[CS-FSLUG] International Data

[Josiah Ritchie]

On 11/28/07, Tim Young <Tim.Young at lightsys.org> wrote:
> Hi there,
> I have had some experience with this.  ;)  Actually, the last three
> weeks I have been working on such a package (opensource, community
> developed, etc.).  BUT, what I am working on will be considerably larger
> than just a contact management system.  It will also contain financial
> stuff (payroll, receipting, etc.)  We are scheduled to have it fully
> deployed at our first location in the second quarter 2008.  Our first
> part of the project to be deployed was scheduled to go out today, but we
> are still a few days out.
>
> For our international address component, we have a number of things
> going for us.  Operation Mobilization (a mission organization) has a
> contact management system that is currently deployed in 90+ countries.
> They have given us their database structure, and we have used that as a
> reference for our design.  Oddly enough, some of the mailing
> considerations here in the States are more confusing than what we have
> in other countries.  Here we have a lot of "bulk mail" issues, with
> different prices, address certifications, complex bar-codes, and a lot
> of interesting things.
>
> I will need to talk with Greg to see if we could send you our current
> database structure.  I think that is a possibility.
>
> But also, if you wanted to help out on our project, we would be happy to
> talk with you on that.  We are developing using entirely open-source
> stuff.  The users will have a web/AJAX interface so it has a snappy look
> and feel.  Because I have personally worked with over 60 missions in 9
> countries, I know there are a LOT of peculiarities in missions.  We have
> developed our behind-the-scenes infrastructure to fit with what I have
> seen and experienced, so that, hopefully, missions will have the
> flexibility they need to customize what we build to fit their own
> needs.  Because we have not yet deployed our first application, we will
> need to wait to see if we have been successful in our flexible design.  :)

I'm so incredibly interested in this I don't think words describe. :-)
It sounds like exactly what I've been thinking about. Currently
solutions are ridicusously expensive. Let's work together and support
the gospel as a united team of organizations. I'd be glad to become
involved by testing it out, reporting bugs and whatever else. I've got
a couple servers sitting around not doing anything and looking for a
home. I would also be interested in writing documentation and more.
I've heard of Kardia and Centrallix, but thought because the pages
were so out of date that they were failing. If I could get them
up-to-date and maybe start casting the vision around some of the
places I'm connected to, perhaps we could help get it exposed and help
get people involved.

I've had this idea of a touch screen kiosk to access missionary
information, blogs, pictures etc. in a church foyer in my head for
ages. It would be neat if mission agencies (or missionaries) could
have a standard way to provide this sort of stuff so churches could
just pick it up.

> Oh.  Regardless, the best folks to talk about this will be at the ICCM
> conference (www.ICCM.org).  While at the conference, you would probably
> not have all your questions answered, but you would make the contacts
> with the people who can answer them...

I've found it kinda hard to get into that group through the web. I'm
seriously thinking about taking on going to one of their conferences
though. I'm sure there are some great contacts to be met and things to
be learned.

JSR/

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