The General Service Office – 2025 AA Service Workshop – Part 5 of 27 – Billy N.

anything i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome to monday night we are uh oh you know what the show everybody you should be able to get these from your delegate soon but here's the final conference report this year you know the electronic version is out but i just got mine in the mail so give it a read um maybe give it to someone who's not in service and let them have a read some people have no idea they're in aa for a long time and no idea that there's a final conference report for our once a year business meeting for all of the us and canada um tonight we're going to start on the general service office chapter and um there's a couple of things to know because because the acronym gso is one that gets thrown around aa all the time usually most commonly for most people is they hear somebody say we're going to send a contribution uh um to gso which for the service geek to the hundredth power is not possible that doesn't mean we have to like kill the messenger right if the group is sending money um it just won't the point i want to make is to understand is that there's no legal entity called gso or general service office it's a it's location where people work there used to be almost two locations a grapevine office and the general service office but that's when they were on separate floors and rarely did they combine but that has been changed for a long time the general service office is simply where the employees of the aa grapevine and the aa world services board live and work not live but work the The GSO side that we're talking about here is the AAWS side, which means that the General Service Office, all of those employees at GSO work for AA World Services. That paycheck comes from AA World Service. basically two parts of the operation at a high level obviously there's a bunch of different departments which we'll get to but there's basically two um overall missions that the general service office staff carries out the first is publishing that's the first of the two missions AWS publishes all the conference approved material and the service approved material, except for the grapevine magazine and books. But everything else goes through GSO publishing. In fact, maybe you know somebody. And please, if you don't have the announcement, ask your delegate for it. But the director of publishing at GSO is retiring. An announcement went out the other day. They will be searching for a replacement that is always an alcoholic, always has been. But if you know someone from publishing or editorial or whatever, please, everyone deserves a shot to apply. But publishing is one side. The other side is services. So that's what we commonly refer to at GSO when we say GSO staff. That is the literature desk, the corrections desk, the regional forums and international convention desk, the cooperating with professional community and accessibilities desks, the group services desk, the public information desk. That's the other side of GSO. Now, inside both of those organizations, publishing and services are a whole bunch of other departments that serve the overall operation um if you uh it says about 100 employees give or take you never know any day full-time about 80 usually about 15 part-time um but you know where it says support for gso you know group and individual contributions income from aws publishing any excess income after operations from the grapevine there hasn't been any of that for a long time um but even you know sometimes they correct it sometimes it's wrong it says who may contribute to gso the answer that question is nobody we make our contributions to the general service board per long form of tradition 9 that the trustees are the receivers of the voluntary contributions and that money gets deposited in a general service sport account a few times a year the general service board moves money over to aa world services to carry out the services now if you're somebody who likes literal things and god knows in service we run into some literal people if you like to see literal examples i can give you an easy one sometime when you have free time the next week or two make an electronic contribution on the a.org website and obviously you'll be using a debit or a credit card when you hit contribute and it says confirmed you can look at your bank app your credit card app your debit card app and you will see a pending charge hit from the general service board of alcoholics anonymous this ink because that's who you just gave money to then when you're done with that go to the online literature catalog and buy some book you don't have or buy a book for somebody else that you know doesn't have it as a gift make that purchase and when you go to your app via credit card or debit card you will see the receipt is from aa world services inc because that is who you are buying the book from so we buy literature from aws inc but we give contributions to the general service board of alcoholics anonymous inc it talks about self-support there's so much bad information out there um as far as we don't make half our money in contributions and half our money in literature. That's only when you look at the total literature sales. But in order for us to sell literature, we have to employ editors and publishers and translators. And we have to do all the work and we have To buy the material and the ink and the paper and the covers. Like we have to spend all that money in order to sell something to somebody. So when someone gives us like just say $10 for literature, we've already spent like six or seven bucks. So half of our revenue might be from literature, but it's not profit. if you look at our overall expenses for aa world services inc it's about 70 contributions 30 literature profit during good years it's 80 20 and lately we're having trouble with both contributions are down 15 percent and literature sales are not what they once were obviously electronic and digital media is affecting that um and the grapevine you can support by getting your own subscription you can report by getting someone else's subscription you can support buy the carry the message program which is where you can pay for a grapevine subscription and they will get it to somebody who lets the office know that they need one whether they're in a correctional facility or somewhere else they have some situation um the maximum contributions uh are now 7 500 for an individual each year and a live aa member they are ten thousand dollars if somebody who is a member of aa passes away and is allowed to leave that to the general service board one time only it can't be any kind of recurring trust or an account set up so that it gives money every year after you're dead nope it's ten thousand one time and it has to be from you has to be from your estate um sometimes the general service office will get checks from somebody that'll say my dad died we had a great life once he got sober we wouldn't have had the life we had if he didn't get sober our mother got sober and i wanted to send this in memory of him we don't take in-memory contributions It has to be from their estate. It has to be their money that they left for us. And problems appear all the time. I just had an intergroup call me where somebody left them $150,000 and just said to Alcoholics Anonymous, well, that's a bad description in a will. In fact, it got so convoluted because the lawyer identified that they meant this one local in a group office but then they wanted a letter from gso stating that that office is alcoholics anonymous which they're never going to give them that letter because no one gets to claim that they're alcoholics unanimous except for groups and conventions like it might be the inner group of so-and-so city or the central office of so so city um but it becomes convoluted now that is a good way a lot of inner groups follow the gso contribution limits so if you're dying with a lot of money leave ten thousand dollars each to a lot of intergroups and the general service office but don't leave a hundred thousand dollars at the general service because they can tell you what's going to happen they're going to send it back and they're not going to like take their 10 and send you a check for 90. they're just gonna send the hundred thousand dollar check back and people try to get around this um sometimes people will now you could give money to a group like i've said if you have more than 7 500 a year put money in your basket groups don't have a limit intergroups don't have a limit but we've even had situations where somebody has said i'm sending it to intergroup and they can launder it through their account so they can send it to you and i don't know if well obviously we're not going to have anything to do with any verbiage that has the words launder in it i mean um but i just let you know because so many people in aa have no idea no idea um but yet we know we have a lot of people who are very thankful for the life they got to live and they want to leave something so it's good to have information if you leave money it should be to the general service board of alcoholics anonymous inc or at least the general service port of aa then it'll be clear as to who it should go to um i want to talk about aa world services obviously a a world services is near and dear to my heart i served on that board for eight years from 2009 until 2017 um aws deals with the staff assignments obviously deals with conference all that stuff gets done through staff all that background that gets put together that gets sent out for the final conference agenda you know there's a staff member who has a position called conference secretary that's the conference desk um there's all these other desks and um we believe in rotation at the office now obviously i don't want to say there's a pecking order but let's just say things like literature and pi can become public information can be very complicated you'll often see a more senior staff member on those desks but they do rotate every three years because we don't know what's going on want anyone being in charge of anything and rotation is taken so seriously at the office that let's face it it's 2025. sure some of you work in an office um you no longer need to like move down the hall to get that phone number you just have i.t change the phone number for that office we don't do that we have complete rotation if you're leaving literature and going to cpc you go down and get the cooperation professional community office um so rotation and the other thing about rotation when you think about it is that obviously we have people who have family emergencies obviously we have people who get ill unfortunately every once in a while maybe somebody passes away and then we have special projects all the time but rotation is also a good way that once an employee is there 10 years they have a good idea of a couple of desks so that everybody can fill in for each other that's another reason um for rotation um Um, the obviously corrections desk handles corrections to cooperate in professional community desk handle CPC. A lot of these desks, the staff member also serves as the secretary of that trustees committee and often of the corresponding conference committee. So when I look at like cooperating with special community and corrections, that staff member is the trustee secretary for the trustees committee and is the staff member for the conference committee the staff members on the conference desk is the staff member is the Staff Secretary for the Trustees Conference Committee now one that gets confusing sometimes um is international versus international convention and regional forum so international means our function and interaction and relationship with aa outside the united states and canada that's what the international desk does they are the secretary for the trustees international committee which deals with our relations and are working with other offices they plan the trips many international locations will invite someone from our structure to their 50th anniversary or the 20th anniversary we also have the world service meeting which meets every two years and that gets a little confusing too so i try to talk slowly about that the world service meeting is every two years and every four years it's in new york so one of the two out of every four years is in new York so it goes New York then two years later somewhere else in the world then back to New York, then two-years later somewhere else in the world the staff member on the international desk is the secretary and the planner for the world service meeting um the international convention and regional forum i talked about a little last week that's one trustees committee it's usually one assignment except for the two years leading up to the international when that gets broken away so that that employee staff member can only focus on the international convention if you're planning a party for 50 000 people you need to give that person the proper amount of time and many trips to that city um there is a staff member on the nominating assignment because of how busy it is they are all the also the secretary to the trustees nominating committee and they are the staff secretary to the conference committee on trustees. But that's basically almost like our recruitment arm. That's where all the announcements go out for class A trustees and general service trustees and non-trustee directors. That's Where all the information goes out to all the delegates for the regions when it's time to elect a regional trustee or a trustee at large. So that assignment is very busy. they receive all the resumes, they collate all the resumes. They serve as the secretary for whichever committee or board is reviewing the resumes so that they can decide who they're going to interview. Then they make all the logistical plans for those interviews. So it's a very busy assignment. Public information, much like corrections. The staff secretary is the staff secretary this the staff member for public information is the secretary for the trustees public information committee and the conference public information committee but that assignment has a little bit of an extra kicker even though we have no opinion on outside issues we still need somebody to tell people that because they think after 90 years we're going to change our mind one day the same reporter who's called like 30 times it's going to call the 31st wants to know if we want to make a comment about some a member who's a celebrity who just got locked up or some new uh article in some journal about college binge drinking or fraternity hazing or dwis but we still need somebody to deal with all that and then aa gets asked to do interviews on radio on tv on streaming platforms now um and most times for that we use a class a trustee because they're not an alcoholic so they don't have anonymity issues they can say their last name they can show their face so the pi person not only is dealing with the trustees pi committee the conference pi committee they are also kind of serving as like our chief communications officer the staff coordinator i want to talk slow about this because this often gets confused too because we have two positions that kind of sound the same we have director of staff services and we have staff coordinator the staff coordinator is one of the aa staff members and you rotate into that job you become like a first among equals i think would be the best description kind of like the description they use for the uh supreme court presiding judge like the staff coordinator deals with all the staff schedules the aaa staff deals with all the desks working together deals with all the staff meetings of the aa staff when they get together and we say a staff we mean one of the a members who works there who is on one of these desks another important thing about the a about the staff coordinator is that they're a member of the aaws board of the aa world services board remember two employees are on the aa well services board the general manager and the staff coordinator when the staff co-ordinator rotates to a new job they leave the aws board in the new staff coordinator joints the current staff coordinator is ray cj the other position is called director of staff services the person in that job now that's always an alcoholic um uh is sandra is the director of services the director staff services has a much broader scope than the staff coordinator they're almost like the second in command to the general manager because the general manager has to travel to certain events and meetings the staff coordinator is in the office watching over all the staff not just the aa staff because then we have all these services that support the fellowship and support the staff we have operations you have records literature orders contributions all these staff assistants that work in operations we have a receptionist um we have finance and accounting we have a chief financial officer we have controller we have accounts payable accounts receivable just like any other organization we have technology services we didn't have to have that 30 years ago we didn t even have that 15 years ago we had like an outside part-time person but obviously as technology has started to really become integral in any organizations operations and business we now have a director of information technology and a technology department contributions um you know sometimes if you go to a regional forum or sometimes if people like i said we have people who look at very granular information but sometimes people look at our financials and want to know why do we spend so much money on receiving and processing contributions because we do we spend an enormous amount of money but the reason for that is a spiritual one is that we don't care if someone sends 50 cents or 50 dollars or 7500 every one of them has to be catalogued received deposited in the bank sent a thank you letter to the group or the individual electronic contributions obviously cut down on this but this is aa it's nothing to get an index card with a paper clip with like seven dollars on it that's a usual occurrence in the contributions department or somebody who's a treasurer is not yet at the point where they're allowed to have a bank account so they go to get money orders and we get money waters i've actually seen an index card with three quarters taped on it that a member sent in and i think about like it cost us more to process that but how much must that member love aa that they were willing to even find 75 cents which probably to them is a hundred dollars to somebody else to send in we have human resources obviously if you have 100 employees you need an hr department and we have the same issues of any other company We have employees that want a decent retirement program. We have companies that deserve a good benefits program, medical insurance and dental and short-term disability. And then it's 2025. What decent size organization doesn't focus on wellness today? So that falls to HR. You know, I mean, I think in my corporate career, wellness maybe started in like 2005. By 2010, it became very popular, but companies realized how important it was to not just give their employees medical insurance for when they get sick. like can't we have a day every six months where like you can give blood if you're a man and get your psa tested and how many lives have been saved early because of things like that or blood pressure or nutritional help and let's face it yes some of our staff members are recovered alcoholics but for most of our jobs there you don't have to be an alcoholic you might be you might be one in drinking you might be one and recovered either way it's none of our business unless it affects your work but we have to have our own employee assistance inside hr to provide things to our employees whether that's treatment or whether it's counseling if they're having a tough time in life so have a real hr department um and then we have to make sure that we're giving people raises and reviews every year making sure we're getting proper feedback to employees maybe who are not performing like it is no different um we have meeting and events because we have a lot of meetings and events we have the seven day general service conference we have three board weekends in new york city we have regional forums around the country we have the international the world service meeting like the meeting and events team has to have the hands around all of that we have mail and shipping which most of that happens at warehouses we have a warehouse in the us and a warehouse in canada um but it's super you know i would tell anyone who visits the general service office first of all it's well worth it on fridays there's an 11 first of all its closed right now psa public service announcement they're under construction right now but during regular times there's a meeting at 11am every friday it's an awesome meeting to go to people from all over the world stop in you never know who's going to be there You just have no idea. I actually was there one time for our board meeting and for the AA meeting, which is an open meeting, where I noticed things looked odd when I got there early that morning. It just seemed the lobby, it just noticed it didn't feel regular. um and that was because a member of the cabinet at that time wanted to come to an aa world services board meeting because they were fascinated with alcoholics anonymous and they wanted to visit our archives and they needed to wanted to um uh go to the open meeting because they had had a relative whose life was changed by alcoholics anonymous so it's kind of weird when you're in a meeting at gso and secret service agents are lowering the blinds and closing them uh so that no one can see from the outside and not for anonymity because that person doesn't have anonymity but for protection and then to just see that person's like overall love for alcoholics anonymous but you never know um i've seen a priest from the middle of nowhere africa who's a missionary who's been sober like 20 years and has been to like six meetings in their life but corresponds with other aa members by email and i'm sure now zoom meetings and literature um i'm not sure if that's true i've been seeing people from all parts of the country even if they don't speak english they want to sit there and you know if you've never visited a meeting in a country where you don't speak the language i could just tell you this it doesn't matter yes there's a lot of english-speaking meetings in a lot places but i'm just telling you if you go to a native language meeting you will know who the old timer is you will know who the newcomer is it's um i actually find it very freeing to not have to listen to anyone and just like sit there and just think how great alcoholics anonymous is and not really have to be in the day-to-day drama of the people i go to meetings with every day we all know how that is right but i'm just telling you it is a true gift to go to meetings but you never know who's going to show up at that meeting and you can go on a tour of gso And the reason I mention all this is that one of the things I think that's a shame sometimes is everybody knows the GSO staff. If they're involved in service, they've seen the names or they've met them at their assembly or they met him at a regional forum. But I'm telling you, go up and shake the hand of the other employees. They're not making millions of dollars working there. they're out there making sure the literature is getting chipped making sure our bills are paid making sure that contributions attract making sure computers work making sure like they all deserve a handshake from us and obviously they're not doing service but they are doing work that enables the facilitation of 12-step work um the publishing department is not even covered in all the ones i just covered the publishing departments like its own animal and gso um you know what do they do there they create the catalogs and order forms they oversee the translations and the licensing they handle all the research and development for new publications that we might be working on or thinking about they process all the literature orders they deal with all the inventory issues that we have because we sell thousands of books they deal with all their customer inquiries that's a good term for customer complaints but they deal with the inquiries um they maintain a small in-house shipping department depending on the size of the order and they also manage the outsourced warehousing in canada and the united states and why do we have a warehouse in each because then we don't have to worry about people's literature being delayed because it's going through customs and has to be inspected and cost more money to ship so if someone in canADA wants something it's coming right from somewhere in canada um a little thing about translations because sometimes people it's it's kind of a nuance and again i'll try to talk slowly is people always wonder well who publishes the books do we and we send them over to russia and send them over to england and send him over to france do they it's kind of and first of all you can only have a literature license if you have a general service structure in your country so you have to have a General Service Board and a conference structure if you that you can apply for a license from AA World Services um and you produce your own literature however we have to look at everything before it goes to final print we have our own translator look at it to make sure that the first 164 for example are what they're supposed to be but they publish and print their own books and sell their own books um if you see a foreign language book in our catalog and sometimes you'll see that it means that that country does not have a license to produce literature so we do like israel does not Have a general service board or structure they recently have a central office committee which is usually the first step to building a structure but we produce a hebrew big book korea does not have a general service structure we produce a korean big book that's why there's 63 autonomous general service structures around the world but our literature is available in over a hundred countries and that's because many of those countries don't have a general service structure the big book is now up into into the 70s as far as the big book being available in certain languages um but we handle that um they also handle the conference approval process so if you write in something that you want a new book you want to change your book you wanna add a book whatever it goes to the literature desk at gso who then sends it to the conference committee on literature and if they decide to do something they send it back to the general service board and say we want you to do this and then it goes back to the literature desk but at the same time it goes to publications because the literature desks deals with the approval process but the actual putting the book together writing the book translating the book binding the book that is all in publishing we also have some newsletters we have box 459 we have the quarterly report that comes out about the board weekends we have behind the walls about corrections we have about aa which the public information desk puts out and then we have one of the most complicated things at gso intellectual property our trademark and our copyrights um and that's why we're incorporated so that we can own them and it's listen people say the big book belongs to the world i i get it but if we believe in the conference approval process and that's what we approved the only way to make sure that there's integrity in that piece of literature is to have it copyrighted so that no one else can print it and change it um so we have that we have the archives department which is huge and the archives apartment is kind of it's really an archives and history department if you were going to be technical about it we have the display cases which anyone who goes to gso make sure you have time to go to the archives department make sure you go on the tour and go to archives um but the archives you see there are like a five thousandth of what we have we have a proper air and temperature controlled facility you know a real one like with underground that people rent from where some of the most important stuff in aa history is stored permanently we can get to it if we need it we also have permanent files in the back of the archives department in our archives file room um there's all kinds of things there and there's a rotating showcase so that we can constantly put new stuff out and take stuff in but there's so many stuff there letters from early or how about this after 9-11 when all those workers were working on the pile first search and rescue and then you know cleaning up i was thousands of cops and firemen and iron workers and carpenters and everybody else and lots of those people were sober so there was a ground zero group there was room that the red cross gave aa and they had to log in when they went into that building because it was very secure the log book from the ground zero uh group is in the gso archives it's not always out but i can tell you when you read some of those entries when somebody would like write their name and then maybe write a note about what they were dealing with working there or how hard it was to stay sober like this spectacular archives but then we have group histories if your group sends its minutes in we store it most areas send their minutes into gso some districts and we store them all also are all the group histories like some people ask me sometimes you know we don't have anyone around to tell us about the history of when our group started i always say you got to write the archives department because there might be something there and if there is they'll call you and tell you what they have and what the early minutes say about who started it now they won't send you a copy but you could make an appointment to go in there and review it it's just a huge part of what we do and all of this i hate to say command and control such bad a words but all of this is the responsibility of the general manager who is currently bob w who i served with as a trustee but bob has the cfo reporting to him and the it director and the hr director and the publishing director and the operations director and the staff coordinator and director of staff services like it's a huge job to keep this going every day um and uh we only let uh the only job that has a time limit on the aws side is general manager it is a five to seven year commitment but never more than seven years and that is because we don't want someone being the queen or the king of aa um on the grapevine side which we'll talk about the grape vine next week on the great vine side it is the executive editor publisher um but the general manager is at every regional forum every international convention so it's four regional forums a year most zonal meetings the world service meeting so we want to have rotation there but you know what goes on every day is really miracle creating at the general service office so i am going to stop there and take any general service aws related questions thank you do we send out cease and desist letters to protect our intellectual property and if so is there a lot of misuse of our marks out there uh yes and yes to the hundredth power um yes we send cease and desist letters and sometimes we take legal action if you were to look at when aaws has been a plaintiff meaning they've sued somebody 99.9 of the time it's going to be over a copyright or a trademark it's our last thing to do But sometimes we have no choice, we do send out a lot of cease and desist letters. People try, there's a thing I don't want to get complicated called the fair use policy. If you go on the AA.org website, it tells you what you can use without getting permission from the aws board a small snippet a sentence or two from a literature um but yes tv shows people writing books everybody is always a standing item at the aa world services board meeting is approval of giving permission for somebody to use something or disapproval. But that's a great question. Is that Friday meeting at the GSO hybrid? Nope, it is not. That is an in-person meeting 11 a.m. every Friday. But like I said, I can't suggest it more than I could of how great it is to go there. Please send in your questions. How long has Bob W been the general manager? I believe I am correct in that he is going into his fifth year in February or April, something like that. It was like during COVID, Greg T retired and Bob W is selected. So I would imagine Bob has about two years left. isn't the new limit bequest 12 500 i believe the increase to 7500 passed but the bequest stayed at 10 but you know what since i have the conference report let's just look it right up how's that great question advise reactions page 37 You are correct. 12,500. Any idea when the big move will be completed? Well, I think we should be careful about the terms move. same building a floor or two adjusting with the grapevine coming up to the aws floor the gso floor the construction project is supposed to be about six months but we know how construction goes um that's a complicated new york city building meaning everything has to go up in an elevator everything has been down in the elevator all the material has to get delivered um but i think about six months do you know if any if there is anything besides minutes that groups are recommended to send to their archives um no um it's it's really up to the group um obviously when we had space problems but now everything is digitized um but things that are important um you know sometimes like the international conference of young people in aa had such had some really important things but like that got traded to somebody's garage every two years whoever the archivist was for advisory council there was a book signed by rockefeller's son who was vice president nelson rockefeller there was a letter from bill a letter from lois so what ickypod did is made copies of everything but gave the originals to the archives department at gso let's see what years were greg was greg muth manager you really tested me out here but i want to say 2000 2009 until 2000 end of eight beginning of nine he went over seven years obviously uh not without controversy it caused a big thing inside the fellowship you mentioned movies or tv shows using aa copyrighted trademark do we charge a license fee to profit entities that we grant licenses to or is it simply allowing use or not it's simply allowing us a lot of times it'll be about they want us to give what they want is they want to put a's name somewhere in the credits for whatever reason so they want permission to put big book in the scene or permission to use the shade of the steps we we don't do that but they ask all day long we don t charge people if i understand correctly there is an entity for the united states canada and there is an international conference every two years how do the other countries relate to aws legally and spiritually okay great question i'm going to start with the international convention is every five years it's always in the united states or canada why is that for a couple reasons it's called the international convention hosted by the service structure of the united states and canada i don't know if there is maybe one or two other structures that could possibly pull off meeting the financial requirements to rent a stadium and rent a convention center and book all those hotel rooms and make the financial guarantee and have the banking to do it um it's every five years though not every two the the world service meeting is every two years we do do the contracts for that we do get the space um originally the plan if you read the original conference charter would be every country would be part of our general service conference one that changed in the 50s were not headquarters these other countries were not connected legally to them just spiritually the world service meeting is not a deliberative body they do not make policy decisions it is a sharing of information body between the countries that have a general service structure each country is allowed two representatives in our country we send the trustee at large us and the trusty at large canada there was an off-broadway musical that just closed called sober song the musical which played out an aa meeting in detail would this type of performance require aws review or approval no i mean not in this country i mean there's all you got to do is turn on the tv 24 hours a day somebody on that show is sober or drinking or in and out of aa or god knows what um No, we don't control or tell people what to do. If you misrepresented AA some way, there are sensitive issues that the board gets involved is the general service app infringing on copyright or intellectual property i'm trying to understand you know what i love this question for so many reasons I don't even know if I can find my general service app. But I'm going to tell you the history. Oh, yeah, I do. I have it. But here it is, the general service app. Mind you, the person was smart enough not to call it the AA app. But let's talk about the general service app and our complete failure with meeting guide app not a failure now but a failure in the start you can look at the history of the general service office or service there is no doubt in the history of alcoholics anonymous there is nothing that the office has done that more intimately invades on a daily basis aa members lives than the meeting guide app i have mine right here i use it all the time not only can i get meetings there's also news there look at that publishing director there's the announcement newly revised markings on the journey video aaws highlights box 459 um it's awesome and yet we thought it was a bad idea for years mostly because the people making the decision didn't use technology at the time they had aged out and so what happened i can't give his last name but it i can t even call him young anymore i would say a young guy but josh is getting older but there was this brainiac named josh who said this is crazy and he developed meeting guide app and what did he do he got central offices and intergroups to connect their meeting directories to his app so that people traveling would have it all in one place mind you this is a young kid who took that initiative because we wouldn't do it for years so you know what wound up happening because god is a comedian we had to call josh in for a meeting and then we leased it and boarded from josh something that we said was a horrible idea for years which is now instrumental in everybody's life so surprising because josh is a thinker josh said wait a minute we have 93 areas in the united states and canada with 93 websites like why don't we have one app where you could go to every website easily For an area. And that's what he did. I laugh now because I just heard some delegate on a rant. We're not connecting to that. Who does he think he is? Who does he think he is? He's the kid who was smarter than all of us and built Meeting Guide app that we then had to buy from him. And I'm not saying he made a lot of money. I'm just saying what a kick in the ass to our egos, saying no for year after year that it was a bad idea. Could you imagine if we got rid of meeting guide app what the fellowship would do today so i go to general service and i'm just amazed um there's news areas um but you can just pull up an area and here's all the areas that participate right now one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen let's see there's about 22 areas out of 93 that are participating and this app is awesome awesome so we're so quick to like point fingers and bash people meanwhile he's responsible for the greatest user-friendly member-friendly piece of technology and now he's doing it. I love this. I can go in here. I can go to area two Alaska. They have 11 districts. I can then go to one of the districts. It's amazing. Do you ever think how many websites we have in AA in general service? Start with the grapevine in AWS. That's two go to the 93 areas now we have 95 websites i'm not going to give an estimate as to how many districts per area do you know how many websites are out there this is such an ingenious thing so i'm glad somebody asked a question and i can't wait to see what happens with it our area does not participate in it i would go to the app i'd go to the information i'd send information to them and i'd bring it up at your area to your area chair or somebody and obviously your area gets to make its own decision i can just tell you the history of meeting guide app uh let's see yep you'd have to ask your area any other questions other than that next week we'll go to grapevine uh it's called the general service app and if you go to it um what does it look like um it's an upside down triangle um like the upside down groups at the top district area conference it's it's blue green yellow circle and triangle but the upside-down triangle because it's service so the group's at the top so that's it we will close in the usual fashion with the responsibility statement hope everybody has a great week i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa always to be there and for that i am responsible