out money for it, especially if it was set up
to allow one to easily enter a whole list of sites rather than
having to key them all in one at a time.
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