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Bahá'í Locations is a geographic locator for Bahá'í activities and landmarks. It easily lets you to find study circles, devotional gatherings, Bahá'í centers and many more Bahá'í locations in your neighbourhood or around the world.
The initial prototype for Bahá'í Locations was created in June 2005. Over the summer months, two Canadian Bahá'í youth set out to create a full-scale version of this prototype. By September 2005, they had the first version of Bahá'í Locations up and running, and launched pilot projects in the Seattle area with the support of the Auxiliary Board Members for Washington State and the Spiritual Assemblies of the Pudget Sound area.
Currently, Bahá'í Locations is under the jurisdiction of Bahá'í individuals, who voluntarily maintain and administer this Web site. It is being provided free of charge to Bahá'í communities around the world.
The data for the activities and landmarks is entered and maintained by designated administrators. The Bahá'í institutions for a specific region appoint these administrators. Usually, these administrators are Regional Institute Coordinators or Spiritual Assembly Secretaries. They are given access to an administrator Web site to manage the activities and landmarks for their respective areas of jurisdiction.
This data is then plotted on a map and can be filtered by various criteria. For example, you can choose to see all Bahá'í Centers in North America or all Ruhi Book 1's in Seattle. Bahá'í Locations simply provides the framework for maintaining and displaying this geographic data.
Bahá'í Locations uses a set of different technologies to provide this framework. Some of the technologies we use are freely available for non-profit use, such as Google Maps (you can find the Google Maps API Terms of Use at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html). Other technologies, such as our patented blurring technology, were developed in-house.
All you need to view Bahá'í Locations is a web browser. Bahá'í Locations has been designed specifically for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 +, Firefox and Opera. High-speed Internet access will enhance your viewing experience, especially if you want to experience responsive panning across the map.
All of the content on Bahá'í Locations is managed by administrators who have been selected by Bahá'í institutions. Often-times, the content for your area will be updated weekly or even daily by these administrators, as new activities are started in your community. If you see very little content for your city, then most probably no administrator has been appointed for your area. You can always write to info@bahailocations.com if you want to suggest new activities or inform us of activities that are not on Bahá'í Locations.
All of the content on Bahá'í Locations is managed by administrators who have been selected by Bahá'í institutions, and as such, the accuracy of the information depends on these individuals. We are confident that the vast majority of the information you will encounter is indeed accurate and up-to-date, but can make no guarantees. If contact information is available for an activity or landmark, we suggest that you get in touch with the contact person or join an activity for more information.
Some of the information related to an activity or landmark is private information. For example, I might be hosting a study circle in my home, but don't want my home address publicly viewable on Bahá'í Locations. Or I may not want my name, phone number or email address shown.
We have gone to great lengths to ensure that no private information is displayed on Bahá'í Locations. When administrators enter activities, they can choose the level of public visibility for the various pieces of information they enter. For example, an administrator can specify that the address for a given activity be kept private. As a result, the location for the activity will be blurred. Or, if the host of an activity wishes that his or her email address be kept private, Bahá'í Locations will act as an intermediary between those requesting to join an activity and the host. Requests to join are forwarded to the host and can be acted upon as appropriate.
We take privacy very seriously at Bahá'í Locations and administators can set the public visibility of an address for a given activity or landmark. If an activity is taking place at somebody's home and the host wishes that his or her personal address remain private, the address will not appear on Bahá'í Locations. Furthermore, the actual marker that appears on the map will not point to the actual address. The marker will point to a blurred address, somewhere in the neighbourhood, according to a cryptographic algorithm developed in-house.
When you click on the marker for an activity, information related to the activity appears. Optionally, some activities will have a join link. You can submit a join request by clicking on this link and entering your name, phone number and email address. The request is emailed to the contact person for this activity and you should receive a reply.
Some activities, such as weekly devotional gatherings, might not have a join option because the administrator for this activity has chosen to turn off this feature. It could also be that some activities, suvch as study circles, cannot be joined after they have started, or that we dot not have contact information for an activity.
If you would like to join an activity that isn't listed, such as study circle or a devotional gathering, please send an email to info@bahailocations.com. Only administrators that have been selected by Bahá'í institutions for your area can add activities and landmarks. If you would like to use Bahá'í Locations in your area, please approach the Auxiliary Board Members in your area and ask them to write to info@bahailocations.com. We are more than happy to offer Bahá'í Locations as a service to your community.
Currently, we are conducting pilot projects in four cities. If you would like to start a pilot project in our area, please have the Auxiliary Board members for your region contact us at requests@bahailocations.com. We are more than happy to offer Bahá'í Locations as a service to your community.
Bahá'í Locations is a geographic locator for Bahá'í activities and landmarks. However, it also provides some features that an online event calendar provides. Since all of the activities also contain date information, you could use Bahá'í Locations to find activities that are starting next week or taking place tonight. We are working on adding more features to Bahá'í Locations that will let you perform fine-grained searches based on date criteria.
Bahá'í Locations is under the jurisdiction of Bahá'í individuals who voluntarily maintain and administer this Web site. It is not an official Web site of the Bahá'í community.
Currently, we have pilot projects taking place in Seattle, Mercer Island, Kirkland and Bellevue, WA.
We are always looking for ways to improve Bahá'í Locations and welcome your feedback at feedback@bahailocations.com.