The District and the DCM – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 9 of 27 – Billy N.

anything i'm billy i'm an alcoholic welcome everyone um we will quickly start with the serenity prayer god grant me the serenite to accept things i cannot change the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference so welcome everyone um thank you for understanding next week we may shuffle watch in the facebook group we may shuffle a few of the future weeks because of a guest or two that was asked to come um but tonight we're on district chapter two the district and the district committee member so i would tell you i preach i try not to preach but if there's one thing i preach about the service manual is that it's not a description of how we do business in every area in every district that there are nuances and differences all over nowhere probably more than the chapter on the district we have so many different variations across the country and canada of how districts work even the wording is confusing in today's world called the district and its district committee member well what are they a member of are they A member of um the district committee or is that an old reference for the district committee member meaning a member Of The District who's a member of the area committee there's a million different variations and I'm going to try slowly walk everybody through just things to keep in general if you notice in the book which is incredible it's like three pages about the district duties and responsibilities members of a district committee qualifications for dcm so we should start out here If you happen to run into somebody who is involved in service in the 90s, the 80s, maybe the 70s, there's some questions you should ask them about the structure now and the structure then. most of the people that i know or talk to who are involved in service whether i talk to them currently or i have in the past have all told me that one of the things they've noticed over the years is the districts have become less empowered to really do their job as the kind of central geographic local boots on the ground doing a service work for that geographic area or it could be linguistic now that's even a challenge because if you read the chapter it says there's two kinds of districts geographic and linguistic that's a real liberal use of the words two kinds there are virtual districts now in a couple of places they're not mentioned there there are groups that are virtual that belong to non-virtual districts i know that's a real play on words and extremely confusing There are also different types, or I hate to say type, but we have some places in the country. I live in a county that is 2,200 square miles, the largest county by land in Florida. it's one district district eight now inside our structure there are multiple what we call sub-districts inside our district eight however just keep that over here as example one a huge district with a lot of sub-districts But those sub-districts don't have their own meetings, and they don't have their committees. Those sub-districts gather at the district meeting. And all they really do is elect a DCM for the geographic area that that sub- district covers. But that sub district does not have its own PI committee or own corrections committee or own uh cpc committee there are other areas where a district is the size of a sub-district like where i live and that district has its own meetings even though it's small has a corrections person and a pi person now if we put geographic territory off to the side the other big thing that's completely not the same across u.s and canada is how many groups per district so now we're away from miles and we're looking at groups the point i want to get across here is i don't know what the perfect one is i'm not sure i run into anyone who wants to tell anybody else what the perfect example is but you have to make sure that whatever you have is working in 2025 there are other areas that we have the term dcmc district committee member chair now in my area we call the chair of district eight the district chair we don't use the dcm acronym but in a lot of other places they use the DCM acronym. Then we have places that have a county structure in between the district and the area where the county may get together with a county DCM, often a DCMC. As you can see, this is awfully confusing you have to have your area whatever you call it handbook guidelines your area has something to explain it to you how your area works but i'll go back to the point i just made does it really matter which structure you have if the one you currently have doesn't work If the one you currently have doesn't work, there's nothing that says it has to stay that way. Now we can add on to this and overarching another piece of confusion. Let's say you're a district in a pretty big metropolitan area. And you have a corrections chair, and a public information chair, And a cooperation with the professional community chair and a treatment chair, just to name a few. But let's say you at least have them and you have a treasurer for the district. You might even have a secretary for the. Some districts even have district registrars in area 15. We have district red distress, but now what happens if you have an inner group or central office that covers the same territory as your district the one thing we can safely say about every inner group in the united states and canada is whatever geographic area they cover there are districts inside there that's just a fact but what about the duplication of work when is the last time an area or district we're talking about districts tonight so i'll stick to district has sat down with the local intergroup or central office and figured out who's doing what we have intergroups with corrections committees and pi committees and cpc committees and treatment committees that are serving one or multiple districts that have the same committees now i think it's interesting just a little fact for aa around the world for all the structures that were created after the united states and canada almost all of them intergroups are part of the general service structure to get rid of this confusion so that they're a level like a district inside the general service area sometimes i see districts and inner groups that divide it by a couple by they use old terms i don't hear them a lot anymore but i used to hear people say well the inner group does the wet work and the district or the area does the dry work so what does that mean that sounds what what does that mean i can tell you in a couple of areas that might still be set up like this it might mean this let's use a couple the committees as an example it might means that as far as bringing meetings into correctional facilities or into treatment centers that the inner group handles that on the wet side dealing with new people the district deals with informing people about what corrections and treatment do and cpc and public information but it's not the same in any place at all it's the same districts used to be super super super important in the structure i'm not saying they are but in certain places they've kind of lost their empowerment i know there's a couple of people on here who have been in service longer than i have and been around if you look at a lot of guidelines to stand for delegate in your areas you will often see that one of the requirements is you have to have been a dcm Now, today, in AA Today, what are the chances that a DCM would get elected delegate or alternate delegate? I've been to a lot of election assemblies in the last 30 years. I would tell you like 0.0. Every once in a while, maybe something uncommon happens. but we used to not have all of the positions we have today today the areas are filled it's like the dais is like the movie my big fat greek wedding right it's 20 people on the daise right we have registrars we have different types of secretaries we have recording we have corresponding we now have it used to be a long time ago that the area chair in a lot of places was the alternate delegate that is not the case pretty much everywhere now the alternate delegates his own position now in the last 15 years we've seen the invention of the alternate area chair the last 20 years we used to not have alternate area chairs but now we have them everywhere we used not have ultimate treasurers we have them we now have alternate secretaries even if we have two different kinds of secretary we have an alternate secretary for each kind so now what has happened is some people would tell you unless you've been an area officer you shouldn't run for delegate or alternate delegate and i'm telling you that used to not be the case 40 years ago 40 years it was very common for a district chair a dcm to stand for alternate delegate or delegate and that's why the reason you had to be a dcm because that's how important that position was I would also say that you have to look at not only how your district is structured, but how is your district meeting? Again, I'm not here to enter in the virtual versus hybrid versus in-person. That's questions for your district, not me. But what about the date, day of the week and time that your district meets? Is it the same thing as 50 years ago or 40 years ago, or 30 years ago? Have you never looked at wow, maybe that doesn't work in 2025. But it's okay to look at that kind of change. There are some districts that meet online now, even if they're an in person groups. some districts that every other meeting is virtual here's another thing i would point out to you and again i would ask you to talk to someone who was in service 40 years ago we have a lot more service meetings than we used to i'm not saying all of them are bad i might be a fan of the book death by meeting in the business world um because what happens if you have a district meeting somebody just called me about this they said billy i'm getting complaints that people don't feel like we do anything at our district meeting we just get together for the purpose of getting together that's not going to build people wanting to be involved you have to take a hard look at that as to why are you meeting and what are you there to accomplish and is your district structure made for today do you need all the positions that you have area committees are a lot more active today than they used to be no doubt about it we were supposed to be a decentralized society but when you look at corrections and treatment and public information and cooperating with the professional community a lot of area committees have taken over a lot of the work that districts used to do. Now, some of that happened because districts didn't have enough people. So someone had to do the work. But my experience in AA is if someone's doing the work for you, you're not just going to say, I'll do it. Like, is your district really serving your geographic boundary or your linguistic boundary if you're a linguistic district like when's the last time you really thought about what's not being done in our district are people talking to professionals are people doing PI commitments public information commitments are people talking to treatment professionals are we making sure that the meetings we bring into facilities are aa meetings because that's all we can bring in we can't bring in anything else that's all we do um you know when it says what does it mean to be a dcm i love that because first of all it doesn't have a question mark at the end of it which i wonder why like is that the only answer what it means to be a dcm what is it you know what it needs to be dcm i'm not sure because it means different things in every area in the service manual it says while the gsr is the voice of a group the dcm is the voice of the district the district needs a leader the grs will look for the dsm dcm for guidance on being gsrs and serving the groups they will look to the dcm the lead on forming the agenda for district activities but we have alternate dcms too but in my district there's i don't know i'm trying to count how many sub-districts but there's over 50 dcns so those dcms are not the leaders they're just a dcm for a sub-district who gets a vote at an assembly but some districts don't get together to meet here's the other thing i want to talk about the district it's not the area's job to tell the district what to do it's the district's job to tell the area what to do sometimes i see well we got a problem in this district we're going to have to send out the area chair or the delegate well i would tell you that it's dcm's job to go to an assembly if there's a problem in the area if the delegate or the area chair wants to share experience that's one thing but areas have be very careful of telling districts how to operate because districts are above them on the upside down triangle not below last week two weeks ago we spent a lot of time on the january 1st date because it's a pet peeve of mine in the service manual like i said to the chair of the report and charter conference committee after that meeting i talked to him and said like your committee is going to have to take a look at this description of the gsr in this service manual and they're gonna have to do the same thing for the dcm So you get elected, DCM, and you start on January 1st. If you're lucky, you have a district meeting in January and February. If you are in every other month, it's either January or February. But just think about that. Give a one, two, three district meetings at best. Sometimes two. Before the General Service Conference. because the dcms get their own vote on conference agenda items or if your area doesn't have a vote they get to exchange ideas with the delegate when you review agenda items every area does it different but how does the district dcns get informed on all the agenda items and why doesn't it say in the service manual with a big like bold letter uh just letting you know in like 16 weeks will be the general service conference you have one or two district meetings to maybe talk about agenda items with your gsrs and so this is stuff that we really need to be talking about inside the districts we don't need to change the service manual per se i mean i would love if they put a couple of new things in there but that doesn't mean that you can't take good ideas of your own and insert them into how your district operates it seems that service sponsorship has taken over the world again in the dcm chapter the service sponsor it says experience in the fellowship that a service sponsor is highly recommended to those newly elected dcms who do not already have one see the section the service sponsor in chapter one i don't know about that Most GSRs or DCMs I run into are between two and five years sober. Most, not all, but a lot. Do they really need another sponsor? What about if they don't want another sponsor ? I'm not saying a service sponsor is a bad idea, but what you need is somebody who did the job, who really did the work. Somebody who did their job. Not somebody who just served for two years. You need somebody who really got down in the trenches and did the job. There's also a financial aspect to districts. And I'm not here to argue about what your group's pie chart should be or how you make contributions. But if we were to divide up the area's service entities below the group level, you have districts, you have areas, you are in a groups and you have the general service board. That's four at best. the district if it keeps electing people or creating new positions we shouldn't have a position that we can't fund like we should have enough inside our budget if we ask someone to do service their own personal economic condition shouldn't depend on doing that service so when we start creating all these new positions does it fit into the district budget another role of a district dcm or district committee chair is maybe assisting groups with problems that come up from time to time but here's another kind of i don't think controversial but something to think about if you're the DCM, do you serve the groups or the meetings? I would tell you by the service manual, the groups. That's who you serve. And I would also tell you this, if you are not invited to come share experience on a problem, then you're not invited and probably shouldn't attend. It pretty much goes in the none of your business category. i sometimes hear billy i heard this group is doing this okay i mean i've said it before if somebody in aa calls me and says you're not going to believe this i tell them you're wrong i'll believe anything you tell me like nothing is going to shock me but it's not our business to insert ourselves where we're not invited um One of the things to really look at, and I know this is a common problem in districts today is you know that I love the percentages of the General Service Conference. That it's over 66% delegates representing the groups and the rest is the trustees, directors and staff and i've pointed out before that at a lot of assemblies it doesn't seem to be more than 66 percent of gsrs or even gsr's and dcms it seems we've created so many positions that have voting ability that the group's kind of authority has been diminished but nowhere is this more apparent than at the district when a district meeting has like maybe 15 people at it and eight of them have district positions that they can vote and only seven are gsrs representing the group is that really the conscience of the groups or have we just created a lot of positions and again i go back to we should only create a position when we need it not just because we want to have it there should be a definite need you know the original aa service committee had two people that's it and from there it grew from bill and bob but we don't create district or new committees just because we want to like make rules and have boundaries we create committees because there's more work to be done which is the same for creating positions we shouldn't create new positions just because we want say that we have a treatment chair or a di chair maybe in some districts those jobs could be combined maybe one person doesn't need to handle each job again that's for your district to figure out you know it says in the service manual um regularly hold district meetings regularly attend area assemblies reach out to groups in the districts that don't have gsrs organize workshops bring tradition problems to the delegate help gsrs become acquainted with the service manual alert the district gsr's to new literature assist the delegate in obtaining group contract information for a regional directories they don't even exist anymore in many areas dcms attend area committee meetings so that becomes a challenge challenge. Not all areas have an area committee. Some areas really utilize the area committee, the area Committee meets more often maybe every month or every other month and deals with routine business and is made up of the DCMs and the area officers. areas though don't have an area committee they have dcms but they don't have an aria committee they only do business inside an area no there's no other place for routine business to be dealt with um you know and when i look at to the newly elected dcm just think about how that's phrased to the newly elected dcm it's like dear billy you're a new dcm it doesn't say anything like welcome the most important meeting in the service structure is happening in four months you have basically 12 weeks to get all your groups in your district ready for the general service conference it's really eight weeks because for your first six weeks there's no final agenda for the general service conference or background information nowhere in duties and responsibilities does it mention final conference agenda or background and explaining what those are to new GSRs. I would tell anyone today that's a district chair or a DCM chairing a district meeting, you might have your scheduled district meetings, but you should probably in January and February, especially being able to use Zoom, have a couple of optional meetings that you invite people to explain to the GSRs, what is the final conference agenda? Explain to them how do things get on the final conference agenda. Explain to them, you're going to start hearing this background word. What is background and how does it look and how is it distributed? That's another problem because in all 93 areas, there are different ways of distributing the background from very openly sharing to whoever wants it to very restrictively only giving it to certain people. I'm not here to argue which is the right thing tonight, but you should be explaining that to new GSRs. they have to know now what about if you're a new dcm and you don't know what about have you just finished two years as a gsr you don t feel like you got a lot of information you went to the assembly before the conference but you thought it was over your head well have one or two meetings on zoom as optional and invite somebody who knows invite a past delegate invite a pass dcm invite somebody my message here is that i'm not here to take a position on virtual district meetings or area assemblies or hybrid what i am here to make sure that i'm here to take a decision on is this technology allows us to have all kinds of it says right here organize workshops scaring sessions or service activities why couldn't you be a dcm and have a workshop on zoom about how does something get on the conference agenda how does the final conference agenda get approved and when does it get sent out who puts together this background what is background all of these things are such amazing learning opportunities that we now have the you don't have to say you know what uh on the next week at saint mark's where we usually meet we're going to have a meeting on background because people don't have that kind of time to have another meeting in their life but that's the power of this technology is to educate and inform and share experience i see some districts and areas that are taking advantage of it and others that are not I can tell you, as someone who has been going to assemblies as a past delegate for, well, 20-something years, 24 years. I've been going through assemblies. I've gone to assembries as a pass delegate. I've Been Going to Assemblies as A Pass Trustee for Eight Years. I can tell you a GSR in the middle of their term or in the second year I am amazed by the questions that they sometimes ask me and they're like I don't know where to get this information I've read the service manual I don' t see it in there at the district meeting and the assembly. And so let me throw out another kind of just passing on some good ideas I've seen from around the US and Canada. Maybe if your district meeting meets at a particular time, maybe before or after you could have a service manual study. If your area has an assembly and maybe you have somebody speaking on the concepts or somebody speaking on the warranties or i wish we would talk about the traditions at more assemblies but i really wish that all assemblies had some kind of gsr boot camp some kind district chair dcm boot camp just for an hour at each one where people could really bring their questions and they could really get answers. Because when you think about 24 months as a GSR or a DCM, it is not a long time. By the time your delegate goes to the first General Service Conference, when you get elected a DCM, by the time they come back in May and do their report back, you already have gone through one quarter of the 24 months. You only have three quarters left, not three yearly quarters, but three quarters of 24 months and it's so hard for people to get this information it says also that each gsr has a vote on district matters and in district elections depending on the district the dcm and alternate dcm may or may not be able to vote and then it has the one that I was, the trouble that I was talking about. Some districts form standing committees or ad hoc committees to address special specific tasks. Depending on the district and type of committee, the committee chairs may be elected by the district or appointed by the DCM. Group conscience determines who may or may not be able to vote. And then it talks about district treasurer, district secretary, committee chairs. And then some districts let GSRs hold those positions. Some districts do not. So we've created a whole new level of service. Instead of going from DCM or GSR to district chair or DCM, sometimes inside the district, the public information chair or the corrections chair is its own position. You don't have to be a DCMor a GSR. I mean, just think about what I've said over the last 35-40 minutes how confusing all of that is. That's why my message is you have to get your area guidelines and your district guidelines or handbook. You have to figure out what is your job inside your district, and then what's your job as a DCM inside your area and what do you need to do to get that done and it's hard enough being a new dcm but if one of your job you have to learn that job and teach all the new gsrs what their job is Because that is a lot of work. So you have to prioritize. For me, I think the groups and the district exercising their concept one authority at at the General Service Conference is the most important responsibility of a GSR or DCM. Most important. Secondary responsibility is that geographic area. But listen, a lot of you are very involved in service. If our structure is working so well, why do every april people like us get phone calls where people say i can't believe they did this i can'T BELIEVE THEY VOTED ON THAT WE ALL KNOW THAT WE'RE MISSING A LOT OF PEOPLE we all know that service has become like i gotta say this service is okay to be fun and it should be directly connected to carrying the life-saving message. What kills service or morale for service is people constantly telling people, oh, it's so boring, nothing they talk about is important. We need to reverse that message. we need to have dcms getting out to groups that don't have a gsr saying hey wait a minute last year this is what the general service conference voted on and right now i'm not judging your group you can choose to ignore it but right now your group has no say in what's going on in aa none at all that's what group members need to hear some of you may have known at some point last year i went through the original service manual which is called the third legacy manual i love the third legacy because the structure was way less complicated way less and it wasn't a newcomer who went to the bathroom who got elected gsr it was one of the most experienced members of the group it wasone of themost passionate dedicated members ofthe group it was considered an honor to be the gsr sometimes now people look at they don't even even some places i attend now like i can only do it one by one but i when i see people's reaction even my own gsr last year at one of my business meetings said i went to the gsR meeting and nothing really important happened well if that's what everybody hears who's going to want to be the gSR and if that's what the group hears we don't need everybody to be at GSR but we need people to support the need for a GSR and the same thing with a DCM you know I laugh now and I know there's a couple of people in here who've been involved as long as or longer than me but you know that line in cons in the concepts where it talks about the little known trustees that people at the groups or the districts or even the areas they could not name the name of most trustees or all the trustees or most people not even one that used to not be the case for the dcm or district chair it was very different than the trustees 40 50 years ago people knew who their dcm was who their district chair was because that was so important for their little piece of aa geography now linguistic districts are important i didn't invent french english and spanish being the three languages of our structure okay that was passed down to me i do know though that if we made that decision that people who speak french and spain should have the same ability to be a district chair or a DCM that I have. We've created some linguistic districts and they don't have a geographic boundary, most of them. Most of the time when we say linguistic district, most people get the first trivia question, right? What's the most common linguistic district? And that's Spanish. And they never get what's the second most common, English. Because in Quebec, the English-speaking meetings have a geographic district, have a non-geographic linguistic district. Now, I still believe there's a Polish district in Chicago. um but linguistic districts should not be like all out on a island a dcm of a linguistic district should have the same ability to become an area officer that a dcm of any geographic district has and a lot of times we'll spend money on trips but not on translation whether it's at a meeting or at an assembly or a district meeting um i do not know if there's any asl districts yet i would be happy to hear if there was um but as of now i'm not sure there is there are asl committees in certain areas sometimes it's part of the accessibilities committee sometimes it's not american sign language there are intergroups that have deaf access committees um but again how is it possible i mean let's face it the preamble was a pretty big deal but the plain language big book even made the pre-amble look like a small deal how is it possible that active groups did not know about the plain language big book and you know if you're a dcm or you're passing on experience to a dcm let me pass this on maybe there is an exciting topic on the general service conference agenda you don't have to wait for the delegate to do something if inside your district you think there's an agenda item that's really important you um could have a zoom meeting about that agenda item just think about that think about if during the plain language discussion somebody handed out flyers at meetings groups hung in the local clubhouse where some groups meet the dcm is going to have a special sharing session on the plain English language big book because that's the other thing if if your job is to get groups that don't have GSRs, to have GSRS. You got to break down the walls of communication. You can't just communicate through the groups. You have to be out and about your AA community. And you know, people ask me about district picnics and other stuff. I'm all for district pic nics. You know why? Because if you can have an aa speaker and some food and not discuss guidelines but just let the people know that this is being put on by the district then people get a positive image of the district that it's actually involved in carrying the message of alcoholics anonymous that it is not just politics and business, all the things people say that are not true. But I've learned that perception is reality. Our job is not to break down reality. Our job istobreakdownperception. Perception versus reality in AA service getting groups involved is kind of like fancy versus real in resentments in the big book if you talk to someone most people would admit it's easier to deal with a real resentment you know why because it's real it's actually based on something real you know what's really hard to deal a fancied one that made up in your own mind that has no basis in reality but that's what perception is our job i think now at this day and age of our aa service structure is to change the perception of service somewhere along the line it got a bad rap and we all know the participation percentages so we need to change that i'm going to go to some questions can a dcm attend a group business meeting to do outreach it doesn't matter if we give them the information if the gsrs don't share with the group so listen this is what i I would say. If you're a DCM, sure, go to that group's business meeting, but talk to the chair before you participate. Talk to the chairman of the group. Say on the local DCM I'd like to make an announcement. You know what would be really good? If you could get the local group to let you have two minutes at one of their meetings not even a business meeting to say hello on behalf of the district and to let them know what the district is up to but of course the person who asked that question that is absolutely fine just be respectful can we add a reminder to consider local deaf access committees to the pie chart also we have a deaf access a deaf district now in oregon glad to hear that also they don't have an a group pamphlet in asl yet yeah we definitely need an as we definitely need a group panphlet an american sign language so you can add anyone to the pie chart you want within reason you might add h i if you're in california or some other place where h and i is separate than general service hospitals and institutions you might add a deaf access committee um of course that's up for your group how is the gsr in bill w's backyard around 40 years ago i'm guessing he means westchester or new york whoever he or she wrote this we sat around complaining that no one wanted to be a gsr and sat and read the tradition related to the month getting nowhere when i became dcm i changed it to develop committees cpc pi etc we were 50 miles from gso and we would invite trustees to explain the committees as we developed them we had people like David A and Frank M. David A, past trustee at large from Texas. Frank M, past archivist from GSO. We turned that district from five groups to 59 groups and had to redistrict ourselves. That's awesome. And I love that story. And you know what I love the most about it? Out of the box thinking, not just doing what we've always done. In your local area, draw a line 50 miles 100 miles around it your district your group inside there are lots of people who have served at different levels of service at the general service board or grapevine or aws or maybe they've been a past delegate or whatever bring those people in take advantage of them and let people know People are going to come if it seems like it's going to be informative, educational or exciting or controversial. Controversial gets people too. Yep, somebody just said that they have a ASL district in Oregon and I am really, really happy to hear that. Most people don't realize, you know, and I didn't know until I learned it in service. you know people think oh just have subtitles asl is not english just want to let everyone know that it's its own language do some deaf people read english yes but is asl english no it's it's own standalone language um i would say you know that person who wrote about bringing in people like i would do anything different i would have you know people say oh dance is on aa okay i don't know what to say to those people except that in 1950 at the first international convention where they approved the traditions there were a couple of dances okay i don't know what to tell people that there were no dances except that the 23rd street clubhouse in new york city had dances um so you know people say oh it's bowling it's dancing it's a picnic whatever what is wrong with having a little fun and getting people together in fellowship and community that's what they're starving for why did we make service like going to an sat preparation course like the general service conferences the sats and we're going to send you to some sat training course it should not be like that the district should be looked at as joining the aa community together not just the gsrs they got to come together to do the business of the district but the district shall be doing things to bring everybody together um this this anti-fun anti-fellowship thing that develops in service i don't know where it came from but it's not how a started spaghetti dinners eating meetings all of these things we were a very community focused in our own community outside our community getting the message out but inside our fellowship was super important that we gathered together and that was the district's purpose let's see this next question i think young people have the right idea they like to have fun maybe to an extreme yeah of course but you know as my friend george once told a delegate that was really mad at young people because of their pool party and because of their late night ocean swimming after a big barn fire um my friend George said to this delegate you know it's not just young people in aa like all young people are going to do certain things all young have a tendency to be irresponsible but yeah what i wish is that more young people's committees would be more tightly tied to general service that's what i wish you know people say oh we need a ypa person voting at the area i don't know not if your young person's meeting as a gsr if your a young person is meeting is entitled to a g s r why do you need a special voter but i do think they have the right idea regarding fellowship i do Think they have The Right Idea regarding scavenger hunts and raves and silent discos and god knows what else like those things bring people together i know lots of people inside who have become i'm talking about people who came up through young peoples who became delegates many of them went to their first young people aa something on a road trip with like seven other lunatics with barely enough gas money right like today i'm dating myself right today i know what it's it's you know the amount of vaping and energy drinking going energy drink drinking going on in those cars on the way to these young people's conferences must be through the roof but god bless them but do you know how many people i know who've told me that it was a dance or something else they went to they weren't even involved in service and that's what initially got them introduced i just wish we would stop this kind of kind of anti-fun attitude how many groups do i think can constitute to linguistic district i'm not sure um my area has three now or two some areas have multiple some areas have one but i think that's a decision for the area we're definitely not a glum lot you know and if you asked me sometimes like where do i feel like i see the most glum in aa it's sometimes at a district meeting or an assembly it's not on the firing lines with groups it's not at the local clubhouse it's not at the young people's a thing like we have to get rid of glum in service that's what we need to do so I'm counting on all of you to spread that message because I'm telling you it only takes one person to extinguish the flames of someone who's excited about service who has a new idea and they get shot down and they don't want to bring it up again we need people all of us out there encouraging people um to come you know to have new ideas someone just sent me something let me just see what this says our delegate sends the PAIs proposed agenda items and background information out to the DCMs. And in turn, they're discussed at district and sent out to GSRs and discussed at their home groups business meeting in February. We have 58 groups in our district. Yeah, that's awesome. But when you think about the little amount of time that is between the middle of February and April to discuss those agenda items and to get feedback and to review background, that's why I'm saying we need to harness technology to really get it done and to really give the information out there. This thing that the delegate owns the background is insane. I don't know where that came from. um your district can review agenda items can start the discussion and really should be helping GSRs to understand so with that I will say that next week we will do the area assembly and its committees i'm just asking everyone to please get a hold of your area handbook or your area guidelines or if in my area your area current practice whatever you call it give it a read while you're reading the service manual because there's so many different nuances in here um so we will close with the responsibility statement i am responsible when anyone out there 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 stay safe have a great weekend week the weekend's over thanks