Tradition 4 and the Right to Be Wrong – Web S.

My name's Burke. I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to this session. AA websites should be very interesting. I have a couple of announcements I need to read. This meeting is being taped. If you choose to share your experience in this workshop, your participation constitutes your agreement to be taped. That's a legal document, I think. I'd like to ask now for a moment of silence so perhaps we can reflect on the efforts of those that came before us and made this fellowship available for us and maybe think about those that are still out there. Thank you. Alcoholics Anonymous. Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. We hope to plan this so that there will be something like 20 minutes at the end of the presentation so that the mics will be open and you'll be able to participate. I need to read the anonymity statement. There may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal participation. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the tradition of personal participation. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the tradition of personal participation. We need to maintain personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need to always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that AA speakers and AA members not be photographed, videotaped, or identified by full name on audio tapes and in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our efforts to ensure that the public is aware of our activities. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our efforts to ensure that the public is aware of our activities. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our efforts to ensure that the public is aware of our activities. Audiotapes of this public presentation will be available in the tape sales booth. I believe that's over in the hospitality area. The identification for that meeting is number 200. The identification for that meeting is number 200. The identification for that meeting is number 200. The identification for that meeting is number 200. stuff I'd like to introduce our first speaker Tom Jay of GSO. Hi everybody my name is Tom Jay and I'm an alcoholic. I'm so used to saying my last name I have to restrain myself in this situation. I don't know what the opposite of serendipitous is. I'm sure there's a one-word succinct antonym for serendipitous but kind of like you should have minded your own business I guess suffices perhaps. But I found out I was here to be here this morning I think it was about 7 20 this morning so I'm a little less prepared that I might otherwise be. If I knew about it say at least last night or something but it's just one of those I guess program oversights where with a million details to calculate that I fell through the crack as it were. So what I'm gonna do since I have some at least passing familiarity with and as I mentioned earlier to one of the speakers very vague recollections of the evolution of our website at the office. I'll refer to those things and maybe about some problems that we have with websites generally that come to our attention at least and where we see ourselves going in a very general way with the AA website at least. It's a very broad topic actually. You say a website I'm not sure where the limits of that subject matter is. Limits are I guess. I'm not sure where the limits of that subject matter is. Limits are I guess. Because there's a lot of stuff on the internet as you may be aware that at least touches on subjects that people in AA might have some passing interest in. But our site started way back in, I can't even remember the year now because that's how. I guess if you're so totally unprepared and you caught so off guard that you just completely out of the loop you don't have to be nervous because, you know, it's like... the fact that my standing here is almost ridiculous, you know. But my recollection is that we had a website committee that might have been a committee of the board. It was an ad hoc committee sort of thing with various people on it from the office and from board members and stuff to think about whether we should have a website or not or what does that mean and whatever. And AA, as most of us have experienced, proceeds very cautiously. So while individuals had websites, you know, 14-year-olds had websites, we're still wondering whether it was a good idea. So at some point we realized that it's a means of communication and that's what we're about at the General Service Office, to communicate, to carry the message. Is this another tool which would help us carry the message? And in fact, it became obvious to us that it was. It could be. So we said, well, okay, we want the most simplified, dullest-looking, most non-promotional website that you can imagine. And if you remember our earliest website, we achieved that with remarkable success. And we said, all we're going to put on there, like some very few little things, we don't want to go too far, you know, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. And so we went to the Curve, no even possibility there. So we'll just sort of like take it very easy and see and see how this thing works. Because who knows, websites may disappear in a couple of years and we don't want to be caught holding a bag. So we moved along slowly with like a few items up there and then the fact file went. And eventually the responsibility for that website and what goes on it, at least, well, the responsibility was, we sort of passed off from this ad hoc committee of this collection of whoever's to the AA World Services Board as such. And they kind of like passed it along to some subcommittee of the board which just sort of dealt with website stuff. And they would think about things and they would brainstorm. And they would bring recommendations to AWS who would, you know, generally would approve them. And so what we did over time was to add this or that pamphlet because we thought it would be useful on a website. The fact file is on there. And of course we had from the outset had to consider that this needed to be in three languages, which meant even things, even items that ordinarily wouldn't be in three languages suddenly had to be in three languages. There are certain, like about AA is for the professional community and it's very difficult to practice in the US and Canada unless you're conversing. I think. So it's not, so things that we had to do and other items, we had to do them in three languages because there was a sense of that you wouldn't want to have a lot of stuff on there in three languages. And then in some one particular piece you look up and you can't find it in anything but English because you, certain symmetry there. I guess our aesthetic sense or whatever, sense of fairness or whatever was came into play. So that's what you'll find. And then, but we didn't want to put, we didn't want to just post all of our literature on there. We looked at Vinnie McCarthy who is publications director and examined a lot of websites that deal with publications and found that they don't just put all of their stuff up on a website either downloadable or otherwise. You know, you put like teasers up and stuff like that to interest people to show them what kind of, you know, what they're interested in. And they're interested in what kinds of things you have available in terms of publications stimulate interest and whatever. So plus another thought, well, why don't we put it, why don't we make it available this way? Why don't we sell from the internet and so on like other publishing operations do. And we are in fact a very large publishing operation. As you may be aware, many intergroups derive a certain amount of their support from selling literature. And if we. If we made it available directly over the internet, who knows what the impact would be on intergroups, one. Two, the reason that we sell literature without charging for shipping and handling is because most of the sales are large volume sales. You know, truckloads and stuff going to intergroups, going to non-AA vendors such as a large vendor that's here in the United States. The state. And others. And if we started selling over the internet book by book by book, we would either have to start charging shipping and handling or we go broke or both. So that's one of the reasons, you know, people wonder, well, why wouldn't that facilitate? Because most people don't buy the literature from us and that's probably a good thing because it keeps them in touch with local AA whether it's intergroups or whatever. And that's not a bad thing. Really. Even if it's not directly supporting intergroups. But as I said, in many cases, that's exactly what's going on. They derive a certain support, financial support from the sale of literature, AA literature. Sometimes others. But so we thought about that and we kind of thought that's not a good idea at this time certainly to put our literature up there for sale. It's not a good idea to put our literature up there just for people to read. Our literature is really inexpensive. I mean, it's very inexpensive. Because it's high quality in terms of manufacture. And, you know, you can see what you pay for book these days. Our books are inexpensive. And the only reason we can do that is because we sell a huge volume compared to other titles of anything. Even bestsellers don't sell like the big book. And certainly not over a sustained period of time. And every year another 750,000 or something. Who does that? The Bible and maybe some dictionaries or something. Even dictionaries change. Our big book changes every year. Well, whatever. Four editions and I guess 65 divided by four I guess will give you an idea how often we come out with editions. Roughly. So those are some of the thoughts we had in creating our website. Some of the problems that more recently we've thought about adding another wing, if you will, to the website. This is all about public information initially. That's what we said. It's going to be specifically oriented to public information. And with a little piece added for the cooperation with professional community. So if somebody looking at the site was a professional, there was an interactive means of communication. And it would send us this. It would come through by email. And we would then refer that email to wherever the professional resided. You know, if it was in Albuquerque, we would send it to the local CPC community. And then we would send it to the local CPC community. And that's what we've done. And we do this. committee that this doctor or this sociologist or whatever counselor is interested in some follow-up and try to connect them, which is what, you know, that's an absolute, you know, on-point use of our services. We facilitate the provision of services. I mean, that's what we're about. We don't do 12-step at the office. We put the local AAs in touch with the whatever because that's where the people can do one-on-one and really do an effective job. So it was PI and with just a little bit of CPC consideration, of course. But then we thought about there may be some use for it recently, thought about there may be some additional utility in the website for services purposes. And we've been kind of kicking that around. What should we put up in the way of service stuff that's useful? I mean, we could just throw the service manual and all kinds of other stuff up there, which some people suggest is a good idea. There are some who don't. I don't. I wouldn't want to look at the service manual online, frankly. It's all I can do to look at it when I'm holding it in my hand. And so there's some thoughts like that and what we might do. But we're definitely branching off into the services end of, you know, to provide, to use it as a communications tool for service purposes. But to enhance our current, you know, involvement in carrying a message to the service community as opposed to like going off and just say, well, if you put everything up there, they can't miss. Well, if you put everything up there, you can't find anything either, you know. So those are things we have. Now, in terms of our communications with other websites or our linking to other websites, we can't really stop others from linking to them. We can't stop them from linking to us. They ask sometimes, is it okay to link? And when you ask me, I always say, well, if I can, I throw a look. You know, if you say like you're not really connected to us or something. They don't have to. But they ask. So I say, that'd be nice if you did that. And some do and some don't. Like a little disclaimer, you know, or something. But we won't link to anybody ourselves at this time other than other overseas GSO offices. And only on the condition that those other overseas GSO offices themselves only link to other GSO overseas offices. Why would we want to do that? Well, we linked at first. We just said, well, you know, this country has a website and that country. So we'll just put them all on there. You can find them or whatever. But we found that some unwittingly in most cases, if you looked at their website and sort of track through, you found all kinds of stuff on there, you know. And I guess it was our own. Our own sense of not wanting to be seen as affiliating with outside interests even through this linking mechanism. Like I'll make this up. If we link to the Yugoslav GSO and they're linked to some other thing that is not really AA stuff, that somehow indirectly we've maybe implied some affiliation with this thing. So we've kept it simple. If you're an overseas GSO and you're only going to link to other overseas GSOs, then we'll link to you. If not, we're not telling you you can't do otherwise. We just, we won't link to you. I mean, it's not, you know, they certainly are autonomous and certainly have the right to do whatever they want. That's just our guidelines for linking to another GSO. And beyond that, we don't link to anybody. And as you see, as you trace through websites, linking and cross-linking, whatever, they take you down some strange path. And even the best and most well-intentioned webmaster working in an AA context or something, if the person isn't careful, he or she isn't careful, you can find yourselves linking to treatment facilities and all kinds of stuff inadvertently. You wind down the trail and it looks like the so-and-so intergroup website is endorsing perhaps some treatment facility inadvertently. Yeah. Certainly. Just through this. So we're very careful about it with ours. But of course, AA is, we have a fourth tradition, which allows us all to screw up, if we will. We're permitted to do that and to learn from that. Every group has a right to be wrong. And so we've decided what's right for us. And so far it's worked out okay. Now some ancillary problems, and I'll cut this short because there are people who have things to say that are far more organized and interesting than what I'm talking about. Some of the problems that come up, incidental to websites, of course, is copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and the list goes on. And people somehow don't think that it's ... There is a school of thought that if it's AA literature, it belongs to all AAs. Even people who are still drinking, presumably. As long as you want some member, it's yours, kind of thing. We have a more limited view of literature for a couple of reasons. And it's not necessarily the profit motive. Well, if everybody does it, then we're going to lose money. I mean, that's not really a concern because ... I mean, most people want to buy AA literature. They don't want to buy somebody else's whatever. Most people buy literature from the office. And if somebody's bootlegging it or something. I mean, that doesn't impact our sales noticeably. But the integrity of the message is what we're mostly, at least a lot of concern is directed in that way. And if we don't keep some control over the literature through copyright and so on, people can modify it, even with the best of intentions. Well, I think it'd be better if it was said this way. I have plenty of ways to say things better. No, actually. I have plenty of ways to say things better. I don't know. I think it's better to say things differently. I would say they were better. Others would disagree. Well, they'd say, well, no, my way is better. And we'd have a lot of better ways. So we try to keep some control over literature with copyright registrations and things like that. But there are those who figure, well, the daily reflections would be so helpful if somebody could just tune in every morning and on their computer there's the message for the day. And it could be. You know, that's our souvenir thing at the convention is. It's a daily reflection. But you can't just put it up on your site without permission. And I'll let you know on the site, we don't give permission to do that. But sometimes people don't realize that they have it all set up so you can look at it and you can pick the month. You could get today's automatically kind of off. You want to see what January 13th looked like. You can dial January and pick 13. And here's the page. Bang. It's right up on the screen. Well, unfortunately, that's a copyright infringement. But people don't realize, well, it's AA stuff. I'm a member. What's your problem? It's for members. It'll help keep somebody sober, they assume. I don't know if it would have. Maybe. I don't know. But we have to keep better control over it than that. So we find out about it. We got to say, please, you can't do that. It's whatever. And usually there's not too much resistance. But it's all over the place. I keep hearing about other sites. You can get to 12 and 12. And you can download it. And you get this and that. And it's, well, we have to try to keep up with it as best we can. But we're not the AA police. We have day jobs also, besides tracking down website infringers or something. There's other things to do at the office from time to time. So that's my kind of broad overview of where we were, what it was like, what happened, what it's like now, and what it may be like in the future. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for coming today. Thanks, Tom. Our next speaker is Brooke H., California. Thank you very much. My name is Brooke Haines. I'm an alcoholic. All right. You're welcome. And I happen to live in St. Helena, California. And I'm a human. I'm a human. And I agree. All right. All right. which is the California northern coastal area and I guess my home group is the Sunnyside Serenity group in Deer Park California we meet on Monday night at 730 so if anybody ever finds themselves loose in Deer Park welcome the the topic of websites what I want to do is I want to cover three main areas and that what I want to cover is the purpose of websites from the Alcoholics Anonymous point of view and then I want to cover really what what it is that we actually do in order to discuss websites and and typify them and then I want to discuss just some personal experience and give you some help if you're in the process of trying to decide in your inner group or your area or in some service position whether or not you're interested in doing that and then I want to cover the website's a good idea for you how many people currently in the room have websites in some Alcoholics Anonymous capacity that they're involved with well it's quite a few of you how many of you are here because you want to figure out if your area your group should do one yeah well that's you're the ones I'm talking to today then in our area in our local district and in our local inner group we we had some interesting experiences and the purpose of the website from an Alcoholics Anonymous point of view is really interesting first of all we don't need a lot of photographs so we're really kind of lucky so the the the purpose that we have is to tell who we are to people outside of our fellowship and to people that are inside of our fellowship and that's a that's a very interesting discussion for us to have. have that we really know how to have because we understand without websites how to tell people who we are. And so if we decide we're going to take this electronic form of telling people who we are, we also have some really wonderful examples. And in fact, we have people like Tom in the General Service Office whose entire purpose is to tell people who we are. And so we've got really some wonderful examples and some wonderful guidelines. And in fact, we don't necessarily, if I really wanted to put a website together in my local hometown to tell you who Alcoholics Anonymous is, it might consist of one link to the General Service website in alcoholicsanonymous.org in New York with a page of local contact information. But the other part of a website's purpose is to actually carry some detailed information about who we are in terms of our meeting schedules and how to find meetings. And there's been some really wonderful examples. I think there's been some really wonderful examples of this who we are information about. It's a cross between service to members currently and service to people outside who are trying to locate us on how to actually contact a local member of Alcoholics Anonymous at a meeting or an office or something like that, which is all very much local function. And a lot of our service organizations have a requirement for this kind of communications. But if you think about it, it's really interesting. It's very focused. We already have that kind of communications in our service organizations, our intergroups, or even our local group that may have an ad in the newspaper about how to find an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. So we in the fellowship have an awful lot of understanding of how to make this information available. So we don't have to do anything different if we're trying to do it on a website. And the final area, I believe, of websites that we are interested in is the kind of information that we have. And that's why we're relatively neophyte in Alcoholics Anonymous and don't really have it really yet developed a difference in articulating it from this public information profile on the one hand that we think of as a website is in communications internally within the fellowship on all sorts of levels. We can talk in terms of forms, like we were talking about, what Tom was talking about, a form for a group registration. And, in essence, the publication of the information that we have, the information that we have, commit promotion. And we're unbelievable onki. I can also talk about this on the behalf of the考 automation board folks at HTMLAC. that we would find on the back table of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous that somebody has put there for us to take home from our business meeting or wherever we are at a service function. Or it might be a local handout that somebody has made up of where the self-support should be sent or where the information about where to send the money in Alcoholics Anonymous for your group donations, your treasure, that kind of thing. So the characterization of the website as an extension of the table in the back of the room, I think, is very important for us because we know a lot about what it is we need to do to put information on the back of tables of rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. We know that it needs to follow our primary purpose. It needs to be for an AA purpose and not some other purpose. We know that we need to protect anonymity of our members. If we do have information that's confidential, lots of times we don't put it on that table. We actually pass it out or mail it to individual members. We don't have to send it to individual members that need it. On items at the back of the room, sometimes we delete last names deliberately so that in fact we have a version of it that is sanitized for public if someone who is not familiar with our anonymity happens to be in our rooms. The reason I'm taking the time for this is that we know how to use the back table and the electronic website is an extension of that table for us if we so choose to do it. And it's an extension that I have some experience with. I mean, if you look at the website, there are many ways that we can use the back table. And I think that the way that the web has been applied to us is probably one of the less understood ways that the website can be of use. We also can go one level further, and that is we can use the electronic form of websites for the communication of our most sensitive information if we so chose to do that. There are encryption mechanisms. There are mechanisms to encode both the data in files. There are mechanisms to encrypt passwords, to go through password encryption so that only known people who are permitted, i.e., area officers, intergroup officers, that level of security. And I'm going to defer discussion of any of that from this table today and talking about websites, mostly because they require an enormous amount of overhead. You can imagine what it would be like if we set encrypted items on the back table for a moment. I mean, I think that's a very, very important thing for our members to pick up and take home. And I think that the normal AA group, like my home group, isn't really quite ready to deal with this yet. So I'm not going to talk about that, but if you have something you want to talk about later, I'll be glad to. In California northern coastal area, I have, and many of you probably, especially if you're sitting here trying to figure out if a website can be useful to you, I've had enormously frustrating times in my service work. Listening to people discuss websites. And the reason is because they know so little. It started out that everybody that wanted to learn about websites and Alcoholics Anonymous, it reminded me about the time that somebody decided they were going to buy a computer. And I remember that three of us decided that we really wanted to learn computers, and so we were going to run down there and find out what they were doing with these computers and volunteer immediately. And I think we have a lot of that tendency among people. We're a curious lot. Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. We really are curious, and we really want to help, and we really want to help ourselves help you. And it's very interesting what happens when we start having these discussions about websites. And from the point of view in the area and the inner group, the first thing that happened in my local county is someone decided to bring up a website, and they put up a website of meetings in the Napa Valley, which is where I happen to be from. And some of you that have been involved in the communications and the websites in IA for a long time remember that for several years we used this Napa Valley website, much to my embarrassment, as an example of the worst possible website in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was done by an individual who basically was doing this wonderful thing, and he got bored with it very quickly and never went and updated it. So the meeting schedule was two and a half years out of date, but it was still being listed as an AA meeting schedule. And we couldn't get the guy to take it down. So I just want to point out, if you want to put up a website, it's very much the same. It's a very simple thing. It's a very simple thing. It's very much like an Alcoholics Anonymous website. It's very much like starting your own meeting. I mean, all you need is a website and another alcoholic, and I mean, you're in business. And that, unfortunately, I think is one of the things that in our service work we all too quickly recognize. And I would challenge you, if you're in a service organization that is looking at trying to figure out how to adopt or perhaps use this technology, that you do several things. One, look at all the other service websites that you probably already looked at. And talk to the people that have gone through the experience. And look at the general service outline that basically says, think of this thing as the table in the back of the room, although they don't use that word. And think of all the things that we have our discussion about, our traditions and our concepts and the needs of Alcoholics Anonymous that govern how we put things on that table. And I think you'll be in fairly good stead then to make certain that the following happens. Thou shalt not propose guidelines to something you don't understand. Thank you. And I think that if anything I can do to encourage you to experiment with a website in your area with a proviso that it lasts no longer than 24 hours after somebody decides they want it taken down. And that you have the discussion then about putting it back up after you have already agreed that you'll take it off the air. In California North Coastal Area, we were having these discussions and I was very frustrated. I'm a professional that deals in this technology. I have dealt in this technology since I was assigned full time in 1991. I was assigned to the Internet Task Force of a major computer corporation. And my experience at that time was very simple. They said, we want you to figure out if there's any way this could be of any use to anybody inside this company. And you have this budget of several million dollars to figure out if anybody can do anything with this. And so I spent several years just doing that, trying to figure out what it was. And I came to the conclusion that anybody that wants to do it, they can do it. And I said, well, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. Everybody that wanted a website was crazy. It was just that simple. Because in fact, it had very little to do with the technology. It had to do with everybody's perception of the technology. And so in terms of that experience, it was really remarkable what people were able to do with it. And I think there's an enormous number of things that Alcoholics Anonymous can do with it. But from the point of view of that table in the back of the room, the biggest problem that AAs have is either they want to control this website before they've ever seen one, which means that they want... that they want a loose leaf binder, four inches thick, full of policies and procedures and guidelines. And I would subscribe to you that we never adopted the fax machine for the same reason. I mean, the website came along and supplanted the fax machine before we ever listed fax numbers in the fellowship. And so, I mean, we really have a problem here of adopting this technology that we don't understand. So, if there's anything that you can do to put together an ad hoc committee to actually bring up a table in the back of the room and empower those people to actually attempt to make it useful for you, I would suggest that you do that and then have a fixed time limit on it and review it. Now, my wife and I did exactly that in the California Northern Coastal Area. And I want to share with you some of the experiences that we had. First of all, my wife was able to allow me to participate with her to do this because she became the delegate of California Northern Coastal Area. And we had had conversations about my profession for quite a bit of time. And I sat down with her and I said, are you willing to expend the energy to experiment with this technology so that we can see if we can produce a useful website? And she said, yes, she was, but she wanted to think about it. This is the woman I love. I mean, I, you know, and I want you to know that my wife and I love each other dearly and we're going to do this together. And I want you to know that my wife and I love each other dearly and we're going to do this together. And I want you to know that my wife and I love each other dearly and we're going to do this together. And we get along wonderfully. We only argue about things like Alcoholics Anonymous websites and things like that. And, but what happened out of this was that about 99 percentile of the things that you're able to do with the website, I was never able to do with this website because my wife was uncomfortable in attempting to get this implemented and attempting to explain it to members of the fellowship. And in fact, one of the things that happened is I brought up the website with her and we got it, we got it up and we got it running. And we wouldn't tell anybody about it until in fact all of the, all of the fellow officers and the district committee member chairs in her area actually had an opportunity to look at it and see if they felt comfortable enough using it. And that included people that had Macintoshes and didn't know how to, how to actually download things from websites. Now having gone through this experience, I could tell you it's probably one of the most humbling things for somebody like myself who doesn't understand the technology. And it's almost an impossible thing for you to go through if you have to design the guidelines before you ever do it. So what we have done now is we made an agreement and that agreement was the following. At any time my wife wished to have this website taken down, it would be immediately taken off the air. That the website was totally anonymous and I will explain to you in a minute how we made it totally anonymous. And that in fact, if the area ever had any discussions and there was any lack of unity within California Northern Coastal Area about this, this website, that she would immediately have me remove it from circulation and we'd disconnect the website. And this has, none of these things have come about and we've managed to have a very remarkable experience with this website. But it's been a growing proposition over the last two years. Now in order to make a truly anonymous website, we have, we have a very interesting thing in our service work and that is that there are websites that have domain names that are registered and there are websites which are not registered. And so the first thing I did was I put up a not registered website. And what you do in order to do that is you find a hosting service that will give you an unregistered site. And all of them will, you just have to know to ask for it. And the thing that happens when you have unregistered sites is that you're not able to find them by any name. You can only find them by a domain IP address, an actual IP address. And using the IP address function, it turns out if you don't register the site, no one will put it on their search engines because they don't want to be received. And so they're not able to be responsible because there's no registered owner of it and they don't particularly want to be referencing things that they can't say he did it. And so consequently, you don't have any problems with search engines finding your site that's not registered because they just throw it away. They have no idea what it is and they don't want to be responsible for it. And at this level then, you wind up with the ability to place just simple service information that you would find on the back table of the room. And the only members that are really in that room are the ones who have known that there is a meeting. They're at 730 and have found that building and have come there and have been there for some purpose. And the way to find this particular table is to know that it's IP number, which we tell people within the fellowship that find out about it at the meeting. And we have put all sorts of service material on that website that is of local interest and we renew it constantly during the cycle of the normal report based on the conference. We put the agenda topics on it. We put the highlights of the Pacific Region trustees report. And the greatest problem with it is the actual amount of time it really takes me to produce the work necessary to put it there. One of the things, for example, that I never estimated was how long it took to remove your last name from somebody's report. It's really very interesting and I get totally confused about the class, the class A and the class B trustees. And the class A trustees full name could be in there and the class B's can't. And I can't remember if one's a class A or a B. And I'm reading all this stuff through and you know I get tired, it's midnight and I can't remember if I hit delete or not. And then I can't read it all anymore. I mean this is a lot of work, folks. I just want you to know it's the kind of stuff that I believe that only the law of alcoholics and anomalous is ever going to allow somebody to do. And so it's not something that should be taken lightly. It's not something that should be taken lightly. It's not something that should be taken lightly. It's not something that is easily passed off right now because of the international and my work commitments I have about five documents to put up on the website. What we have done is we have, and I haven't been able to do that because I'm here. What we have done is that we've taken this on as a personal project and it will be turned off and it will be unplugged at the end of this panel. It's not an ongoing living thing that's got a life of its own that we have to worry about. The next California Northern Coastal Panel gets to decide for themselves whether they wish to pursue a website and they're having those discussions now. But they're having those discussions in a remarkably wonderful way. And that way is who is going to produce that useful work that we used to get when we were able to download all that information about what the agenda topics were going to be? Who is going to give us the work that's going to be the downloadable version of the recommendations of the conference? Who is going to be keeping the electronic version of the two-year running AA schedule and calendar? Who is going to produce, how am I going to, what's going to happen, who's going to do this? And this is a much better discussion than to have than who's going to do the guidelines, who's going to stop somebody from doing something? And because people have been able to see, and we learn by doing. So I would challenge you to go back and figure out how to set together an ad hoc committee that has a life expectancy of a finite amount of time to be able to give that committee the authority and the responsibility to do a trial table in the back of the room for you for your service organization or to do a trial public information site for your intergroup and give them the ability to do that and empower them to actually get professionals who understand the technology. And there's plenty of opportunity if you have a working site to teach someone how to do the updating. There's plenty of opportunity to teach somebody how to operate the computer program to take the last names out. But you really need a working model, I think, in order to take those people and make them useful. It's not a place for people to learn until you have something that works. I just want to caution you on that. I think that's probably one of the greatest misgivings I have about alcoholics anonymous service where I heard somebody get up in front of a room one day and say, I encourage everyone who wants to learn about this to participate in this committee. I think the way to learn about this is to have something that works, not something to discuss. It's through action, I believe, and through doing that we actually learn what this web medium is able to do for us. And so you need some people who are able to do in order to be able to take action. And a final note, I would say that don't hamstring, but also make certain that your website can be taken down immediately and that there's a process. Thank you. Great. And one of the things that I would ask anybodyFSB users to do is to be somewhere where information is being turned on to flew everything that is kind of off the go to search and stuff that you can. StudentDatichenine.com Dšoma are there any? They just happened to be on the site of the webinar and our policy is to try and reduce the number of turns off users. You didn't usually have it. What? Absolutely no, that does not work at all.ilty forward On Google I need a link. Basically, I'm just going to go grab a beer to a Yongle just my a half hour and of actually buying your own hosting service is between $17 to $30 a month for an average AA website, and you get professional level service and 24 hour response time and you don't need to worry about that and you don't need to do it yourself. So you don't suddenly find out that your website is running on some treatment center's computer, which I've seen it happen. So I think that you're able to take this and authoritatively use outside services that are within the scope and the means of Alcoholics Anonymous groups to purchase and then I think you're only worried about what the content is. So you need to empower someone to be able to disconnect that content if it's not working right and then you need to be able to take it as a normal advisement under your business media to put it back online. It's really interesting. If a website for Alcoholics Anonymous disappears for 24 hours, I don't think you'll ever hear about it. I don't think you'll ever hear about it. So we don't have to have that table. We don't have to have that tool. We don't have to have that. We don't have to have that. The problems with the website is that this is really slow or that computer is very old and I want you to know that as a professional, the work that has gone into the General Service Office's staff to produce such a website that is representative to the suffering alcoholic or the alcoholic who wants to find out about the international in a tent, whether it be that person in New York City five blocks away or in any of those countries that you saw a flag attached by a very slow line. It's a miracle that they're able to do that. And I really think that we need to support that effort and encourage them to continue. Thank you. Thank you, Brooke. Our next speaker is David Kaye from the local community here. Good morning, everyone. My name is David. I am an alcoholic. Initially, when I got the letter asking me to be with the speakers, I hesitated a little bit because I'll tell you I'm not highly experienced in setting up websites. Technically, I'm merely a student of some of the technology involved in it at this time and don't plan to really pursue the website area in my career. But I think it's important to be able to do that. I felt it was important for me to come for a couple of reasons. First of all, because I'm not really highly technical. I'm mostly a user, at least of website technology at this point. And I have been involved in some of the early processes that the previous presenter talked about in a couple of areas, deciding whether or not to put up a website and framing some ideas on what the initial look of that website might be. Okay. So I think it's important to consider that. And I can tell you that it definitely is a medium that AA definitely has a place within Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it's too important to ignore. It's getting too widely used. But one of the things I have found that's important to consider in this, and I think kind of a distillation of the experience, is we need to share. Not only the experience. But the experience. always necessarily with people who are expert in putting up websites and doing that. As the previous presenter pointed out, there are people you can pay to do that. What we need to share with is we need to talk about, first of all, what do we want the website to do? Is there a function for it? Is there a need for it? A famous quote that I was unable to access in preparing this because of how busy I've been has something to do with, is there a need for it, not how much does it cost? And that's something those of you in the room are going to have to decide. You raised your hands when asked if you're deciding to put up a website. Do you need one? Are there people out there that can make use of information you have that other people haven't already put up? Another area that I've been involved in in connection with websites is I've been active in service and online in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've been involved in a group of people who have been active in service and online in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we basically are a website. We're not much else apart from the people behind the screens. We have a list service that we use and we have committees that meet by email. And one of those committees is public information, which I was privileged to share last year and I currently continue serving on. And I want to share one experience with that that relates to websites. We have a mail-to link. The general service has a mail-to link for professionals. As Tom pointed out, and they do United States Postal Service mailing from that form. We don't have, well, we do have a postal box, but we don't put it out to the general public because it's designed strictly for contributions from member groups and members. So we have to interact by email. That's all we do. And one of the things we've discovered is that people ask a lot of interesting questions. And sometimes those people will ask questions through that website link that we're not really qualified to answer. So it's something that I want to caution you. The interaction is important. And we were kind of forced into doing it because of the nature of the online intergroup website. But it's something you have to be careful about zinging off a reply. We work hard with the group conscience issues on those replies. And people see the mail-to link on the website, and immediately that reply becomes associated with that site. And if the words Alcoholics Anonymous are on that site, you have to be careful. One of the discussions we had recently also involving what do we put on the website, there was some discussion. I've remained on the Public Information Committee since I rotated out, kind of trying to sit in the back row. And the discussion came up. Someone had the idea that we should, it would be nice to put the AA World Services catalog. Okay. So we're going to do that. Okay. So we're going to do that. Okay. So we're going to do that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry. I know I didn't make it very clear then. I should've probably mentioned the esex and algethala shots from Canoe wanted to put them there. There is also a lot of in the mail. It's all really in the mail. Right. It's them, it's their– Yes. So I saw there were two of the emails, but then because they were out of stock for under class, so we saw the discussion passed back and forth, and I saw the emails passed back and forth, and finally I kind of raised my hand and said, excuse me, do you realize And we did. Now, our current public information chair is sitting right here, and this is the first time she's heard this, but she may have guessed. I already knew what their answer would be. It was the one Tom gave. But the importance of sharing with each other what our past experience is and connecting with others who have gone before, even though this is a relatively new field. There are people here. There are people online who have experience with this. Talk with them. There's people I've met at this convention so far, some in this room, many of them far more, I would think, more qualified than I am to be standing here. But they're there, and they're willing to share their experience. And that's the most important aspect, is as we build these things, if your area or district or intergroup makes a decision to put up a web page, tap the experience that's out there. I think the idea maybe of having a meeting with a public health expert, or a public health expert, or a public health expert, or a public health expert, or a public health expert, or a public health expert, is having some web sponsors out there. People willing to share their experience with people who are considering it. Talk to other areas who have websites. There are some excellent ones. I won't make any specific recommendations here, but if you'd like to talk to me privately after the meeting, I'll certainly share those. And some of them I haven't been to for a while, so maybe they've changed. That happens occasionally. And that's another concern that's important, is they're making a decision. And I've been to both the delegate areas in Minnesota. I was involved in the ad hoc committees making the decision whether or not to have a website. Both have decided. Northern Minnesota's is up in a very limited way. They have a meeting list up. And that's pretty much all they have, the addresses of their intergroups. Southern Minnesota has a domain name registered and parked. And I was at a... We held a lunch meeting at our Area Assembly last Saturday, looking at a couple of different possible design routes. and we're working on it. But it is, I think, really important that every process of putting up a website, deciding to have one, reaching some level of consensus, work in the committee system because then you can avoid one of the pitfalls, which was mentioned already, having over control, having too many guidelines. Two of our districts in southern Minnesota have websites up now. They're pretty nice websites. I haven't spent a lot of time looking at them, but I have gone through them. And during the process of their decision, one of the districts, which I also have a meeting, a group that I go to regularly, I went to their district meeting and they passed out one area's guidelines to websites. And it was, you know, it was definitely written by an unrecovered parliamentarian. I mean, I don't know. And I won't mention the delegate area. And I thought, how can their web committee or their webmaster do anything? I mean, it would take them, it would take their web committee if they had five people on it a month to all understand what the guidelines were trying to say. And I guess that's, you know, I'm not going to offer a whole lot more in this area. I don't have a whole lot more to offer. But it is important that, first of all, I think that if you're thinking about putting up a website and you don't know whether or not, you know, that's a good thing to do, as Tom mentioned, 14-year-olds have them. Those of us who have computers and web access in the room, that's probably the majority because that's usually what these things attract, know there's a lot of garbage, I guess, out there. You know, it's, it, and a lot of people associate it as one big lump. But I think it is a tool. And it's a tool that we need to use. And we need not be afraid of it. But we do need to have an informed group conscience when we decide what to put up by deciding, first of all, some kind of consensus on if there's a need, what kind of need there is, what the content should be, and the idea of keeping it simple. I guess the final thought, and I'll mention the experience I've seen on hotlinking or linking to other sites. I'll mention that online intergroup, the conscience of that intergroup, which has been up about not quite five years, there's some people in the room who were involved in San Diego before it actually was incorporated here, that can give me the exact date, I'm sure. But the experience has been over and over again, time and time again, when people suggested we link, sometimes even when we link to member groups, has been that we don't link to anybody but the General Service Office website. Because of a lack of control is a really dangerous thing. Now, we have local websites that link to us, and we're grateful for that. We have local websites that link to other local websites. Once again, you have to look at what the purpose of your site is, how it's laid out. But that's something I would think that any decision on actually having a hotlink, that would be my suggestion, would be to come late in your development process to avoid them early. Because those things can change drastically. I think that's a good point. And it is difficult to control. I guess finally, I'd like to say that I'm simply grateful for the experience to be able to stand up here. I never imagined seven years ago I'd be in a place like this with people like you. And I think I'm... You can take that either way. But I was brought into the fellowship by a phone call to someone who came and picked me up in person. But I found that there's a lot of ways that we can use this to carry the message. And as long as we remember our primary purpose, and remember that just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done, which is often another pitfall, and just to take care that if we get enough to let people know how to get in touch with another alcoholic, with a still suffering alcoholic, get in touch with another alcoholic, and we remember that's why we're here, whether it's in cyberspace, on the web, on the internet, on the internet, on the internet, on the internet. And we remember that. And I think that's a good thing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, David. And thanks to all three of the presenters. I get the right to talk for two minutes or something like. I keep hearing this, 14-year olds can put up websites where I come from, 6-year olds. year olds put them up on a regular basis. In 1992, I heard about this web stuff and out of curiosity, I set up a site. And like so many people at that time, not having a subject for the site, I finally decided to put up an AA slash alcoholism historical site. And I did that. And then I forgot all about it for the next five years. And a couple years ago, the Seattle Intergroup contacted me and they said, we want to look at putting our schedule up on a website. Partly because they found out an individual member had put their schedule up on the website. Actually replete with many mistakes, which were mistakes five years earlier when the data was derived from. So you had this terribly outdated information. And I did help them put up a site. And what they wanted was for me to do it and take full responsibility. And that is a trap. That is a real trap. And I was faced with working with an intergroup staff that is, was and is as computer illiterate as any group you'll ever find. We bought the Macintoshes here a number of years ago and sent them off to school to learn about them. And after the first day they came back and said, wrong class, we need a separate class on just turning it on. And they were not kidding. But they have a site now that they can maintain. It's not a fancy site. It's really basically a meeting directory. And I'll tell you, if you're going to have an up to date directory of twelve hundred and fifty five meetings that they have every week, you better come up with a simple way of keeping it updated. You're not going to do it manual. You're not going to do any of that stuff manually. I'd like to repeat the fact that this meeting is being taped. If you choose to share your experience in this workshop, your participation constitutes your agreement to be taped. We have apparently only one microphone. You're now free to ask questions of our presenters or share your own personal experience or ask questions at the sky, whatever you wish. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Richard. I'm alcoholic. Richard. I'm from southeastern New York. And my home group there is Ninth Avenue Group in Manhattan. And I want to thank you all. This has really been a terrific workshop. A couple of things. We're in the process in southeastern New York of setting up a website. And we've done a combination of some of the good things you've been saying and some of the bad things. Tom's description of the original GSO site is sort of what the original GSO site is. And I think it's a great way to get people to know about the GSO. And I think it's a great way to get people to know about the GSO. And I think it's a great way to get people to know about the GSO. Go ahead. Yeah. Color. Sastically. Yeah. It's terrible but personal. I don't know it. Yeah. But just real quick. To be able to get people to know about it. You're on a team of some of these multiple websites as well. Don't you want to get more involved? Well, it's kind of tricky. I think it's kind of complicated and you just say yeah, I thought as far to the point as being effortless ofuyuarusing it. And maybe cuz there were appearing many some of those lame instructions back in the early days, you give up a new website, build a new target and you're going on business. Yeah. That's the thing. No. The good side of this is, second, you know, guidelines and that sort of thing with websites is one of the things everybody in this room, I think, does have a lot of experience with is the traditions of AA. And I think, you know, honestly, that's what many of us carry into these guidelines. And it may be, may lead us down the wrong path, but as Tom so eloquently pointed out, we have the right to make a lot of mistakes and learn out how to do it better. But I really do think that's part of it. And I get troubled when people are talking about the technical expertise you need to do this. I think we have the expertise that's really the most important, which is the traditions of AA and how those traditions can be honored as we go into this other way of communicating. One of the things I just want to mention that we gave a lot of thought to in southeastern New York as we've been talking about our website was we've become a very... This is an educational process for us. And we've become very aware that there's an application for special needs, people with special needs who cannot make it to meetings, people with hearing problems, with vision problems and so on, who the web, the Internet offers a tremendous opportunity for them to communicate more widely in AA. And we're trying very hard to think about that as we design our site, to keep it simple in a technical sense so that it's accessible from any number of different kinds of computers and users and what they might need, for one thing, to have an option for, you know, a low resolution version of it for somebody with an older computer or to take into account what kind of combinations of colors and how types should appear on the screen so that people with vision can have with vision sight problems can read what's on it. So that's one thing I just wanted to throw out that we were thinking about a lot. I was very interested in what Brooke, is that your name, from California was saying about keeping the site anonymous. And I wish you'd repeat what you said about that in terms of how to access the site so it's only available to AA people because we've been talking about that in southeastern New York a lot. And what we want to put up on our site, for example, is our calendar of events in our area, which is a four-page, eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, single-spaced sheet, four sheets of that. It has tons of information. It's got phone numbers. It's got personal email addresses. Just it's a nightmare for us in terms of thinking of how to clean that up to put it on the website, which now is a public site. Anybody can access this site with our current domain name. And it represents a tremendous amount of work. It's a tremendous amount of work in terms of keeping this within what we think is the guidelines for proper AA communication. And we're thinking of going further with that and putting our newsletter on the site, perhaps further down the line. And again, we'll have that same issue of names, phone numbers, a lot of personal information that gets stuck into these items. We're concerned that we strip all that out. People are going to go to the website. See a email. They're going to go to the site. They're going to go to the site. We're not going to have a list. We're going to have a list of the people that are going to be at an event that's listed, for example, but have no way to reach anybody to find out if the date's been changed, if the location's been. And that happens all the time in AA. We all know that. So I would really like if you'd go through a little bit more detailed what you were talking about in terms of protecting the anonymity of the site. I think that's very interesting. Thanks. Yeah. If you want me to do that offline, I'll catch you after the meeting. OK. Thank you. I'm Lois and I'm an alcoholic. I'm also the registrar for the Eastern Area of Missouri and I was part of the ad hoc committee that put up our area's website. I don't feel alone anymore. I'm grateful. We exactly followed your suggested path, although we didn't know it. And in January, we went the step farther to finally present this thing that we had built and it was hard. I mean, I kept going, I don't want to do this if they don't want to take it on. But I had to do that. But we did it. We built it. We built it in January and then gave it over to the assembly. And the way that our assembly decided to support it now, now it's part of our service rotation, is we have three area officers who have responsibility for content. So they'll always rotate. Our area secretary, our area newsletter editor, and we have an area office manager. So those three people are responsible for content. They get together and decide what gets posted. And then we have an appointed webmaster, which I'm currently serving as, but will rotate. Our chairperson. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's our chairperson. I'll do that. And so that's E-A-M-O.org. And we're real excited. We didn't have guidelines or anything. We just kept building it and see what's happening. I'm not here making daily postings to our area's website for people back home who didn't get to come. And I had to run that by our committee, you know, the three people. Is this okay? Yes, this is what you can't put. Lois, don't put anything about, you know, your personal stuff. Tell us the service stuff. So we have a back of the table area conference structure website live, and I'd be happy to anybody if they had any questions. And I just wanted to throw out there, you know, because I'm a new technology person, you know, we're moving into wireless. Like, I have a web-enabled phone. And to me, this is the perfect alcoholic tool. I can call my sponsor and I can look for a meeting. So if you guys already have meetings up there and you're looking at what to do next, please start thinking about encoding them in WML so we can access them from our phones. Thanks. WML. WML. Wireless marketplace. I'm Danny. I'm an alcoholic. I'm also Brooks GSR. And I have dealt with his page and I have typed in on it. And to get the information for our agenda topics has been, you know, really easy for me. What I am is an auto technician. I don't have much computer experience. But to get the information to my home group, it worked good, as long as I could remember the numbers he gives me. Okay. Okay. To type in. My name's Rad and I'm an alcoholic. My home group is Cashmere, Washington. I currently serve as the Area 92 alternate chairperson. My question is for Brock. In specific, I know that you were unique that you had the ability to work with a web page and your wife was the delegate. My concern is, how was it that you handled the newsletter? I don't know if this is a Q&A type of situation we're in right now, but how... Yeah, go ahead. Because you had... Yeah. ...in print something that had been in effect for years, like our area does. We have an active viable newsletter in print. And how is it that you coordinated the movement towards the website and still respected your newsletter? That's a very good question. We excluded the newsletter. Realized that the back of the table...the table in the back of the room analogy, I think, is probably one of the most powerful things about this that you can take home with you. Because, in fact, there's all sorts of people whose responsibility is to put things on the table. And I think that's one of the things that I think is really important to put things on that table. And the newsletter is an excellent one. And so our area is now having a separate series of discussions because we have the newsletter. It didn't change at all. I have done an electronic dummy of the newsletter and given it back to the area officers. And we now have an agenda discussion topic on the newsletter specifically and what and how to use it in an electronic form. And so that discussion has come about because the table in the back of the room existed and the newsletter was not there. Hi, I'm Vicki, and I'm an alcoholic. I keep up the Augusta, Georgia, central office website. And one of the issues that I'd like to bring out is when I learned to do web pages, the first thing I did, we were going to be hosting the state convention this year, so I got the bright idea to put this website up. And I was a little bit confused about that. And I said, well, I have to. Oh, I have to do it. And then the first thing I did, I was a little bit confused about that. I was a little bit confused about that. And then Didn't look at anything. And believe it or not, it's okay. But I put it, for the time being, I put it on my private site. I do pay for my site, but it's a free company usually. One of the problems I've been having trouble with is trying to get the not-for-profit server to take it over in Augusta as far as to get it on the Augusta.org server. And I have had no luck, and I've had two other people try to get it on that server because I'm not comfortable keeping it on a free server. But I don't know what to do with it. Another thing is I went way over my head when I did it. I thought, you know, oh, I got my own home page, and I've got this. I'll do this and see what they say. Because I did the page, put the meeting schedule on it and all that good stuff. Then I asked all the GSRs and everyone else. I asked everyone for, you know, an approval before it went. Everyone said, oh, great, do it. The problem is nobody else wants to help. What can I say? I really went over my head for anyone thinking about doing this, you know, and doing like I did because I know I'm not unique. Be very careful because you might get stuck with something. Right now it's a few months behind. I'm keeping up seven pages, and it's kind of lacking. But I've only got like three links on it, and the links, two of the three are active, which makes it real good. But can anyone give me some ideas of how to get a not-for-profit server to, you know, get it across to them? In Augusta, I guess they don't like it. AA. I don't know. Thank you. I'm George. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, George. I'm a And one thing that hasn't been touched on is, you know, everyone's saying that local real live people face-to-face, you know, groups and inner city and, you know, central offices having websites. There are out in cyberspace meetings and steering committees and everything that exists just in cyberspace. And I'm a member of one such a group, and we post our meeting schedules, and it's available to everyone around the world where meetings online are, where you can attend a meeting no matter where you are in the world. The voice of AA and another alcoholic is going to be there for you if you need it. The one thing I'm doing is I'm going to be in the middle of the meeting, and I'm going to be in the middle of the meeting, and I'm going to be in the middle of the meeting. I'm going to be in the middle of the meeting. It's a very fun, its very fun thing to... The only удивâm thing about being on the level of a lot of people, it's amazing. I mean, it's the 1200-day sale of you put on the booths for phone calls and just stuff like that, in the airwaves. And I'm excited spending so much time with you guys, and the people who, you know, come out and potatoes to me. I mean, that was absolutely love. And you know, y'all are just, you know, every evening, including Adam's parents, we take care of people's safety, make sure y'all have great food, we make sure they're accessible for people to live in place nd whatever they need. It's amazing. And people texted in from other groups. There's a lot, heavy percent of people have a 25-day bond. It's a lot. We are the voice of AA. The only people that have any access to the site that can make changes or to the, we use a one list for mass mailing to the group, the only people that can get in there are moderators of the group which are the trusted servants and elected officials of that group. Nobody else has access to get into it and the positions do rotate so you're not stuck with it for an extended period of time. And you know it's the AA online which really didn't exist five years ago that has blossomed and is going to continue is if somebody lives out in the middle of nowhere a thousand miles from the nearest meeting and has a cell phone. And a laptop has AA. There are email meetings that this person can log into their server, download email meetings where one of the groups I'm in and there's lots of them will do email shares every week on a topic, a step, a tradition, something to do with AA. And a person out in the middle of nowhere that doesn't want to drink can download the AA. Download this to his laptop, read the shares, have a meeting. I mean it's great. We've gotten people from the eastern block countries into our meetings. Sure the typing in English isn't very good but you know it's reaching people that otherwise couldn't be reached. People that are invalids, people that can't see to drive at night, people that can't get to real live meetings but need a meeting or they're going to drink can get to a meeting. And I don't know, I think it's great. So it's on the tape, aa-intergroup.org. My name's Jim, I'm an alcoholic. I am the office manager and director of the Dallas Intergroup in the central office. I've been there since last August and part of my job description. One of the lines was that I be able to at least manage the website if not do all of the technical updating. I'm not professionally qualified but to do that we have a terrific webmaster who is a sober member of AA and is a professional. And our communication for updates I must say has been very seamless and excellent. Usually I just send him an email and he updates our site by 20 and 24 hours of schedule changes. All right. So we had lots of meetings, hundreds of meetings. We acted like a team of different resources. And certainly we had never had any more meetings where we were, you know, called for our would just not wanna go symptoms. We're doing it because we have to each find a new organization. So we were very successful. We have the forms to get together. They were very logical things to have an interaction but we did do some work on춤 so it was one thing for the hashtags. Also within the office we're working on a million favorite articles. The basses배it some fake僕 grids for a record of this day that c imev in the gallery in the kua know10105. By the way, like 30 minutes or so. The department is gleam, one of those days when we had the mass als. the communication of one alcoholic to another whether it be done by telephone which was the old way we have our telephone listed in the directory and it says alcoholics anonymous and sometimes it's just terrifying to wonder which volunteer is going to answer that phone but somehow it works you know by the same token we do have a mail to address and we have an interactive form on our on our web page by which volunteers can sign up to do all kinds of service work through our intergroup one of the boxes they can check is to do what we just call for one of any other name 12-step email and if I get a cry for help which I do maybe once or twice a week I will send an immediate response just a little generic one and I don't list the title or anything just sign it Jim and then I forward it to the relevant a member who is who has been good enough to volunteer to do 12-step email and you know you know you never know really what happens to those anymore you really know what happens to the phone call since we don't keep records but we have we have some fairly good evidence that there's some recovery going on out there and it's it's been a very exciting exciting ten months really to just see what can be done within the guidelines of the tradition of the AA. So certainly we do have some links up to enter groups and we try to keep them to where the first generation of the link has no commercial entity whatsoever on it and after that it's pretty hard to feel we're in control but we have many people who travel who have written this back and said we are so grateful that you have links because I'm flying to Minneapolis and I wanted to know how to get meetings and it was an easy way to get the their website so we're still feeling our way around that and I don't know if we're doing it perfectly but we're doing the best we can hello famine I'm an alcoholic member of the living proof group of Opelika Florida my name is Jimmy Mac hello family I wanted to touch on number one our theme this this year for the convention is passing on to the 21st century this is the perfect medium for us for me the electronic medium the websites is something that for a long time I've been looking at putting up for our local intergroup and GSO I started playing around with it one day and lo and behold I had this full full-blown site I was gonna do it just as a hobby but I put it up and I let the folks that you know that are in the community know that I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm a local and I'm intergroup know about it and by I guess osmosis I became public information chair they needed one so but what I did was I built a site and I donated it and I fully supported the only problem I have is getting volunteers to serve on the committee because I don't want we had a problem here a few years ago one person did that and he died he died with the password to the site and the site was also hosted on one of the ISPs that when you log into the site it has their advertisement what I what we've done is host got a hosting company to host our site because we want nobody's advertising on it okay yeah there's a lot of free stuff out there but all everything that's free is not good you know at least for this alcoholic so we want no advertising so that's what we did and you know 20 bucks a month is not a lot of money you know I didn't get so much money to get the site open and I don't want to get so much money to get sober to tighten up financially especially when it comes to support in this fellowship you know I see that a lot in this fellowship so but the thing I'm having a problem with is getting up so that I can give the password to other people that are and we're highly intelligent bunch that can have access to the site to do updates also I do a tremendous amount of work with this website on a weekly basis so far as updating and another thing somebody said about this is that I have a fire page on the site that whoever wants to send me a flyer I will put it up on the site but what I do is I get permission from the individual if there's a step series given by Judy G I will get permission from that person if they would like for me to put their site up I mean put their name up on that on that flyer on the site or if there's a committee member if it's okay to put his name in his home and home phone number on that as a contact person I get that permission first from that individual before I do it and I think that's the simplest way you know to address that problem it's one of the solutions anyway for me anyway our website is www.MiamiDayIntergroup.org for those of you coming down next year to our 2001 state convention log on you'll find all of our meetings located on that site thank you hi my name is Tom E and I am an alcoholic and I'm also host at ny-aa.org and and some people ask how do you manage to get a website approved how do you get it through this particular website is attempting to be an entire state website bridging across four areas and it really started because the local council on alcoholism in my county was going to put up what kept bugging us to put up a website with our meetings and then they since we weren't going to do it they were going to put one up so it became possible to go to the district say we're not going to have control fear is a wonderful motivator to get something started and the district said oh my god Tom go out there put up a website get the meeting lists online so I did now the county merely links to that and it is in our area has a database of all meetings and when I put that together it simply removes my districts meetings from that database and then I took the county immediately adjacent to ours which had three districts in and they said oh yeah sure go ahead put us up to and eventually by the time I went to my area to say why don't we make this an area wide I had already signed up about two-thirds of the districts in the area to have their information up there but I think a key thing I don't want to debate traditions with a whole bunch of alcoholics it's a meeting I wanted to get the thing up and so my agreement right to begin with is no editorial material later on when you want to get into decisions of whether to put up this newsletter or that announcement of where our district meetings are or where our intergroup meetings are or anything later on that it can come but I wanted to simply limit that and I like the idea of putting it maybe some hidden place on a site or rough or possibly password-protected there are certainly ways of doing it but this certainly is public information a lot of that stuff simply is not public a a should continue to look like Disneyland yeah there's twice as much stuff going under on underground in Disneyland then there is above ground and if the public has to see all the underground stuff the beauty of what you actually see in those meetings kind of kind of a dissipated and so I don't think we we really want to invite the public in to look and see what our structure is because we claim to be totally automatic and God-driven and then they're here all these people you know we're gonna vote on this we're gonna vote on that you know spending $22 failed by a vote of you know five to three or something all those great spiritual stuff that we just don't have to put out there but you know start with something that this website took on a life of its own and it has gone far beyond my programming ability I don't understand how you know how it got to this point but it is I figure people don't go to meetings in District 11 and they don't go to meetings inChurch.org just county. They go to meetings right here, and they want the meetings where they are. And so if you go look at that website, it is only meeting lists, but you indicate on a map exactly where you are, and it doesn't give you a pre-programmed set of meetings. It dynamically builds a meeting list for exactly where you are along with a map showing where they are. And I don't know how that got to be. These things take on a life of their own. Thanks. Thank you. I'm a network engineer, and I travel around the country, and I've had a lot of...