Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page

"A Member's Eye View of AA"?

Do you Yahoo!?

(1952)

So September is the month of remembering! I am glad that you added "reading"

and especially "re-dedication."

I remember...the amazing friendliness of Akron AA in 1938. We were given an

address book with all names listed (few could afford telephones then) and

the earnest invitation to "call at any time." And we did.

I remember...meetings. We were from Cleveland, and every Wednesday, rain or

snow or shine, we made the 70-mile round trip to Akron. We made it eagerly,

willingly; anxious to be with new friends. Often there would be pot-luck

supper on Saturday nights. We were too poor in material possessions to

entertain, but how wealthy we were in friendships!

I remember...the emphasis on "morning meditation and morning reading," and

all of us equipped with the 5¢ Upper Room. That was a must.

I remember...every lesson that Anne dished out in her gentle and inimitable

manner. "Dorothy, everyone has been kind to you as a newcomer. Never forget

to pass that friendliness and kindness along!"

I remember...when several manuscript chapters of "The Book" came. Anne and I

read them to each other till 4 a.m., and Anne said: "Pray with me that this

will help others."

I remember...Anne every time I hear the Twelve Steps read, for the fifth

chapter was one that we read so eagerly one night.

I remember our first AA New Year's Eve party in Akron. Anne had gotten two

new dresses, her very first new clothes. When I asked her which dress she

would wear, she said "I can't wear a new dress. There will be so many who

have no new clothes," and she wore the dress we were so accustomed to seeing

on her.

When they arrived we would all be congregated to greet them. They would hide

their weariness (as they still do) and greet us with warmth and affection.

I remember...it says in the Big Book "We are like the passengers of a great

liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck..."

How true it was of us then!

From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/8/2004 2:43:00 AM

General Service Conference now ending have marked the time when our Society

has taken the first step into the brave new world of our future. Never have

we felt more confident, more assured of the years to come than we do this

afternoon.
This Conference thinks, I am sure, that its main structural concepts are

approximately right. I am thinking of the relation of AA groups to their

Assemblies, the method of choosing Committeemen and Delegates, Directors and

Headquarters Staffs; also the relation of the Trustees, essentially a body

of custody, to the operating services of the Headquarters, the Grapevine,

Service office and AA Publishing. These interlocking relations are something

for high confidence already based on considerable experience. Nevertheless

we shall remain aware that these structures can be changed if they fail to

work. Our Charter can always be amended.
And of course, we shall always be much concerned with those lesser

refinements that can improve the working of our main structure.

this Charter - how our newly formed Budget Committee is a fresh assurance

that we can't go broke, how our new Policy Committee can avert blunders in

this area and take the back breaking load of minor matters off of the

Trustees, how our Nominating Committee can insure good choices of new Staff

members, Directors and Trustees. In short, our Board of Trustees is now

fitted with eyes, ears and a nose that can guarantee a much improved

functioning. So far, so good.

who feel and think and act. Therefore any principles or devices that can

better relate them to each other in a harmonious and effective whole are

worth considering.

services, principles which express tolerance, patience and love of each

other; principles which could do much to avert friction, indecision and

power-driving. These are not really new principles; unconsciously we have

been making use of them right along. I simply propose to name them and, if

you like them, their scope and application can, over coming years, be fully

defined.
Four Key Words:
Here are the words for them: petition, appeal, participation and decision.

Maybe all this sounds a bit vague and abstract. So let's develop the meaning

and application of these four words.
Take petition. Actually this is an ancient device to protect minorities. It

is for the redress of grievances. Every AA member, inside or outside our

services, should have the right to petition his fellows. Some years ago, for

example, a group of my old friends on the outside became violently opposed

to the Conference. They feared it would ruin AA. To put it mildly, they

thought they had a grievance. So they placed their ideas on paper and

petitioned the AA groups to stop the Conference. Lots of our members got

sore; they said this group had no right to do this. But they really did have

the right, didn't they?
Yet in our services, this right is often forgotten or unused. It is my

belief that every person working in AAs services should feel free to

petition for a redress of grievances or an improvement of conditions. I

would like to make this personal right unlimited.

of AA Publishing, the Board of Trustees, or indeed, the whole Conference if

he chose to do so -- and this without the slightest prejudice against him.

Of course, he'd seldom carry this right so far. But its very existence, and

everybody's knowledge of it, would go far to stop those morale breakers of

undue domination and petty tyranny.

deTocqueville, came to this country to look at the new Republic. Despite the

fact that his family had suffered loss of life and property in the French

Revolution, this nobleman-student had begun to love democracy and to believe

in its future. His writing on the subject is still a classic. But he did

express one deep fear for the future: he feared the tyranny of the majority,

especially that of the uninformed, the angry, or the close majority. He

wanted to be sure that minority opinion could always be well heard and never

trampled upon. How very right he was has already been sensed by the

Conference.

right to appeal. Under it, the minority of any committee, corporate Board,

or a minority of the Board of Trustees, or a minority of this Conference,

could continue to appeal, if they wished, all the way forward to the whole

AA movement, thus making the minority voice both clear and loud.
Protective Safeguard:
As a matter of practice, this right, too, would seldom be carried to

extremes. But again, its very existence would make majorities careful of

acting in haste or with too much cocksureness. In this connection we should

note that our Charter already requires in many cases a two-thirds vote (and

in some instances a three-quarter vote) for action. This is to prevent hasty

or inconsiderate decision by a close majority. Once set up and defined, this

right of appeal could greatly add to our protection.
Now we come to participation. The central concept here is that all

Conference members are on our service team. Basically we are all partners in

a common enterprise of World Service. Naturally, there has to be a division

of duties and responsibilities among us. Not all of us can be elected

Delegate, appointed Trustee, chosen Director, or become hired Staff member.

We have to have our respective authorities, duties and responsibilities to

serve; otherwise we couldn't function.
But in this quite necessary division, there is a danger -- a very great

danger -- something that will always need watching. The danger is that our

Conference will commence to function along strict class lines.
The elected Delegates will want all, or most all, of the Conference votes,

so they can be sure to rule the Trustees. The Trustees will tend to create

corporate boards composed exclusively of themselves, the better to rule and

direct those working daily at the office, Grapevine and AA Publishing. And,

in their turn, the volunteer Directors of the Grapevine and Publishing

Company will tend to exclude from their own Board any of the paid staff

members, people who so often carry the main burden of doing the work. To sum

it up: the Delegates will want to rule the Trustees, the Trustees will want

to rule the corporations and the corporate directors will want to rule the

hired Staff members.

means complete ruin of morale and function. That is why Article Twelve of

your Conference Charter states that "No Conference member shall ever be

placed in a position of unqualified authority over another."

furious ones. For lack of a seat on the several boards and committees that

ran her office, for lack of defined status and duties, and because she was

"just hired help," and a woman besides, one of the most devoted Staff

members we ever had completely cracked up. She had too many bosses, people

who sometimes knew less and carried less actual responsibilities than she.

She could not sit in the same board or committee room as a voting equal. No

alcoholic can work under this brand of domination and paternalism.

participation.

a Staff member's vote is guaranteed as good as anyone's. Participation also

means, at the level of the Headquarters, that every corporate Board or

Committee shall always contain a voting representation of the executives

directly responsible for the work to be done, whether they are Trustees or

not, or whether they are paid or volunteer workers. This is why, today the

president of AA Publishing and the senior Staff member at the AA office are

both Directors and both vote on the Board of AA Publishing. This puts them

on a partnership basis with the Trustee and other members of the Publishing

Board. It gives them a service standing and an authority commensurate with

their actual duties and responsibilities. Nor is this just a beautiful idea

of brotherhood. This is standard American corporate business practice

everywhere, something that we had better follow when we can.
In this connection I am hopeful that the principal assistant to the Editor

of The Grapevine, the person who has the immediate task of getting the

magazine together, will presently be given a defined status and seated on

the Grapevine's Board as a voting director.

get nowhere. And the business of leadership is to lead.

are obviously checks upon our leadership, checks to prevent our leadership

running away with us. Clearly this is of immense importance.
But of equal importance is the principle that leaders must still lead. If we

don't trust them enough, if we hamstring them too much, they simply can't

function. They become demoralized and either quit or get nothing done.
How, then, are AA's service leaders to be authorized and protected so that

they can work as executives, as committees, as boards of trustees or even as

a Service Conference, without undue interference in the ordinary conduct of

AAs policy and business?

decision, carefully and definitely defined.

own, and when they should consult their respective committees or boards.

Likewise, our Policy, Public Information and Finance Committees should be

given the right to choose (within whatever definitions of their authority

are established) whether they will act on their own or whether they will

consult the Board of Trustees. (Our Headquarters can, of course, have no

secrets.)
Similarly, the Grapevine and AA Publishing Boards should be able to decide

when to decide when to act on their own and when to consult the full Board

of Trustees.
The Trustees, in their turn, must positively be trusted to decide which

matters they shall act upon, and which they shall refer to the Conference as

a whole. But where, of course, any independent action of importance is

taken, a full report should afterward be made to the Conference.

power of decision. It cannot rush back to the grassroots with all its

problems or even many of them. In my belief the Conference should never take

a serious problem to the grassroots until it knows what their own opinion

is, and what the "pros" and "cons" of such a problem really are. It is the

function of Conference leadership to instruct the Group Conscience on the

issues concerned. Otherwise, an instruction from the grassroots which

doesn't really know the score can be very confusing and quite wrong.

shall be referred to the AA group and just how and when this is to be done.

will have to trust the Conference to act in many matters and only the

Conference can decide which they are. The Conference, however, must at all

times stand ready to have their opinions reversed by its constituent groups

but only after these groups have been thoroughly informed of the issues

involved.

Headquarters leadership must have or else fail in their duty. Anarchy may

theoretically be a beautiful form of association, but it cannot function.

Dictatorship is efficient but ultimately it goes wrong and becomes

demoralized. Of course AA wants neither.
Therefore, we want leadership that can lead, yet one which can be changed

and restrained. Servants of our fellowship, however, our leaders must always

remain trusted. We surely want leaders who are enabled to act in small

matters without constant interference. We want a Conference that will remain

extremely responsible to AA opinion, yet a body completely able to act alone

for us when necessary -- even in some great and sudden crisis.

decision into our service thinking and action, I believe that many of our

confusions about AA's service functions will begin to disappear. More

harmony and effectiveness will gradually replace the service gears that

still grind and stick among us.
Of course, I am not now announcing these as permanent principles for

definite adoption. I only offer them as ideas to ponder until we meet again

in 1957.
Therefore I don't see why we should delay trying the experiment I have just

outlined above. If it doesn't work, we can always change.

initiative in these structural projects. That is why I have tried to go into

this very important matter so thoroughly.
Please believe that I shall not be at all affected if you happen to

disagree. Above all, you must act on experience and on the facts, and never

because you think I want a change. Since St. Louis, the future of AA belongs

to you!
P.S. Some AAs believe that we should increase our Board from 15 to 21

members in order to get the 10 alcoholics we need. This would involve

raising the non-alcoholics from 8 to 11 in number. But, might this not be

cumbersome and needlessly expensive? Personally, I think so.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
++++Message 1649. . . . . . . . . . . . General Service Conference - 1957

From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/9/2004 3:05:00 AM

that AA shall forever remain unorganized, that we may create special boards

or committees to serve us -- never governmental in character.
The Second Tradition is the source of all of the authority which, as you

know, lies in the group conscience of which this Conference is the

articulate voice worldwide.
Those are the basics on which our structure of service rests, whether at the

group level, the Intergroup or AA as a whole. What we want of the service is

primarily to fill a need that can be met in no other way. The test of any

service really is: "Is it necessary."

AA and those still to come. Experience has shown that certain necessary

services are absolutely indispensable at all levels. We make this

distinction: The movement itself is never organized in any governmental

sense. A member is a member if he says so. He cannot be coerced. He cannot

be compelled. In that sense we are a source of benign anarchy.

obviously have to be organized or they won't work. Therefore the service

structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and more especially of this Conference is

the blueprint in which we, as flesh and blood people, operate, relate

ourselves to each other and provide these needed services. And it is the

evolution of this blueprint within which we function that has been my chief

concern for the last dozen and a half years.
The usefulness of AA to us in it, and more particularly to all those still

to come, even the survival of AA, really depend very much on the soundness

of our basic blueprint of relating ourselves together so A.A. can function.

That is the primary thing. That is what we have come to call the structure.

point it may possibly need refinement and improvement. I hope we never think

that the cathedral of AA is finished. I hope that we will always be able to

refine its lines and enhance its beauty and its function.

all the "law" there is. Everything that we have here in the way of authority

must come from the groups.
To create the voice of AA's conscience as expressed in the groups, we meet

in group assemblies. And then to obviate the usual political pressures, we

choose Committeemen and Delegates by the novel methods of no personal

nominations and use of a two-thirds vote.

It was the original parent of the groups and a hierarchy of service quite

appropriate to our infancy, but one which must now become directly amenable

to Delegates and those closely linked to Delegates.

time past. And I think our seven years' experience has suggested that, in

broad outline, we are somewhere near right.
The Board of Trustees as a hierarchy had certain great advantages, which we

want to keep. For the long pull, it had immense liabilities. It was a law

unto itself. Now, it must become a partner. We have the Board, which is more

or less of an appointive proposition, and the staff members and directors of

services, largely appointed, subject to your consent, of course. We had the

problem of how the electees are going to relate to the appointees.

club. The Trustee, for example, becomes a Conference member with one vote,

and a custodial duty. A Director of a service agency becomes a Conference

member, with a service duty. At the level of this Conference, we are all

equal; we are all in the club. Mid you note that the appointees have been

set in a great minority to the electees to insure that Area Delegates will

always have adequate powers of persuasion.
The Board of Trustees, you remember, is a legally incorporated entity. It

has to be that way first of all to transact business. It has to be that way

to give its several members and committees appropriate powers and titles

which denote what they do. We have to have that much organization in order

to function.
Theoretically, as Bernard Smith has pointed out, the Board of Trustees has

been legally undisturbed by all the recent change. Nevertheless, in a

Traditional and psychological sense, the Trustees' relations to the groups

and to you has been profoundly altered, not because Delegates have legal

power but because Trustees know that Delegates are their linkage to AA as a

whole. They also very well know that if you don't like what they do, you can

go home and cut off Area support.
In order to have anything functional, people have to have an authority to

act. Very obviously there are all kinds of questions arising where the basic

problem is "Who should act? And where should the committee or board or

individual act, and when should he act?"

really can't run anything. We operated on that mistaken idea for a while. We

have to classify the kind of thing that each worker, each Board, does -- and

the kind of thing the Conference does and the kind of thing that AA must do

to keep this Fellowship functioning. In other words there must always be an

authority equal to the responsibility involved in service work.

Service

History for Representatives to the Online Service Conference

*

******************************************************************************************************

background for Online Service Conference members. The online AA

groups share a common history both of Alcoholics Anonymous service

structure and of AA development on the internet. It is this unique

combination of shared histories which led to the Online Service

Conference.

early success and spread of AA throughout the United States and Canada,

then across the world. The founders, particularly Bill W. and Dr. Bob,

realized that the program of recovery which they had founded in the late

1930's had become a "movement" only a few years later. After the

Jack Alexander article of 1941 in the Saturday Evening Post, the number

of groups rapidly quadrupled and continued to grow rapidly. As AA spread,

it began to change to adapt to new areas, then new nations. The

need for a unifying structure soon became obvious.
Some means of gathering the group conscience of all the groups was

needed. The increasing age of the founders made it clear that their

term of leadership was nearing an end. Early attempts to answer

group questions and policy issues were handled one-at-a-time by Bill W.,

aided by Ruth Hock, using the US mails as the principal glue which held

the growing movement together.

in Cleveland in July 1950. The first General Service Conference

convened in New York City in April 1951. Both the International

Conventions and the General Service Conferences have been used to express

AA's collective group conscience over the years. The "three

legacies" of recovery, unity and service were adopted at the

International Convention of 1955, the year of publication of the second

edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

Canada is chronicled in some detail in AA Comes of Age, published in

1957, the year in which membership went over 200,000. It is recommended

reading for those interested in early AA history. However, very

little is available concerning the development of general service

structures in nations other than the US and Canada.

as the "Traditions" of AA in 1945, published in the Grapevine in 1946,

and not at all enthusiastically received by the Fellowship. Bill

and wife Lois traveled far and wide in an attempt to persuade the members

of new groups across North America that the Traditions were

meaningful and useful. Finally, they were adopted at the

International Convention of 1950 at Cleveland. In that same year, Dr. Bob

fell seriously ill, and the trustees authorized Bill W to lay out a plan

for a General Service Conference, to insure continued guidance for the

Fellowship .

Bill struggled with the Conference structure. He wrote, "... how on

earth were we going to cut down destructive politics, with all its usual

struggles for prestige and vainglory?" He also wrote, "Though the

Conference might be later enlarged to include the whole world, we felt

that the first delegates should come from the US and Canada only."

come in Bill's lifetime, and is yet to be realized. There is no

"World General Service Conference" of Alcoholics Anonymous which

addresses policy issues and expresses the collective conscience of the

worldwide Fellowship. In its place, some 52 General Service Offices

and a growing number of General Service Conferences have sprung up to

meet the needs of Alcoholics Anonymous groups around the world.

Some of these emulate the US/Canada pattern closely; others are more

unique to the locale in which they exist. The boundaries of the

Conferences usually follow national frontiers, but there are linguistic

Conferences which flow over the borders of nations, as did the original

General Service Conference of the United States and Canada.

delegates from 16 countries, and has been held biennially since; however,

the meeting is not a part of the general service structure of the

Fellowship, and does not attempt to express the group conscience of the

world's AA's. It is an information-sharing meeting for attendees.
*AA on the Internet*

====================

computer-based communications. It is likely that AA members among

the first users of email sought out others to share experience, strength

and hope. There are fragmentary records and oral histories of AA

members using the earliest bulletin board systems (BBS) through local

telephone connections via modems which were both slow and limited in

reliability. Hardware concerns were in the forefront, and communication

among computers over distance was possible, but difficult.

bulletin boards in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, and

probably other American cities. A few staff members in the

New York General Service Office were aware of AA members meeting

electronically, and began keeping contact addresses in the late

1980's. According to the AA Grapevine's "From Akron to the

Internet" timeline of AA communications, "Q-link," one of the earliest

online AA groups, began in 1986, grew to 200 members in two years,

and GSO began keeping a partial list of online AA groups by 1988. A

meeting for online members was provided at the Seattle 1990 International

Convention, which may have been the first face to face meeting of AA

onliners from a wide area. It was well attended, but did not result in a

lasting organization for online members.
The internet developed rapidly into an international communications

system, and facilitated written communications at long distances.

Local bulletin boards and small access providers added newsgroup and

email capabilities, which soon made the local net technologies

redundant. Early internet AA groups used multiple addresses (cc:

lists) for email to reach all member mailboxes with a single post.

When a member changed email addresses, or internet service providers, all

members had to change the address in order to keep the system up to date

and whole. Early members remember this as a constant headache.
Mailing list technology was a breakthrough in providing a suitable online

home for email-based AA groups. Listserv and Majordomo software

"reflected" a message sent to a single common address onward to a

multitude of recipients, and greatly eased maintenance of address lists,

which could now be updated centrally. A new AA service position as

online group "listkeeper" was born, and became key to the growth of the

Fellowship in the new medium.
Other online technologies, including "chat rooms," "guest book"

technology on WWW sites and newsgroups all have played roles in the

development of AA online, and continue to be used in varying ways by

online groups, but the greatest growth has been in email-based groups,

which number some 240 groups with perhaps 8000 participants as the Online

Service Conference came into being in mid-2002. (No accurate census is

available. Numbers based on estimates).
*
Online AA Comes Together
*The first online AA groups depended upon word of mouth by their own

members to identify and enroll new members. There was no complete online

directory of groups. Each group carried out its efforts

independently, finding its own way to sharing recovery in the new

medium. Some groups grew very large, notably the Lamplighters

Group, perhaps the first online meeting to formally identify itself as an

AA group. It took its name from the General Electric "Aladdin's

lamp" logo which identified the GEnie online service provider on which

the group met. It grew swiftly in the early 1990's to hundreds of members

and a full spectrum of AA committees and elected service

positions emulating the largest face to face groups. Other meetings

and groups felt that it was important to remain small to permit good

online sharing on AA topics, and broke off to form new groups repeatedly

when group size exceeded 30 or 40 members. Some groups related to one

another on the basis of a common internet service provider.
New online groups were founded for specialized membership, such as women,

men, gay or lesbian, etc. Other groups formed around a

preference for certain meeting styles, such as Big Book study,

weekly topic discussions, or other styles. Email groups sometimes "spun

off" chat meetings that appealed to a sector of their members. The

groups were clearly autonomous. There was no central online body, and

little communication among the existing groups.
Rumors surfaced that one of the earliest groups, "Meeting of the Minds"

(MoM) had registered as a group with the General Service Board of the UK.

Some of the group's founders had been Scots. In the UK, a unique

district had been designated "District 11" to contain those

English-speaking AA groups not meeting in the British Isles, particularly

those meeting on the European continent.

standard group registration form to the US/Canada General Service Office

in 1994. Because the form asked for place and time of meetings, the

group identified itself as an online group and was denied registration

for that reason.
The GSO of the US and Canada explained that only groups which met face to

face within the boundaries of the US and Canada could be registered in

their Conference. A group which met on the internet, ("in

cyberspace") could not be included, and could have no voice or vote in

its Conference. *No criticism based on how the AA Traditions were

followed online ever was voiced by the General Service Office nor any AA

trustee.* It was agreed that a list of online groups would be

maintained in the New York offices and provided to anyone seeking online

participation in AA.
The online groups were pleasantly surprised in the same year when their

request to participate was approved, and a "loving invitation" was issued

to provide workshop speakers on the topic of online AA and to host a

hospitality room for the 1995 International Convention in San Diego.

Speakers for the panel were easily located, and a "Living Cyber

Committee" was formed online to host the hospitality room and plan its

activities.
A member of the Living Cyber Committee worked for a San Francisco Bay

company which had just replaced its computing machinery with newer

models, and was able to borrow some idle older machines to be used in the

hospitality room as demonstrations of online AA. Online groups

agreed to share with conventiongoers, and in some cases nonattending

members set up special lists or held "model" meetings online for

convention participants.
The "Cyber Suite," as the hospitality room came to be known, was a major

success by any measure, and a watershed event for online AA. The

"buzz" around the San Diego Convention halls led thousands of visitors to

the online demonstrations. Another important activity of the room

was to provide a meeting place for "friends who had never met face to

face" from the participating online groups. Every day there were

whoops of recognition as members encountered those previously known only

as usernames on their monitors. Delegates and trustees were briefed

on the new medium as they visited, and online groups took turns in four

hour shifts as "hosts" for the room.

Committee and a few new friends from online groups vowed to continue

serving together in some manner after they returned to their home

computers. A handful, perhaps less than a dozen, set about to form

a service structure for the online groups. After a few weeks of

discussion, it was determined that the most flexible AA service

organization, and easiest to found, was an intergroup. In short

order, the Online Intergroup of AA (OIAA) was formed, incorporated in New

Jersey, and brought into initial operation on the internet.
Efforts continued by individual members, online groups and the new online

intergroup to find a place in the general service structure of Alcoholics

Anonymous. Requests to attend the US/Canada General Service

Conference in observer status were denied. Requests to attend the

World Service Meeting in observer status were denied, even after

recommendation was made by a WSM committee that online organizations

participate in their meetings, as a view to the future. Few, if any, area

delegates to the US and Canada General Service Conference were online AA

participants, and many without experience viewed the growing number of

new online groups with suspicion and open derision.

US/Canada General Service Conference determined that online groups

applying for registration would be classified as "international

correspondence meetings."

classification also, rather than among "Central Offices, Intergroups and

Answering Services."
Another "loving invitation" was issued, this time to OIAA, to participate

in the 2000 International Convention in Minneapolis. Rather

than a single workshop, the program included several individual

presentations by online members. A trustee with online experience chaired

a panel on "AA in Cyberspace - Now", followed by "AA in Cyberspace -

Future,." plus other specialized online topics.

with online computers demonstrating how AA had grown on the internet;

however, its location outside the main flows of convention traffic, plus

growing public familiarity with computers and the internet, resulted in

somewhat less conventiongoer curiosity and attendance than five years

earlier in San Diego.

participation was favorably mentioned in the last paragraph of the new

Foreword to the Fourth Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Fellowship's

basic text. They were equally shocked when the first US/Canada

General Service Conference after the Fourth Edition's publication voted

to remove a sentence from the paragraph in future printings. The

proscribed sentence alluded to the equivalence of online meetings and

face to face groups. Even without the sentence, the paragraph

remains a strong endorsement of online AA, ending, "Modem to modem or

face to face, AA's speak the language of the heart in all its power and

simplicity," clearly marking recognition of online AA in the basic text,

if not in the general service structure..

and study the matter of how online AA groups might best fit into the

worldwide Fellowship, with emphasis on how online groups might

participate in a general service structure. The chairman appointed

a study committee, headed by Ewart F. of South Africa, who invited

participation by a mixed group of online members, some of whom had long

experience with the issues.
It became clear early in study committee discussions that there were a

limited number of ways in which online groups might join together in

pursuit of a meaningful group conscience. The possibilities narrowed to

three patterns; (1) Online Group in Existing Area, (2) Online Area for

Online Groups, and (3) Online Conference for Online Groups. The

following is a much-abbreviated summary of the committee's evaluation of

each pattern of participation, with benefits and problems of each

pattern, from the records of the study group:

is the easiest and most obvious pattern of participation. An online

AA group might participate as part of an existing face to face area,

based upon some chosen geographic location, perhaps the home address of

the group's elected GSR. The problems are many, including probable

nonacceptance by some areas, and probable unwillingness of some online

members to support a single distant geographic area. Ultimately,

the problem lies in the question, "What was discussed at the area

meeting?" There are no face to face areas which share the concerns

of online groups and vice versa. Onliners in a group with worldwide

membership will have little interest in the plans for visits to treatment

centers in Wyoming or the convention planned for Puerto Rico. Members of

face to face groups in those areas would likely have little interest in

plans for an online hospitality room at the next International

Convention.
(2) "Online Area for Online Groups." It

might be possible for the US and Canada General Service Conference to

create a new area equivalent to a state or provincial area, perhaps

called the "Online Area." It is easy to conceptualize, but the most

difficult pattern to achieve. First, there are no delegates

in the US/Canada General Service Conference who represent online groups,

so there is no one to advance the proposal against known opposition

-- it is "politically impossible." Second, there are many online

members who are not residents of the US or Canada, and would have

problems analogous to the "distant area" difficulties outlined above. A

decision would have to be made whether to assume that all online members

are American and Canadian for group conscience purposes, or whether each

national or linguistic conference should create a separate "Online Area."

Neither is fully satisfactory, and both are unlikely to be

attainable.
(3) "Online Conference for Online Groups." This

pattern follows the model of most "new nations"(or linguistic

zones) as they come into the AA Fellowship. First, a few groups are

established, then perhaps an intergroup or central office, then a

new general service structure evolves, especially adapted to the

characteristics of the "new nation." An Online Service Conference

would represent no geographic nation, but would include all the AA groups

in "cyberspace," that is, those which operate on the internet, which has