Website Committee Report – February, 2003

An entirely brand new Website Committee has begun its work in the first few weeks of this year. While we certainly are interested in more additions to our committee, we had a small crew of 8 of us at the first committee meeting in Mankato on February 8.

While we changed Webmasters, the first name and initials didn’t change – it’s still Nick H. He has been at work on the website and will be a great addition to our areas effort at using the technology of the Internet to help carry the AA message.

Nick’s first efforts were to help the new Area Committee members get acquainted with the email system on our website. He was able to assist many of them at the Area Service Conference in Owatonna during January.

The committee and webmaster are focusing on completing a transition to a new website. This effort began with the last committee and webmaster, and has continued to the current one. The first priority of this effort is to create the Newcomers section of the site. At the last committee meeting many good ideas were contributed and we think this will help us build an interesting and useful site.

The Newcomers section will have several elements to it. As far as published newcomer information, we will be linking to the GSO website and a number of the pamphlets they have online there. These links will open in a new window so the newcomer doesn’t get dislocated from our site. In addition to that information, we are working on a means by which to provide meeting information. Our first effort will be to simply display a map of our area, with counties outlined, and when a person clicks on the respective county – they will be taken to either a webpage for that district, to the respective Intergroups meeting list, or a default page for those districts about which we have no information.

We hope to be able, in the future, to provide a means by which a person can enter a city and receive a listing of groups and meeting information for that city. This will be several months in the making and we hope to be able to have it active latter this year. Along this line, we will be presenting some information on this possibility at the next Assembly Meeting. The information will be provided in a “for discussion only” presentation. This will allow for GSR’s to get accurate information about the effort and discuss it with their respective groups. Please come and help us examine this idea.

Also on the Newcomers page will be stories from our own members about their experience at getting sober. We will be inviting people to write their stories and submit them to us for inclusion on this page. A 1 – 2 page story should be the proper length.

At the same time we are also inviting people to submit lists of things they did to stay sober in the first year of their sobriety. This list should contain actions taken that can be described in 1 or 2 sentences. With these two items we will be able place on the Newcomer page an “Our Experience Shows” section and an “Actions We Took” section as well. We believe this can provide a valuable service to someone who is new to sobriety – or may not have attended their first AA meeting.

We are also in the process of completing the guidelines for our committee. These will be submitted to the Structure Committee, who after reviewing them, will forward a completed guideline set to the Area Committee and Area Assembly. You can look for these in an Assembly later this year.

Our new website should be up sometime before mid summer. It will also include a section for GSR’s and DCM’s. Material is being developed for this aspect of the site as we move on. The “look and feel” of the site will change as well. We will be using a ‘left oriented’ approach, rather than a ‘centered’ one to make the site easier on the eyes. In addition, the background will be white – rather than a colored graphic – to allow for a wider range of color usage in text and graphics.

While it will not affect the web surfer in any way, we hope to move to a new host for the site due to a need for broader services provided by the host. At present, we have found one that is actually less expensive – but provides a wider range of services. We do want to ensure, however, that the transition will be a smooth one for all concerned.

If you are interested in being a part of our committee – please email me at website@area36.org .

Dennis B
Website Chairperson