Website Committee Proposal - On-Line Meeting List

The need for an on-line searchable database of AA meetings has been growing for the following reasons

While Minneapolis and St. Paul Intergroups do an excellent job of tracking meetings, and producing a Meeting Listing of them, for the metro portion of the Southern Minnesota Area, there are a growing number of requests for meeting information outside the area covered by the Intergroups.
An increasing number of the emails received at area email boxes are concerned with finding a meeting
As society becomes more and more dependent on the use of the Internet the most often used place to find a meeting will no longer be the phone book or the newspaper.
The Area Group Records is, or at least should be, the most up-to-date repository of group and meeting information available. This vital resource is not being fully utilized to serve the still suffering alcoholic.

The proposal is to use a copy of the Group Records Database to develop an on-line searchable meeting list. A person could go to the website, select the city in Southern Minnesota that they want a meeting list for, and have that that list presented to them on the web page. This would provide up-to-date meeting information from the most reliable source, and for the entire area.

The meeting information could be presented in two ways. These are detailed below:

The meeting information would contain:

The group name.
The address of the meeting location.
The time of the meeting
The type of meeting (if available).
Special conditions i.e. smoking / non-smoking.

No other information would be provided.

The meeting information would contain:

All the same information for the Option #1 listing
A phone number for the group or group contact
The first name of the Group Contact.

The phone number and first name of the contact would be at the groups discretion. It would not be placed on the listing unless specifically requested by the group to do so.
Other options might be to list the phone number of an Intergroup, club, or district officer.

We currently have configured a map of the Southern Minnesota Area with the county lines clearly shown. Cities are not shown. A person can click on the respective county and it takes them to another web page. In the case of the metro districts, it takes them to the respective Intergroup website. In the case of non-metro counties, it takes them to the District Web Page. For those districts that do not have a web page, we would need to provide a link to email the Group Records Secretary. This would be less immediate, but still a way to get the information.

While option number 1 and 3 options will get them meeting information, it will not provide for the possibility of a problem with the particular meeting. No records are going to be 100% accurate and there will be times when a person might need to call and get more up-to-date information.

Option #2 provides the most reliable way to get meeting information to someone. The issue here is that the possibility does exist that someone could do a reverse phone lookup on the Internet and get the home address of the person listed as the contact.

The groups often have a hard time recognizing what real benefit they derive from the AA service structure. This results in fewer people being attracted to General Service Work, as well as reduced monetary contributions. We now have a way to be of maximum usefulness to both the AA groups and the still suffering alcoholic. Be that person someone already in Alcoholics Anonymous, or someone who is coming to us for the first time.

By utilizing the Group Records Database in this way, we can provide an extremely positive incentive for the groups to keep their group record up-to-date.

In the not so distant future, we could also incorporate a function into the website through which the group could update their record on-line. This would add even more accuracy to the Group Records Database.

In the event GSO has a problem with a groups information in their database, even they could go to the database and find the record they need to verify. Access could be provided to them for this type of activity.

The website committee feels this is truly a needed service that we can provide through our Area website. Instead of providing an on-line meeting - we provide the information to get to a real meeting.

However, as much as the committee feels the need - it is the decision of the AA groups in Southern Minnesota that is critical to this effort. We need you to decide if this is what you want us to proceed with, and if so, how would you want us to format it?