General Service Warranties and Authority – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 13 of 27 – Billy N.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Billy. I am an alcoholic. Okay, first thing tonight, let's deal with the new zoom settings on chat, which are a total pain in the ass. Dee unmute and take it away. Yeah, I apologize. So if you go into the chat, you have to go into new chat and type Billy's name in order for his name to come out. You can't chat anybody else, but you can chat Billy's Name under new chat in order to chat. Otherwise, it looks like it's disabled because it is, but they have a new layout in Zoom the way that they changed it. It's terrible. It's weird, but that's the only way to chat, Billy. Yeah. it sounds like they did not ask the end users but it is what it is um just a quick uh schedule of uh and the flyer will be out very soon but the dates are for sure are um um July let me just take a look at this so I am right when I say it after tonight the next meeting will be July 14th and that will be appointed committee members and non-trustee directors what do they do and how are they selected up this will be posted very soon July 21st will be the general service board reserve fund how does it work how is it invested how is funded what is it used for and how is different than an endowment and then starting on the 28th of July will be like the welcome to service legacy of service whatever they call it now in the service manual um and then the following week um the fourth will be chapter one of the service manual but that will all be posted very soon tonight we are finishing the warranties um which i'm just gonna a brief reminder for the tape um that these existed before the concepts they existed from when the conference charter came out they are article 12 of the conference charter um and uh they can't be changed without 75 of the group's permission in writing um like the traditions and the steps and this was protected even before the concepts were protected that's how important the warranties are i would tell you just to finish off on warranty two which we went into depth last week if you are talking about the seventh traditions it is impossible not to mention warranty too warranty 2 is all about expanding the seventh tradition definition so tonight we will start on warranty 3 which says none of the conference members shall be placed in a position of unqualified authority over any others so let's just divide that first by who are the conference members i'm going to use 135 because it's easy math sometimes it's 137 sometimes 136 but the conference voting members are the 93 area delegates the 21 or 22 trustee delegates the six non-trustee director delegates and the 15 or so staff delegates i call them all delegates because the bylaws of the general service board make clear that every voting member is a delegate Now, when we say delegate in our normal language, we mean like delegates versus everyone else. Delegates and the boards or delegates and the Boards and staff, but it's better to look at it that everybody, like the bylaws say, is an equal delegate. That week at the conference, their job is to be equal, regardless of what their name tag says. Some people may give reports at the Conference. the board chair, the board treasurer, all the board chairs, AWS, Grapevine, General Service Board, the General Service Board treasura. Usually the trustees at large give an international presentation and sometimes during the week depending on the schedule there are certain workshops that are presented but everybody's an equal regardless if they're presenting at conference or not they have an equal vote um so those are the conference members and it goes on to say we have learned that this principle is of incalculable value to the harmonious conduct of our conference affairs in its application and our structure has already been extensively discussed under the concept entitled the right of participation which emphasizes that our world servants both as individuals and as groups shall be entitled to voting rights in reasonable proportion to their responsibilities so again it's going back to another concept so if we went back to concept for the right of participation and again that super important line in reasonable proportion to there are several responsibilities so all 135 people are equal as voters equal voters and we don't have caucuses we don t have parties even though we have regions we don't regional voting blocks we shouldn't have any of that so what is the reasonable proportion it's kind of like a review of concept four If there are 93 out of 135 area delegates, the reasonable proportion is that the area delegates who are representing the groups get the most say, over 66%. They have the biggest responsibility. Next is the trustees, after that the staff, afterthat the directors. So, as individuals, they're equal, but as groups of positions, they are not equal. There's four different kind of voters, area delegate, trustee delegate, non-trustee director delegate, and staff delegate. They're all equal. But the groups have more say than everyone else. And the trustees have more stay than the directors or the staff. it then goes on to say because this right of participation is so important we have made this subject of this warranty thus providing the insurance that conference action can never alone overturn or amend this right for any purpose widespread group consent would be needed which would be proved difficult through not necessarily impossible for the conference to obtain we believe that our whole service experience fully justifies the taking of the strong stand against the creation of unqualified authority at any point in our conference structure it should be noted too that this warranty against absolute authority is far more general and sweeping in its nature than a general guarantee of voting participation it really means that we have aa will not tolerate absolute absolute human authority in any form the voting rights urged under our concept of participation are simply the practical means of checking any future tendency to an unqualified authority of any sort. This actually happened a couple years ago at the conference, so it's a good example. Let's just say it happened in the last seven years. But a conference committee presented a recommendation to the conference floor. The chair... Let's talk about that in a second. There are three, the only proper use of the word co in all of AA service is at the general service conference because there are three voting members who are co-chairs for the week. It is usually the general manager, the chair of the general service board and the delegate chair, the area delegate chair. so in the last seven years a committee made a recommendation and the chair who was chairing at the time called that committee recommendation out of order that is very unusual a committee should have the ability to bring a uh recommendation forward and let the um body decide but the chair ruled it out of order and then wouldn't allow debate on it now the good news here is that next year the chair apologized at the start of the conference and it was also reaffirmed and this is a good thing for anybody in an area or in a group or anything. Now, I've been chairs of tons of AA committees. I am not anti-chair. I want the chair to have a wide latitude to make decisions and keep the meeting moving. But in the rare occurrence that somebody thinks the chair made a grave mistake, then any voting member of that body should be able to make a motion to reverse the chair's decision. In other words, no human being in Alcoholics Anonymous should ever be an unqualified, unchecked authority. Soren, 99% of the time, does the chair say that's out of order, this is out of water, we're doing this? Yes, and we should elect good chair people. But if the chair makes a catastrophic mistake or one that just seems unfair, any voting member should be able to make a motion at the floor and i would tell you if you were told this is not okay i would say well this is what they do at the general service conference that doesn't mean they're going to let you do it but i'm just telling you this was reaffirmed so that if that happened again somebody would get up and say mr or mrs chair i make a emotion to reverse your decision And if it was seconded, then it could go to discussion and vote just to make sure that there is no unqualified human authority. Now the other thing we have to be careful of is that no person become more important than others who's a voting member. Now there's big debate about this regarding the conference agenda because the trustees set the agenda. trustee committees forward things to the conference to put on their agenda and the trustees conference committee sets the agenda this has been this way since the early 70s before that the delegates had a lot of input in the agenda there are ways the delegates participate now though there are conference calls after the january board meeting to let the delegates give feedback about something that should or shouldn't be on the agenda to the trustee chair of their corresponding trustee committee um and you know the job of the trustees and this is i think where in current day aaa we see people debating a little i have been a member of a trustees committee that decides whether something should go to conference or not i've also been a number of the conference committee on the the trustees committee on the conference which deals with the ones that no one knows where they go and i've also been chair of the trustees conference committee when an agenda item is sent in the role of the trustees or a trustee committee is really to simply decide is it something the conference needs to deal with because it might be something that the conference doesn't need to deal it might be service material we don't need a conference action to change service material a trustees committee or a corporate board could do that it might something that doesn't rise to the level of policy i know people send me agenda items all the time and i'm like you know what you wrote is very nice but you don't have to make it an agenda item send it to the aws board or the a grapevine board or send it to the conference to the trustees correct corrections committee the only thing the conference needs to vote on is things that require conference approval um what the trustees are not supposed to do is weigh the merits of that item so in other words somebody sends in an item and i'm on that trustees committee and i don't like it which is possible and so instead of me thinking does this go to the conference or not i'm like well maybe i should roadblock it now i can tell you i never saw that I hear complaints today that that may be happening. That's not my experience as a trustee. My job was to decide, is this something the conference should deal with? Not decide the merits of the agenda item that was sent in. Staff puts together the background material. They're supposed to put all relevant background material regarding that agenda item together. Some people think that that's too much power for the staff. I would tell you that if you're on a conference committee as a delegate and you receive background material that you thought was incomplete, that something important was missing, then there is a process you can go to your delegate chair and ask them to go to your trustee committee chair and say hey there's something important from the background that's missing or if you felt the background looks one-sided the background is supposed to be fair it's supposed to spell out just the good, the bad, and the ugly of whatever we're talking about. And usually what we're talking about is past minutes of committees or boards that have dealt with that subject. Because as you've probably noticed, if you've looked at our conference agendas, we repeat ourselves a lot. In fact, we make a decision and three years later, we want to make a new decision. Or we don't like that the decision that was made, so we try to get it back on the agenda. But the agenda information should be complete. It's probably, of all the warranties, the most important. And I say this because the conference was never meant to become a rubber stamp. It never was. If you look at the history of the conference they use words like inspect inspect the financials inspect the office i think that would make people freak out today um but there has to be a balance of power and it has to a clear balance that when it comes to things that need to be decided by the conference the conference should be fair now i'll also say this and i'm on record about this so it's nothing new from me and i am not anti-plain language big book and if that makes you hate me fine but i'm just for the purpose of this story i'm not anti plain language change, I realized the reading level inside correctional facilities. But when I became a director and a trustee, I was told that between January or February when the agenda comes out and the conference, that I'm not to lobby. not to let delegates area delegates be the information channel to the groups in their area if i happen to be at an assembly i don't need to throw my two cents in especially when they're talking about conference actions because i have a vote and i shouldn't be there as a trustee or a director to influence or to say vote my way because i'm a trusty or a director and listen we can all say we would hope that people don't vote because they see someone else voting a certain way but you all go to assemblies you know what happens when certain people raise their hands or when certain People are in favor of it sometimes it looks unfair so last year what I totally disagreed with is the trustees doing weekly sessions for regions and groups and districts on the plain language big book now some of them said they were asked to do that but i was at prasa when someone said from the microphone if you'd like one of these presentations this is my email and phone number that to me is over the line um and i can tell you honestly i've had some discussions with current trustees and a lot of them agree um maybe it was fear fear that the area delegates weren't getting the proper information back but the bottom line is no lobbying either way that we let the conference decide and no conference member should have any further authority than another so warranty for all important decisions be reached by discussion vote and whenever possible substantial unanimity i would just say to everybody here um no pamphlet does a better job of explaining this than the aa group pamphlets about informed group conscience i mean that's really what it's saying it says here on one hand we erect the safeguard against any hasty or overbearing authority or a simple majority and on the other hand we take notice of the rights and the frequent wisdom of minorities however small because substantial univers unanimity to us is two-thirds not majority it takes two- thirds to put a conference action in to be an advisory action um it goes on to say and when a decision is taken in substantial unanimity does happen to be wrong there can be no heated recrimination everybody will be able to say we had a careful debate we took the decision and it turned out to be a bad one better luck next time lots of aa decisions are changed all the time we're the greatest self-correcting organization in the world probably the point is to have respectful discussion and debate and this means put your phone down this means no texting your service sponsor if you need to text your service sponsor in a meeting that you've been elected to handle you might want to think about letting someone else do the job you and not your service sponsor are given the right of decision it's your right of decision if you want to talk to your service sponsor for 30 hours that week before you go that's fine I hope they're not telling you how to vote and instead are only talking about the underlying principles but inside AA business meetings we don't need to be texting people and if you have something to say go to the microphone this is also a new trend in aa service it's called i go to the microphone too much so i'm going to text someone else to go tothe microphone so it's not me up there again that's a new thing that's developed over the last couple of years we don't need that either um we should be engaged we should not rolling our eyes we should not be chanting we should not be clapping if it goes our way none of that should be going on in a discussions or aaa elections at all it should just not happen and it does sometimes and that's too bad people ask the question all the time why does it say discussion vote um and then substantial unanimity obviously in most places you have to make a motion in order to have discussion sometimes that limits talking about things in some areas or the general service conference have a what's on your mind session in other words talk about something that's going on in aa but you're not going to take any action on it but when it comes to important decisions they have to be discussion and vote and substantial unanimity um and respect to the minority opinion and respect for not just calling the question because you gave your two cents and you don't want to listen to the 12 people who are online and by the way i'm just going to throw that out there that's one thing the general service conference is better at than most areas in intergroups if you speak once on a topic at the general service conference again you don't get to go to that microphone until everybody else who has not gone gets to go and there's no one at the microphone because there's nothing worse than i'm first at the microphone i tell you why you should vote my way and then i get back online to make a motion to call the question or table it it's not fair and i just want to say this like the traditions and i always say that we have to make sure that we're thinking about the newcomer in the room you may know better but the new person does not so if you i don't know if your speaker takes out a cross and holds it up you and i know that's crazy right we don't do that in aa meetings but the newcomer might not know that but same for the new gsr if the new GSR doesn't see that their input is welcome or that they get listened to like everyone else they're not going to come back. They're going to think it's a waste of time. So it's super important that we conduct ourselves in a non-ugly fashion and just have a debate and discussion. Debate even freaks out some people in AA, but I mean, discussion, debate, call it what you want. And then we go and we deal by substantial unanimity and we hear the minority opinion. It's so important, it's a warranty. So Warranty 5. No conference action should be ever personally punitive or an incitement public controversy it appears the last couple of years that we've never had more censures for the board sent in than the last five years six years and it appears that some board members are telling people that if you censure somebody you are being punitive I would say that's only possible if you have not read our literature If you have read our literature, the 12 and 12 the 12 traditions, AA comes of age and the concepts If somebody is not doing their job it is okay to tell them they're not doing their work They're not doing their job If someone is not showing up we don't just let AA suffer, we remove the person and we get somebody else. Now, do we try to do it in a dignified way? Sure. The chairperson might call the secretary who's not showing up and say, you know what, it might be, you have a lot going on in your life, maybe you should just resign. And nothing personal, maybe You do it sometime in the future. there's tons of diplomatic ways like that to handle things but simply let's face it the general service conference is not a legal authority it's a spiritual body so big deal you got censured by a spiritual body I have heard from the last conference that some trustees said that it would affect them professionally if the conference censured them. Way out things like that bother me when people say them. I'm going to tell you right now, I have a professional license in 21 states and have to fill out that renewal application every couple of years. there is no question on any professional license that says were you censured by a spiritual body okay none it might say were you disciplined by an administrative body it might saying did you commit a crime it might say did any regulatory agency that oversees your business discipline you yeah you got to check yes But this thing that's being set out there, like I know that if I was currently an AA trustee and I have my license and I'm the chair of another board and I am a member of another Board and I m an officer where I work. i don't need to report that to anybody and a censure is just telling someone don't do it again we don't like that it happened it's not reorganization it's nicht removing people i hope you know i always say the difference between removing somebody impunitive if someone refuses to step down but is not showing up and you remove them that's not punitive if you write a letter in the area newsletter about it or an article area secretary thrown out for not doing their job that's punitive that's punishing but taking care of AA is not punitive. And I'm not even saying that the trustees deserve to be censured this year. I was not there. I'm Not privy to all that information. I just know that when I hear people saying we're going to wreck somebody's job or career, they just don't know what they're talking about. Or they're hoping that the audience is maybe doesn't work in the professional world like they do and will just follow their lead. And that's too bad. A censure by the General Service Conference is not the board removing somebody. The board is a legal board. That's a legal action. But the conference censuring the trustees it's just a spiritual suggestion that we don't like what you did um incitement to public controversy we stay away from public controversy that's why we have the traditions it's especially why we haben tradition 10 you know we don t take position we don't take um positions on outside issues we don t fan the flames in the press or the media we don' t try to say um uh we don''t try to get our way or to or to try to sway the world how they feel about alcohol or how they fee about alcoholics all we do is say that if you're an alcoholic we may be able to help you we don't even guarantee we can help you we may be able there are plenty of ways for people to stay sober besides alcoholics anonymous but we don t stoke the public flames we don have narratives you know the rest of the world loves narratives and wants to see if they can position themselves within the public relations space to get their way we don't we don t do that we want aa out of the public controversy that's why the manuscript litigation bothered some people because it was public court cases are public and we started that court case we can't help it when people sue us people sue the general service board in a world services all the time we have the person who gets beat up outside the clubhouse in a fight we have The Person Who slips and falls on ice walking out of their meeting they all think they can sue the general service board or AWS when I was the trustee there was even someone who sued us in federal court saying that AA had a satellite and was programming people from the space like hey they're entitled to it but we can't stop when someone sues us But when we sue someone else, we're in control of that. We started the manuscript litigation and then it wound up in the paper. So, you know, we have to be careful. So I'm going to go to the next warranty, which is Warranty 6. That though the conference may act for the service of Alcoholics Anonymous, that shall never form any acts of government and that like the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous, which it serves, the conference itself will always remain democratic in action and spirit. We don't do acts of governance. You're an AA group if you say you are. We don'T have any investigation committee. i know it says like it will be listed after 30 days so the delegate can confirm but what's the job the delegate's job is to confirm the address is right the time is right the gso assign it to the right district in that area we don't have a pontification purification committee. We don't. We don't go out and make sure is it really AA? No, we let people vote with their feet. We let the traditions do that. We stay far away from that. And we don't have acts of government. We're not we don' t have rules about membership. We d'on't have rules about if you drink, can you come back? Because that's why we have the traditions. We used to have these acts of government we had groups that said if you had a slip you could come back but if you had another slip you couldn't come back for a year do you imagine that but that's in writing in the archives we just don't do that the reason there's no acts of government is because we don't have a government we have no centralized authority our authority is not on top the higher you go, the lower you are in the level of authority on the upside-down triangle. The General Service Board and the conference are not supposed to tell groups what to do or districts or areas. Areas are not supposed to tell districts what to do and districts are not supposed to tell groups what to do. now sure can they share their experience of course of course they can but do they get to regulate no and some think uh some think in today's aa we've become too centralized that it looks like the area is supposed to tell the districts what to do but it's the opposite you have to read the concepts and and the traditions to know that um it says here because we set such a high value on our liberties and cannot conceive a time when they will not need to be limited we hear specifically in join our general service conference to abstain completely from any and all acts of authoritative government which couldn't any wise curtail a's freedom under god the maintenance of these freedoms in our conference is a great and practical guarantee that the conference itself will always remain democratic in action and in spirit anything needs voted on at the conference is either about our literature which is our literature not the groups not the districts not the areas literature it's AAWS's literature, or suggestions in our literature on shared experience, how groups should operate, what a treasurer should do. But we definitely don't put out government-like requirements. We just don't do it. It's because all weaved throughout the concepts and the traditions is alcoholics are too susceptible to abusing power that is a fact of life we are very susceptible to amusing power and authority and so we have to take that temptation away and this is the warranty that guarantees that you know i love here's the perfect examples when someone says, well, my service sponsor says that's not an AA event because it's not hosted by a district or an area. Well, you should get a new service sponsor. What would you like me to say? That is not what our AA literature says. The guidelines on conferences and roundups say anyone can host an AA Event, a bunch of AAs together. But we have some areas in districts that feel like they're in the roundup uh i don't know inspection business they should be deciding what really is aaa and what's not aa or how about these people oh no it's a dance do not put it on the area website get rid of it well i hate to break it to these people but the first international convention had a dance and so did the 23rd street clubhouse in new york city and they had flyers so um people can say that all they want we love to regulate official aa we decided not to incorporate the name aaa on purpose it's like one of the first conference actions i don't know why we think we need to be so like regulatory um um if you don't like it don't go to it now if it really crosses a line if you think it's harming other groups or AA as a whole well that's a different discussion but just to regulate we don't do that could you imagine if we did but believe me I know some areas in districts that do they have like committees that vote on whether something can go on the area website it drives me crazy i want aa to only be on aa websites but when we start like regulating the degree of how official the aa is i don't know i hear people say such and i see i hear people say this you can't use the word conference we only have one conference in alcoholics Anonymous, the General Service Conference. I hate to break it to all those people. But there were a conferences before the General Service conference that use that word. So I don't know what to tell them. But it seems we love to, we're just so susceptible to using power and authority. So with that, I'm going to get coffee quick and then go to questions please send them into the chat. Okay, we are back. let's see there will be a new flyer coming out very quickly yes next question uh it'll the flyer will be on the in the facebook is it d is it going to be posted in the chat it's going to be posted in the chart very shortly it'll also be in the facebook group for the monday night group um there's another question here do you think there would ever be a time when they would need to be a center of course i do i hope there's never need but i care about aa more than anyone's ego including my own if the if if the structure isn't handled properly the groups there's only two remedies in the service manual besides rotation, okay? Rotation and death solve a lot of our problems. We all know that, okay, those two things. We also know that elections solve problems. But the only two real remedies for current trusted servants in the Service Manual are censure and reorganization reorganization meaning removing one or more trustees how could it be punitive if bill put it in there for us to do an accenture is kind of like i mean we all know i mean it's kind of a slap on the wrist and we all know how well that works with alcoholics right I mean, I don't know how well it worked when other people slap you on the wrist or if you have any alcoholic children or whatever else. But like all it is, is a warning. All it is is a morning. We don't like what happened. We'd like you to handle it differently in the future. Now that doesn't mean that everything requires a censure. so as far as this year's censures i wasn't there i have no idea it failed um i guess on its merits i hope i hope it didn't fail because people thought because some trustees said that they would be in trouble at their jobs um like i said that just seems a little outlandish to me but censure should not be the first thing we reach to it just shouldn't now i know that i'm an organization person meaning i worry about the health of organizations just as much as the health of the individuals who are inside those organizations as far as toxic culture and so if we have censure after censure coming as an organizational person all I can do is look at it and say wow why is this happening are the delegates being too mean the area delegates or is there a culture on the board that is causing these censures to come in I don't know but I know this if it was happening where i work and it becomes a pattern i'm more worried about the pattern than i am the individual center so that's how i feel about all these i'm not worried about the individual centers i'm worried about what's going on and you know does the conference need to take another inventory like it did this year does the board need to take other inventory do we need to stop you know listen i think anyone should be able to say anything they want i am not against social media i don't care if people share their experience but i do have a problem with ugly comments on social media i do i believe this when it comes to aa service there is never a need for me to argue against your position i just discuss my position why i think a certain way i don't need to ever attack why someone else thinks a certainway once you stop going down that path it's a bad path now on the other hand i want the trustees treated with respect and you know it's it's one of the parts of when people ask me is this a concept question billy is this is is this a warranty question all this trouble we've been having i actually say no it's a tradition question because one of things it says at the end of tradition nine universal respect is the key to their usefulness in other words the groups and the areas should respect the trustees but the trustees should respect the groups in the areas if there is not universal respect for each other our whole system collapses and to me that's kind of what has happened it's not a concept problem it's a tradition nine problem is is somehow we do not have universal respect for each other and i hope that we can return to that because i've heard some comments about this year's conference and you all know i'm not i'm not afraid i'm i'm not against people asking hard questions i'm not afraid i'm not against people being voting one person in the minority but when i hear about how ugly some things get that that disturbs me for sure concerning warranty 5 page c35 second to last paragraph privately however we can inform tradition violators that they are out of order we can follow up by using such other resources of persuasion as we may have can you give an example or a time in your experience of the board when this was used well i do i do want to stress when it says other resources of persuasion we're talking aaa here we're not talking calling people names or or gossiping about people or making ugly comments you know when it um i want to read the question carefully um um can you give an example or a time in your experience at the board when this was used tradition violators that they're out of order can be filed but i mean listen i've had this when i was a board member or not a board number if people call me and ask me a question or if something comes to my attention something came to my attention in the last couple of weeks and I just sent a note to the delegate and it's kind of one of the things that kills me in AA today because an area trusted servant posted on their Instagram feed their letter to speak at the international convention now that identifies that person as an AA member even though the letter so the power of persuasion is to call somebody and share my experience and hopefully they can share with that person there's so many other instances like that not record you know not saying your last name when it's recorded i know most of the people who speak all the time at aa conventions and um a lot of them grew up saying their last name from the podium but i can find a nice dignified way if i feel like it i don't make everything my business for sure um but we do have to make sure um the power of persuasion should be positive and encouraging never ugly and hateful ever ever ever are there safety problems with having gso registration information how long do they keep and how long is it stored our district is asking for gsrs to get a group conscience on this action item we are asked if gso if gsos i don't understand about gso using email only with having gso registration information are you talking about the registration information for the international convention whoever asked that question please clarify next question at an intergroup meeting i was told as by the chair that as a dcm accm i am responsible for a group's listing to assure it is an alcoholics anonymous group i heard you mention that an aa group is that they say they are can you go further in detail well what are you assuring what do they want you to assure are they three or more alcoholics gathered together for the purpose of staying sober with no other outside purpose okay there's one question that's it now if you're like me and you're judgy and judgmental as can be i don't like your meeting i don'T like your format i DON'T like that you changed the blue card i DONT like your definition of an a member i mean come on that's what i'm saying is it two or three alcoholics gathered together for the purpose of sobriety with no other outside affiliation if it is it's aa now if it happened to be an NA meeting of course we want to know that because then it shouldn't be in the AA directory doesn't doesn't mean NA is bad we list AA meetings and groups that's what we list um what I find funny is that i mean i don't know i mean if we started having a committee to investigate meetings i just see so much trouble in that and i think is it an aa meeting is the address right is the location right is time and date right i think that's our business i don' t think anything else is our business so the international convention so i i'm guessing this is a cyber security question is you know what i would tell you and i'm sure this should not be a conference item you should just write the general manager at gso whoever sent this in well because you said your group is thinking about it it's not a conference item it's an office item i can tell you that gso like any other organization like has anybody ever gone from the aws website to the grapevine website people raise their hand thank you do you know what happens when you do that you get a big disclaimer you are leaving aa world services going to another company even though it's the grapevine i can tell you that the office takes cyber security very very it's a big concern there are credit card information that's there the whole world is concerned about cyber security today um but it's not a conference item you should write a letter to the general manager And I'm sure he will get back with a good answer. When does GSO take nonexisting groups off the directory? That's a great question. It takes a lot to remove a group. It's a lot of coordination between the area registrar, the delegate and the group services or registrar uh group registration at gso um but we are not quick to remove groups that no longer exist in your experience is there a path to restoring respect at the conference and in respectful view of trustees is it more inform information around service than the concepts That's a great question, whoever asked it, but yes, of course I think there's a path. But I think it means that I hate to say both sides, but if there are two sides or three sides, they all have to start taking the high road. And they all has to accept the group conscience. and, you know, play fair and get along with others in the sandbox and, you know have let's put a lot of faith in the group conscience process. So maybe no more lobbying weekends by the trustees for a conference agenda item, you know sometimes I think that caused more distrust than other things um especially remember at one of these events they actually took a poll we don't do polling in aa that's not a group conscience we don' t do polling at one them they went so far as to do a poll in the beginning and a poll in the end and said oh more people are in favor of it now this thing must have worked like we don't we don't do that so to the person who asked this question i think nine trustees just rotated i think that's a good shot in the arm of rotation um it really is universal respect and i've told i've pled guilty to it it's easy to go down the upside triangle of of service and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning like i have and be going off to an aws meeting and patting myself on the back and thinking i know better than the a groups that's why they elected me that's why i'm a director it's a spiritual sickness that can invade every trusted servant but you have to work really hard at not letting that invade or when you see it crop up dealing with it and god forbid bringing recovery to service like that should never be like not in fashion bring your recovery to surface you know i saw something at a conference a long time ago and it was a real good example and this was at like a state convention right and on saturday night in the middle of august the air conditioning went out in the hotel the whole hotel and you could only imagine with the alcoholics checking out on sunday morning how they were to those front desk people you know and i remember somebody the speaker being at the podium and saying i want to help everybody out in the audience today i learned this somewhere so we're going to make a chart and we're gonna list what we're resentful at and what did it affect and what was my part in it what was mine part where was i wrong like if you're having a hard time with service if you use inventory to solve other problems in your life why aren't you using inventory and service um it's very easy um to go down the rabbit hole and to forget to bring your service your recovery to service but it is super important um and also to you know if you're that bent out of shape the best thing you can do is go to a whole bunch of crazy aa meetings and not perfect aa meetings the ones that people probably don't even want listed in the book you know the ones like except for like a jukebox and a keg you think you're in a bar right but that's good old low bottom, bottom AA. And, you know, remind yourself what we're doing here. The semicolons, the periods, the new paragraphs. Yes, they look nice. They have some level of importance, but they're not as important as putting out your hand and welcoming somebody to their first meeting of alcoholics anonymous they'll never even be close to that important and so i i am optimistic that we will have more uh that the last couple years which followed covid we've had a lot of challenges i am super optimistic um that we can go down the right path so that is it we will be back in two weeks um we will start with d go ahead unmute yourself perfect i can't post a flyer in the chat only because it's not set up in the mainframe to post um but but i could share screen if you want so it's up to you i could sure you can share the screen it's going to go up in the monday night thing tonight i think another question came in at the last minute i don't want to perfect my area recently had an assembly one of our offices was about to censure our area chair however was threatened and advised that they will be sued for violating warranty 5. to clarify censure is a warning to avoid a repeating behavior not a punishment so um i don't know where that took place and i don t want to take sides um what i would hope is that listen if you go to censure somebody maybe this is something i need to make clear if you put your name on a motion to censure somebody and you write something not true about them on that motion aa is not an immunity from you being protected from not being sued you know some of you might not know this but a couple of years ago a couple of lunatics decided to start a website called saveaa.org and they started to attacking people publicly including myself i wasn't even on the board i was like being blamed for being like the chairman of the illuminati of alcoholics anonymous responsible for the preamble the plain language big book god knows what else but they went too far they published my last name i took legal action against them that website is gone. So you can't go to an AA event and harm someone's character. You don't get some AA freebie from the rest of the world. If you damage someone's character, you might be legally responsible. So I don't know the facts of this whole censure that just took place. I guess it was a vote somewhere at some assembly. All I should say is this. I believe in times like that, cooler heads have to prevail and that that's a time for leaders to step up and maybe get a couple of people in a room that don't want to be in a room together and maybe give them the talk it out. Now, if there's behavior that's going on that's not okay, then the area needs to decide that. But I can't can't be comment on those. Um, I'm not there. I'm not in that area. I don't know the facts. Um I do know this that I said it a couple of years ago and I'm Not taking a position on the General Service Board chair resigning or being asked to resign. We're long beyond that. But what I did say at the time is I hope it wasn't a rush to judgment, that enough time wasn't taken to deal with it because it would start to appear in areas and districts. Well, if the board in one night can get rid of its chair, can I get ridof my chair at an assembly or my treasure at an assembly like the first thing i would do if i was at an assembly where a motion like that was made would be to ask the person to retract it and let's take 30 or 60 days to let a couple of people look into it before we start trying to take drastic action i mean the warranty said it tonight nobody loves hasty like an alcoholic you know nobody like we love the hasty decision the immediate gratification and um that should be like the nuclear option and you should have tried every possible other alternative now if you're being bullied or picked on i'm not saying that's okay um sometimes those things need to be put out sometimes the only way to stop that is to not have it in the dark anymore to shine a bright light on it i'm not saying that that's not needed sometimes it is i'm just saying to do it properly and carefully and take the right time so we will be back in two weeks to talk about appointed committee members and non-trustee directors i thank the person from this group who sent in a note after seeing those announcements then the week after so that is July 14th which is good because I'm having surgery next Monday on my arm because I fell and or something so I need to have a little surgery after the International Convention but I'll be fine by then I'm sure but I would suggest that you read service manual section on appointed committee members and non-trustee directors and i am even going to find an appointed committee member and a non-trustee director who have served in those positions and have them come that night and share 10 minutes about their experience in it so that's it we'll close the responsibility statement 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. Have a good night, everyone. Thank you.