Starting a new POI

Even though you are making it for Oregon I would put the city and state in the address so that if at a later date one was made for all the states it would be easy to merge and for out off staters to use. I don't know Oregon so just and address when visting won't tell me which city it is in. Just a suggestion.

Looks like we should think about making a POI file of all the AA meeting locations in the US.

That's a good one. I think you could be on to something with all the booze locations some may need it.

Yes, it also includes the City and State. That's part of the address.

I'm from California. There's a liquor store anywhere you look and you can buy booze in grocery stores. The grocery stores can't sell between 2AM and 6AM but that's about it for restrictions.

In some states, such as Oregon, you can only buy booze in a state run liquor store and only during limited hours and rarely ever on Sunday. If you're traveling and have been in the car for hours and your back is killing you and you stop in some strange town the odds are good that you won't find anywhere to purchase a bit of pain medication.

I've found this in several states and it really annoys me. What's it to them if I want a drink? How is it fair to folks who work during the only hours the places are open? Who decides this stuff? Are they legislating my "morality" or what?

I pulled into a hotel in Idaho one time and I was really feeling sick. I was just getting over a horrendous bout of the flu and had been in the car for many hours driving through a snow storm. My back was screaming at me. There was a bar in the hotel but they said, "It's Sunday" and that was that. BAH!

In Ohio they sell wine and beer in the grocery stores. But on Sunday before noon they rope off those aisles so you can't even go in them.

that is what I am looking for, all of the AA locations for the state of Washington. How do I do that? thanks I'm new at this.

I think it would be a lot of manual work. The AA website and the GSO in NY, do not maintain local meeting information. For each city, you would have to contact the central office or intergroup and get a printed meeting list.

From that printed meeting list, you would then have to key in every meeting address manually and batch geocode them. Then you would have to define a method to include abbreviations to indicate meeting days & times and meeting type (open, speaker, Big Book, step, etc.) in the comments field, something like MrKen did with the rest area combined POI file to indicate what services are available at each rest stop.

It certainly could be done, but it would be mostly a manual effort and have to be done at a local level.

EDIT: Having said that, sometimg else occurred to me. The central office may create their local meeting schedule on a PC and send it out for printing. They may be willing to provide an electronic copy that could save some of the manual typing. Of course, if they use some little known or proprietary publisher software, you may have trouble finding a program that could open that particular file type. Just some random thoughts.

EDIT, EDIT: Well, maybe it will be easier than I first thought. Some of the larger central offices do have websites with meeting lists. Here is one example:

http://www.aapinellas.org/asp/meeting_area.asp?A=Clearwater

It gives you everything you need to start the project - full street address for geocoding, meeting days, times and meeting type. Some will make for a very long comments field in the POI entry.

I have a family member that can use the list, so I am going to just start generating POI's that apply to that person for the location I know are going to. Real time consuming for me, but piece of mind knowing someone I care about can find a meeting with less work.

I guess if each person who would be interested in such a thing just started working on POI's they themselves could use, eventually it could be a really big file (like the red light cameras).

When reading a post from flaco - lest I have it coming out my nose!

In My home town in Ohio - there was a Drive-Thru Liquor store. Sort of like a long garage - you drive in one end, buy the booze, and drive out the other end.

They do that in Illinois as well - rope off the liquor aisles; at least in the Jewel that I frequent.

Sidewalk - your post really got me thinking. So, since I know a lot of the AA meeting locations around here, I decided to jump in. I know it doesn't help you where you live, but at least its a start. Maybe others will pick up in their areas.

It was a lot of manual research and keying to get the coordinates as accurate as possible. Batch geocaching just didn't provide good enough results. Plus, I found mistakes in the meeting lists. Things like a valid address, but the wrong address. Or, out in rural areas, no-name or no-number roads. It took almost a week straight to get just this one file right. Not to mention several phone calls to people who knew where some of these out-of-the-way places were really located.

Here is the first of 3 POI files I'll be uploading to cover the 3 counties that surround Tampa Bay:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/17414

When I'm done, I may also combine them into one, Tampa Bay area file, for people who want it that way.