Area Assembly and Area Committee – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 12 of 27 – Billy N.

welcome everyone um i want to first say i've heard from a couple of people that they were at the west central regional forum and that it perhaps maybe had a big impact on them i'm really glad to hear that i tell everyone they should go to a regional forum they should not pass it up they will learn things about aa they never knew before um so uh tonight we're jumping back to the chapter that we skipped um which is chapter three i mean i'm sorry chapter four the area committee um because of some uh scheduling um of previous speakers we and because we had a skip a week we just went out of order but the area of committee is an important topic um and really important um for a lot of reasons um i want to go back to the area assembly chapter three just to a sec for a second because it says the purpose of an area assembly and it says to elect the delegate who will represent the area's conscience at the general service conference and then it says to form a local decision-making structure so groups can collectively decide on matters that affect the area and then, it says, to carry out 12-step work and if you go to this chapter chapter 4 the area committee you know it says the area committee is especially focused on the health of the area and thus on growth and harmony in the aa fellowship an area committee deals with all kinds of service problems now i'm going to give a lot of my experience based on a lot of different areas obviously i can't help that i got sober in area 49 served in a delegate as area 19 live today in area 15 but i've been to many assemblies and area committee meetings and everybody does it differently we've said this a million times that's the big problem with the service manual is it's an overall view of what's going on in aa but it's not a guideline or a policy document for how each area does business and if we start at 100 000 feet there are areas that have weekend assemblies there are areas that have one day assemblies we've already been over that either way is fine whatever works best for that area then there are these area committees which basically the area committee is the assembly minus the GSRs you know it says right here what's the composition typically composed of all DCMs area officers and chairs of area service committees so it's basically everybody except the GSRs. Now, inside these one-day assemblies and weekend assemblies, there are a couple of things that are very common. Assemblies that meet weekend, a lot of time the area committee will meet over that weekend as well as other times throughout the year. one day assemblies it's very common that the area committee does not meet that day they just have their assembly so those are kind of common rules that you see out there one day assembly no area committee meeting at the assembly the area community meets at other times weekend assembly the Area Committee might meet at the Assembly over the weekend but it also meets at other times the most important thing to get out of this and i think in the archives of this workshop is we did a workshop on the original service manual which was called the third legacy manual is the original purpose of the assembly is to elect the delegate and give feedback on conference items that's the purpose of the assembly that's the purpose being connected to the gsrs now over the last you know 70 years or so we have a lot of gray areas and a lot things that have changed one of the original purposes backed up by history was the area committee was supposed to be empowered to deal with most day-to-day issues of the area so that the assembly and the GSRs are not bogged down with a lot of other issues and there are a lot of areas that still do business this way the assembly is very focused now most of the areas meet quarterly there's a couple that meet less but most areas at least meet quarterly as assembly but when you think about that um if every item of business needed to go through the assembly how time-consuming that is and what a lack of trust that is in our trusted servants you know i have no problem with the statement trust your trusted servants as long as it's okay to trust but verify and ask questions that makes sense to me but paying normal bills to do business or just items like that of buying coffee for the assembly or finding a location where to meet or some areas have an area office or whatever is if you're electing your dcms your aerial officers and your area committee chairs and your delegate and your alternate delegate if you don't trust them to get certain work done you got a lot bigger problems you got much bigger problems and you know one of the things that this uh causes is sometimes we don't pay attention to we're really good at spending money in alcoholics anonymous really good and if you read the quarterly the qfr the quarterly financially results that were distributed recently from gso you know that contributions are down 17 percent from last year 17 is a astronomical figure in this year's budget you're talking like 800 700 000 they're down 10 percent of what they thought they would bring in this years ten percent is an astronomical number but when aa service first started there were no regional forums There was no regional service assemblies. There were no regional delegate get-togethers. I'm just using those as examples of, and I've been to all of them, spoken at some of them. Still go to some of em. I'm not anti any of them but I just want to give the example of sometimes we spend money on a small scale. but it has a big effect on the aa overall population i can just use narasa and prasa prasa being the first regional service assembly narasa starting in the early 90s but since i live in the southeast region now although i did just buy a home in the northeast region to use in the summers um uh let's use sasa the southern states area service assembly as an example of what i'm talking about if each area funds three officers to go to sasa a lot of areas fund more than three but just three pick any three you want but a lot areas fund some of the committee chairs but i'm just going to stick with an easy number of three the delegate alternate delegate and area chair let's just say on average each are funded to go area by area it's 3 000 bucks or maybe somewhere around there but in In the AA budget, it's $33,000 AA dollars that is no longer in the AA bank account. $33 thousand. It's a lot of money. And today, as we've created these events and assemblies meet more often than they used to, what about assemblies? I mean, if you just take an assembly that's quarterly and reduced it to the General Service Conference in the fall, I mean the spring, and an assembly in the fall, let's just use two as an example. And when it's not your election year, you do something else. But let's just say two assemblies a year. In a lot of areas, for a group, that's $2,000 a year if they have four assemblies. In my area would be more money. It's closer to 1500 each assembly, but I like to use small numbers so that no one can email me and debate me for like three hours, right? So I'm going small but let's just say you're a quarterly assembly area and you reduce to twice a year well that's a thousand dollar savings per group that sends a gsr to the assembly a thousand dollars now when you roll that out it doesn't sound like a lot of money but and i'm going to use 50 30 10 10 for groups that make contributions and in my example it's 50 to the local intergroup 30 to the general service board 10 to the district and 10 to the area but just think about that even if you're you take one thousand dollars take fifty percent of that that's five hundred dollars if 40 groups gave five hundred dollars extra to their inner group or central office that would be twenty thousand dollars i just want to be clear twenty thousand dollars now what about the thirty percent number thirty percent of two thousand or thirty percent of a thousand is three hundred dollars three hundred dollars saved on that out of that thousand that saved from not going to all those assemblies you take three hundred dollars and now we're not talking about just areas and groups in your inner group we're talking about all 93 areas. Even if you took 50 groups per area, that's 4,650 groups and times that by 300? That's a lot of money. I just want to make sure that you understand that. 393, I'm going to use 50. I'm going to be really low. 93 times 50 is $4,650. Times that by 300 it's 1 million 395 dollars one million three hundred and ninety five dollars and so i wanted to give those numbers because the area committee is supposed to be a way that we can more effectively handle our business and if we keep creating new events and assemblies keep getting more expensive for groups you know they always say you know whether you're the president of a bank or the president of the united states or even if you're the head of your household there's a sign on your desk that says the buck stops here in AA the buck stops at the group everything comes from the group eventually and the less money the groups have the less money that can be contributed to intergroups districts, areas and the general service board and so you know the officers of the area committee are the same as the officers for the assembly the area chair the secretary the treasurer the registrar and then the dcms in the area committee chairs and we're not talking about not letting gsrs talk about conference topics that's obviously a gsr topic or let's say a major policy change to the area guidelines that might be an area might decide that they should deal with that as an assembly but when we're talking about finding hotels and when we are talking about paying bills and creating a budget and everything else the area committee is supposed to be the more nimble body that can get this together and i would compare it to the general service board the general service board has 21 trustees and a lot of committees and a lot of work gets done through those trustee committees and through the general service board but you know what doesn't get done through the General Service Board the day-to-day operations of GSO and the grapevine and publishing the AA World Services Board deals with publishing and the office the grapevine board deals with the grapefine corporation they're not 21 people each they're nine or ten people each and they get together much more often imagine the general service board started meeting as often as aws instead of four meetings a year they would have eight or nine 21 people on the light end to fly to new york to put in a hotel from thursday sometimes wednesday to sunday night or monday morning 21 eight times eight more 21 plane tickets all those extra hotel rooms some areas really have this down to a science and they have a very effective area committee but over time and not just my area i'm not picking on my area there's more than my area around the country in Canada where the area committee has kind of lost its way and all decisions are now made by the area assembly and you can't get anything done unless you get the assembly together if we had all the money in the world that was never a problem we wouldn't care But you also have to understand the toll it takes on GSRs and district members. If you're a GSR, where I live, we're asking you to go to four assemblies and 12 district meetings a month. Districts didn't always meet every month. Not every place do they meet every months. Some places they meet other months, some places every quarter. But my point here is that it's 2025. AA is smaller than it used to be. We can debate whether COVID had an effect on that. We have more groups online than ever before in our history. And inflation is not stopping. That's not a political statement. I'm just basing it on the science that I read in the economic journals of today that I read for work. Inflation's not going away. And while inflation is not going way, you know what's not getting smaller? The agenda to the General Service Conference. That's getting larger all the time. That getting larger and so where you know i don't like to say alcoholic thinking or alcoholic logic it's human logic and human failure and human thinking is we're gonna do more with less and then way less to a point where then it starts to really affect us and i think this chapter in the service manual is probably a hidden gem for AA of the next 20 or 30 years of all their ways we can do business more effectively by empowering the area committee. The area committee is not made up of some guy like me who just showed up to be a first-time gsr with no service experience that's not who's on the area committee it's not like we're throwing our lives in the hands of people don't have experience the dcms all have served as a gsR some of them maybe more than once the area Committee chairs have usually probably all been an area service somewhere between five and ten years the area officers the registrar the treasurer the recording secretary the corresponding secretary the delegate the alternate delegate most of them have probably been in service over 10 some over 20. like if ever there was a time that trusted your trusted servants it's to trust the area committee and when aa's service structure first started and the third legacy manual was passed out. That's why, and I'm not using the gender neutral term just because I want to make sure if you look it up, they use the term committee man. You see that a lot littered in the concepts and the conference charter and places like that. The district committee member or committee man, they said, which called committee person, committee woman, committee man doesn't matter to me in today's day and age. But it really was that DCM who was taking care of the day-to-day business to keep the area surviving throughout the year with the area officers. And one of their number one responsibilities was to make sure they got all the GSRs together so that they could elect the delegate. One of their other number one responsibilities is to find a way in the winter leading up to April to make sure that the groups are informed of the general service topics. You know, report backs after the conference. Some areas do it at assembly, but a lot of areas don't. a lot of areas the report back is a separate meeting or meeting meetings some by district some by zone some areas use zones that are a group of districts but my whole point is that there's only so much money in the aa basket and we shouldn't ever be afraid to look at ways to use that money more effectively and you know i don't know about you but like when you ask a gsr to be a g s r and you tell them that you're gonna put them in a room for nine hours and maybe you're going to have like four or five votes some of the stuff super not policy changing just what you would call housekeeping budget items and things like that you talk to some gsrs it's it's not that they don't didn't like a service some of them just were bored out of their minds. Because the content of what they went to wasn't worth the sacrifice in their time. And it's easy for someone as arrogant as me to say, well, you don't love AA then. But that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous, like we should be making people make the most of their time it's 2025 people have lives and go back to school and try to work and have families and let's not forget personal recovery and sponsees and everything else you know we don't want to be seen well the last thing i want to hear somebody say about going to an area assembly is it was boring i didn't care about what we voted on i would like assemblies to be meaty and have topics that people couldn't wait to get up and share about and also if it is a policy level decision that more time is allowed for sharing from gsrs because they're not weighed down or the time isn't taken away by routine business and budget matters so i'm going to stop there but i would entertain any questions about area committees or area assemblies be glad to take them please send them in via chat Please send your questions in. up here's a good question how do i find out about how areas with active area committees do their work great question what i would suggest now believe me the last thing i want to do is insult any current delegate and since we have 93 of them and there's a chance one could be here or could be listening on a recording there is no rule that you can't call gso but gso is a bad place to call for this question what you really want to do is search some of the other area websites besides your own because a lot of areas put their guidelines up on their website now now it might be password protected for aa members but there'll be a contact email on that website to maybe call to maybe email the area chair or the area secretary or the área delegate but i would reach out to someone in another area and it's a good idea no matter what you know i was just on a uh workshop the other night that south the south jersey delegate did which was excellent and she had two delegate guests to talk and um i laughed because one of the delegate guests said you know I love that you're asking me and the other delegate to come here because in my area, we don't want to hear about how anybody else does anything different. That is just evil and we keep out. And I just think that's kind of funny because I've seen that mindset all over the 93 areas. Like this is the way we do it. This is the way we've always done it. So I would tell you that if you can reach out and get another area or a couple of areas guidelines or handbook or their area service manual it will be interesting reading and maybe give you an idea that maybe you don't do or maybe you'll read something and say well we do that better than they do but either way opening your mind is a great experience um but for the person who asked that question um you can send me an email i know you have my email you can sent me an e-mail and i will direct you to uh a couple of areas that have very active area committees and maybe you could see how it's written down let's see i do not know if this is pertinent when the general service office is below the nine to twelve month threshold does that mean that they are not fully self-supporting no it does not mean that we've always been self-supporting through contributions and literature profit and majority contributions the reserve fund is very low right now it's not that that's not an issue but whether we're self-supporting or not is can we pay our this year's expenses with the money that came in this year that's what determines whether we are self supporting or not someone said that's a great topic how do we get people involved in service without turning them off yes listen the gsrs we elect that are never going to go to an assembly it's hard to change that the ones i worry about are the ones that go to their first assembly and never come back the ones that actually took the time uh somebody asked a question that's off topic so i can't uh and answer that um can i go over the gso numbers again why i just said that the latest quarterly financial report says contributions for the first six months are 17 percent uh less than last year and 10 below the budget for the 1st 6 months this year those are significant shortfalls i'm in an area that has 2 500 plus meetings only 351 gsrs at our area meeting this past saturday it seemed like we have about 100 to 150 people is this normal it's kind of normal about 40 percent of the registered groups contribute but here's the problem we shouldn't care about the 2500 meetings We should care about how many groups are inside those 2,500 meetings. It's groups we deal with here and not every meeting is a group. Suggestions for DCMs to motivate GSRs to go to the area assembly. Let them know what we're discussing. Let them knows why it's important. if it's leading up to the general service conference point them on the agenda of the conference agenda to topics that their home group is really going to want to care about do we have to mention the preamble in the plain language big book i mean um how many groups didn't take part in those votes in the service manual the chair is the minimum of solid sobriety three to five years and all other offices a solid period of sobriete with no year requirements why and why would that be the rule for solid sobrietty well listen we all have our own definition of solid i'm not afraid to say that you shouldn't be a gsr if you haven't been through the big the steps in the big book if you don't have a good foundation in recovery that should be your number one priority you're dying of a critical fatal illness i would hope that a solid member means somebody who's been through the traditions a solid remember meaning somebody who is not only going to service meetings but is involved with a home group i would start there let's see great question i didn't somebody said you said delegates have at least 20 years of experience that's good but how is it possible to get delegates in their 30s and 40s if this is the case so i'm sure that's directed at me um i did not say that let me repeat what i said i said if you don't have faith in the area committee let's talk about the breakdown of the area community all the dcms were at least a gsr they have two years of better probably If they had two years when it started as a GSR, they have four years now. Most of the area committee chairs are probably going to have between five and 10 years. I said there will be delegates who have over 20 years. That's not the case or the rule. You don't need 20 years in service to be a delegate or be an area chair. we've just created a system where two years at a time we've created like this matrix of promotions and we talk bad about anyone that doesn't follow that path but we should just stick to concept nine when we're electing people for every position elect the best person who's available at that time that should be our rule concept nine i emailed gso on well let me read uh i emailed gso if they could tell me how many assemblies are hybrid i still have not heard back uh what i would suggest there's quite a lot i'm not sure gso is keeping that statistic um what i would tell you is you could ask your area chair or your area delegate to email their fellow area chairs the area delegates have a way to talk to each other inside the gso portal they can ask each other questions you could ask your area delegate to find that out if you're in a private group aa related on social media even the monday night group you could ask would if anybody is from a hybrid assembly please let me know but there's quite a few hybrid assemblies right now our area delegate started a monthly forum for gsrs to try to get more involvement from the area gsr's but the area shut it down after two months how can we who are gsrrs agsrs get the area to actually acknowledge that gs rs we aren't even welcome to share at most assemblies it's only the dcm of their alternates were allowed at the mic for anything a good question i would say this change is hard and life is difficult we start there right um um I feel bad for that area alternate delegate because sometimes I think that certain people in service like that a lot of groups aren't involved and while publicly they say they want more people to be involved anyone that does anything to try and get more involvement they shoot holes at um what i would tell you is every area assembly has different rules about who can speak at my area a gsr can speak in the assembly but they can't make a motion in georgia at the assembly only a g s r can vote the areas officers and dcms can't vote if you don't like how your area operates then your group should be bring a motion to your district and your district should put something on the agenda for your area to discuss or maybe you just decide to do an area inventory and make that the motion and you know um we should never be afraid to find better ways or more ways to get more people in service. In very large geographical areas, how to address the perception and sometimes reality that a select few or only some districts represent the area because some parts of the area is so far away it's cost or time prohibitive to be at area committee meetings? That's a great, great question. Every area is going to have its clicks, and they're going to change over time. There's always going to be one home group that everyone thinks controls the district. It always gonna be one district that everyone things controls the area. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. But at the end of the day, we're talking about participation. now areas that meet in one central location the problem with that is that every time they meet there usually so the furthest away for one assembly is going to be the furlest way for all assemblies what i would tell you to do is look at your history for the last 20 or 30 years and maybe come up with a suggestion that we try something new even temporarily a couple of times um or look at the travel distance or the over having to stay overnight and try to make it fair for everyone but all we've done over the last 60 or 70 years is spend more money, create more service positions, and the AA basket has not kept up with it. So an area inventory is a good place to start. i would also ask and i'll make sure that i make this as long as what you send is anonymity proof but if your area guidelines or your handbook for your area it's not a national security agency eyes only document i just we talk sometimes in aa like we can't share anything but if your area guidelines or handbook are do not have any full names in them then please post them on the monday night group um in the private group as a file and let other people see them let them take a look at them um i'm a big believer that we should be taking good ideas from anywhere okay friday night at the gsr school at our area assembly our alternate delegate was teaching he said the only place you can read about the traditions in a literature is the 12 and 12 in the 12 traditions illustrated he also said that we have 16 class b trustees then we elected him as our delegate the next day how can we elect informed delegates if we are being informed by misinformation great question well it's a trick question because we currently have 15 class b's not 14 like we usually do but it's not 16. the bylaws give an exception if we have a class b alcoholic chair that the other 14 alcoholic trustees are still there so when they replace that class a will have 22 and not 21 trustees that can only happen when there's a class b chair um you know if your alternate delegate gave bad information i mean we just i can't stress it enough you know i mean i'm going to turn to a literature let me just get to the right page good service leaders together with sound and appropriate methods of choosing them are at all levels indispensable for our future and it goes on to say we need the best i didn't write that word builded you can look it up in the dictionary um it should not be a popularity contest and it should be a popular contest it should just not be because someone has shown up for so many years in a row obviously the only place to read about the traditions is not the 12 and 12 and 12 traditions illustrated i could name so many other places starting with the big book where the traditions are mentioned before they even really existed and then a comes of age the a group pamphlet i could go on and on but we really have to elect the best people what is considered a far enough distance to consider needing or justifying to stay overnight well i don't think i would want to see a rule on that i think the area can determine the rules for its servants i think a group can decide if it's gsr needs a room for overnight and i think that's dependent on a lot of things are we talking about you know four 25 year olds vaping and drinking energy drinks the whole way there and back who if they did have a room wouldn't go to bed till four in morning anyway i mean i don't know if you know like we can't put everybody in a box but if we have someone who has an accessibility issue or maybe doesn't see well at night and drives during the day i think that's a decision that each group should make if they want to fund their gsr that way what do you think it means when it says the area committee is especially focused on the health of the area what does the health ofthe area mean it's a great question i think itmeans is the area serving the groups i don't think the health of the area is determined by our group sending the area enough money if people are getting good service they'll pay for it people don't like when you say that in aa but the district and the area should be serving the fellowship and so when you look at certain things like i'll just give you an example go to your area's budget get it get your budget for this year look at how much money you spend on corrections treatment cooperate with professional community and public information and getting the message out compared to how much you meet for meeting we have flipped that in most non-profits 70 is a barely acceptable average of how much the percentage of your money that goes towards your mission should be used but the amount of money that we pay for bureaucracy and meeting compared to the amount of that we carry the message these days is way upside down and i think that's what an area committee should be looking at and the health of an area with things that were brought up should the location be changed should the day be changed Should it be hybrid? All those questions. I think a healthy area is one that is always challenging itself to be better, not living in the status quo of the past of this is how we've always done it. Some of you I know, some of you, I don't know. I might recognize you because i see you on monday night but i i've never really spent any time with you i i don't know you personally so i don' t know what you do for a living i don''t know if maybe you go to school i don'T know if MAYBE you're on your homeowners association board i DON'T know IF YOU'RE ON YOUR LITTLE LEAGUE BOARD but i am pretty confident that whatever you are involved in outside of AA, that one of the number one things that outside thing is always looking at is can we do something better? You know, in the business world, we'll say, is there a better mousetrap? And a lot of times there is a better mouse trap. but where you know i'm a broken record on this but when you get to the concepts you know and i say how many people go through the concepts and they never read the introduction um where it says um is what we do hardened down in gospel and it says of course not one of the things I find interesting if you look at the general service conference report and I'm not here to debate group consciences so I'm not talking about the outcomes I'm talking about the agenda items why are there more agenda items to change our message than agenda items to find new and better ways to carry it? Or agenda items to do our work more effectively? And I think that's a lesson we could learn from the outside world. There's much that I've taken from AA and brought to other charity boards that I serve on. But the one thing I would never take from AA is what I think is our number one failing score, and that's we don't use lessons learned. In the rest of the world, lessons learned, the bad ones especially, are our greatest teachable moment. but at all levels in AA, we don't like to say something didn't work or it failed. And, you know, I think that is like a huge thing that we need to look at. Like the number one topic should be how can we do this better? Okay. Another question. we had an election on saturday our alternate delegate rotated into delegate our area chair rotated into alternate delegate and our alternate chair rotated into chair they even use the term rotation instead of elections how do i help change this custom in our area I would start at your district level about educating GSRs and other people at your district. And I would stop suggesting to your new area chair that maybe you should have a workshop. I don't know what your area guidelines say, I'm guessing there was kind of an election, but they just all went to the next spot. And maybe they all deserved it. I don t know them, i wasn't there um but when's the last time there was a concept9 workshop leading up to elections like what are we looking for how often is a gsr told that we have four attributes of leadership in concept 9 that we say are indispensable. Responsibility, flexibility, tolerance, and the most important one of them all, according to Bill W., vision. And vision is about the future, which is about change. and so maybe you need to have a concept nine workshop of some kind but you need to always be talking about it because my experience in aa service is that it takes a long time it might even surpass your time in service you might be the first person who brought up and everybody hates you for talking about it and 12 years later after your long not serving at the area level the area is discussing it but the only way that happens is for one lone voice to bring it up what do you think about an area not willing to post their yearly budget on their website the finance committee was so opposed to the idea because they didn't want to answer questions about it so i'm not sure what the questions would be about posting it or questions about the budget itself so i am a little at a disadvantage but i will say this what is so secret about a budget especially if it's in the member protected area that's password protected i even think the real financials should be there i think the audited financial report for the general service board and affiliated entities should be on the gso website other charities and non-profits aren't afraid for people to see their audited report um so i would you know i would strongly disagree but i'm just one person the day our alternate delegate was elected she declared that she was going to read the service manual well thank god i am glad to hear that that she had only used as a reference work how do we encourage servants to be better prepared well again maybe before our elections a couple of months before inside a concept nine workshop we should have people talking about what kind of experience should the people have including being familiar with our literature including the service manual i'm not afraid to say it if you have never read the service manual and you got elected an alternate delegate you have done the fellowship a huge disservice the fellowship deserves better than that interesting you said we don't like to look at our failures after all that's where our traditions came from trial and error would you agree if only more people would truly embrace the traditions after going through the steps that we would have more open minds to change well sometimes i'm not sure a lot of people go through the traditions realize if they don't read our history or talk to someone who knows our history already comes of age i think some people read the traditions into 12 and 12 and think these were right from the beginning and good ideas and you know we've been doing it all along they don't realize that we almost burnt a to the ground but i do think knowing that history is a good basis for always suggesting change at aa service um i don't know i mean i'm kind of at the end of my professional career i want to get out of it early um but i mean i've been a die hard okay i've been a die hard in my profession in my industry i know everybody in my industry across the united states i go to all the big events and conferences um when i think about my professional life and like if i am not up to date on the latest and greatest waste, ways of doing business, technology, even people skills, my company would be bankrupt. We would be gone. I mean, you know, GSO, I have the greatest respect for everybody who works there. Does that mean I agree with everybody all the time? Of course not. But I'm going to give you an example. And probably sometimes I get accused of picking on lawyers. but in this example a lawyer gave me a great example which i've always used when you look at the people who work the aa service desks okay the staff members literature treatment regional forums international conventions group services i could go on and on and on right but let's go back to 1995 pre-email okay you sent the letter into gso not an email the letter might have come by mail maybe facts and the staff member if it was simple could just say send this letter that we always send or the staff number dictated a letter and each staff desk had one staff assistant right now i i just want to tell you you know i was at this technology uh seminar and one of the speakers was a partner at a law firm and he was talking about that he joined the legal profession in the 80s and at that time every lawyer had a legal secretary and maybe a paralegal. And they did all their stuff in dictation. But then he said, today, like four lawyers share a legal secretary because no one dictates a letter. And it enables them to have more paralegals and lawyers to do the actual work. Now, I'm sure if I talk to some law firms, they'd probably disagree with that and say they're overworked. But my point is this. We've not changed our model. Should we still have one staff assistant per staff member? I'm not sure. Maybe. But what's happening now? No one's opening letters with a letter opener and paper clipping them to the envelope and putting them in a file and putting him on somebody's desk, that doesn't happen anymore. And no staff member is picking up an old... I used to have one at my desk. You pick up this microphone and I talk into it and say I'm dictating a letter to this person. No one's doing that. What's happening now at GSO? Every staff member is typing the response to almost every email they get and all i'm trying to say here and i have the greatest respect for everybody that works there and i know you know the amount of work that's there my message is at every level of service we have to be asking is there a better way to do it today and do we have our eye on the ball as to what's coming down in a year or two okay somebody answered their own question and told me so i love that in the interest of transparency our district voted to list our financials right on the website and we are a virtual district area 14 district 2 no uh password so google aaa area 14 district 2. um their financials right up there if anybody wants to see them i think i can let me see if i can copy this i will send it out in a chat to everyone um but i think that's what's healthy i mean not to reference the big book too often at a service event but if you talk to me or people you know in aa and you ask them about when their lives have blown up completely sober, okay? Their lives have blown up. It's on page 83 and 84 every day when you got up and when you went to bed. were you doing any kind of active 10-step in your life and my so you're still eating so you know what it's not accountable. And why would this district or a group or an area? Couldn't they get themselves D, can you hear me? Yes, okay. We have ridiculous thunderstorms here right now and I know I'm on two devices. Yeah I can hear you, you were a little wonky and I thought it was me. What about now? You're good. Okay, yeah, we have crazy thunderstorms here. My wifi just went out, I'm now on cellular. But it's late.