MSCA - Mid Southern California Area 09 of Alcoholics Anonymous

Delegate's Bulletin Board

17 May 2020 Virtual Area Service Assembly

MSCA 09 Rocks!
• By the middle of May, I’d visited 12 English-speaking and 2 Spanish-speaking business meetings, which have been great: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21.
• Thanks to Rich, Ryan, and Rainer for putting a tab on our msca09aa.org website that now allows our Area members to make electronic contributions! On 4/29/2020, Rich shared that groups are starting to use it and make contributions.
• Similarly, in late April, Ryan and Rainer were able to develop an FTP site, which will allow us to post confidential information that previously we had to eblast. Please don’t share it, but the password to access this information is “area09panel70.” Early information includes all the Conference information that was eblasted on April 4, 2020.
• Ryan also provided all Districts with current contact information for Panel 70 officers (as we understand them) asking that they help us update them as needed.
• We also had about 20 people in a Zoom session on April 26, where for an hour-and-a-half we chit-chatted about Area 09 issues.
• We have a full schedule for May 17. The June 14 Area Service Committee meeting will be business as usual, and will be my first opportunity to do an Area 09 report-back on the Conference.
• Please be sure to schedule either Zoom sessions or face-to-face report-backs. For now, I have the following Districts and dates listed in my calendars: 2 on 5/27; 12 on 6/4; 25 on 6/8; 21 on 6/10; 1 and 3 on 6/11; 19 on 6/13; 20 on 6/15; 22 on 6/16; 9 on 6/21; 17 on 7/14; and 8 on 7/15.
• At this time Area 93 is still planning for our Four-Area District Committee Member Sharing Session with the date to be determined. Thanks to Ruben O and Nancy H for serving as Area 09 liaisons for this event.
• I appreciate that Maryka, Cooperation with the Professional Community (CPC) requested that Chair, Mitchell, create an ad hoc committee to enhance our outreach to remote communities, now that COVID-19 has made all of us a new kind of remote community.

PRAASA 2020 Rocked!
• Who knew that PRAASA 2020 in Tucson would be our last time getting together before the various stay-at-home orders. I’m so thankful I was able to have two round tables and two luncheons with the other 14 delegates. Following is a photo of our group that must remain confidential:

• Since PRAASA, I’ve participated in three Zoom session with most of the other Pacific Region delegates, where we have a traditional AA meeting without much mention of our respective delegates’ responsibilities.

• Much thanks to Evan T, who provided our PRAASA group photo:

• I had a very serendipitous PRAASA with many spiritual highlights. These are mentioned in both “The Virtual Delegate” posted on April 7 and PRAASA Paraíso posted on April 26 to the Delegate’s Bulletin Board. I also posted Area 03 delegate, Kevin F’s PRAASA talk on plain language Big Book on March 30.

Preparing for the Conference
• Though not all specific to the Conference, I spent about 70 hours in April pursuing my delegate’s responsibilities.
• The April 5 pre-conference workshop was attended by about 154 members, between 0900 and 2:00 pm, and was apparently a resounding success. Thanks so much to Mitchell for creating the Google Forms to capture input and to Ryan for her excellence in communicating through eblasts and website development.
• I first met in a zoom session with Trustee’s Literature Committee Chair, Beau B on April 13, with the other eight delegates on the Conference Literature Committee (CLC). The CLC met for two hours on May 2 and one hour on May 3, so there has been much more than only the Conference, which is scheduled for May 16 through 19. This resulted in the retention of 10 Literature agenda items, postponement of 10 items, and 5 provisional items that will be considered if we can fit it into the 45-minute time frame.
• Our first two agenda items for review were “Twelve Steps Illustrated” and “Your A.A. General Service Office (G.S.O.), Grapevine Office, and the General Service Structure”
• There was also a two-hour Conference orientation session on May 7th.

News from New York:
• The heavily-revised 2021-2022 Service Manual arrived on 5/1/2020. Whereas the last version had 7 appendices, the new version has 22 appendices including Sample Area Meeting Formats, Third Legacy Procedure, Select List of Literature Published by A.A.W.S. and Grapevine, etc. So revised there is no way to identify with the left-hand tick mark all the changes.
• The following bulleted points were taken from May 2020 AAWS Corporate Board Report and General Service Board Annual Report:
• In her May General Service Board Report, Michele G shared that the Meeting Guide app is generating approximately 250,000 users per month.
• The new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) NetSuite system will better facilitate the Fellowship’s involvement and maintenance of group, district, and area records, where My Portal will replace the only FNV system.
• Contributions for 2019 were a record-high of $8,855,697, 5.62% higher than budget and 5.61% higher than 2018. Online contributions for 2019 amounted to $1,001,083. This compared with $878,333 in 2018, $803,909 in 2017, $565,885 in 2016, and $434,274 in 2015. The 2019 online contributions account for 11.30% of our total contributions.
• The Big Book is available in 71 languages, with 23 languages pending and 16 new translations in progress, along with 5 revisions/retranslations. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is available in 48 languages, with pending translation in Arabic and a revised Czech translation. Daily Reflections is available in 34 languages.
• At the end of 2019, G.S.O. had 93 employees: 46 administrative, supervisory, A.A. staff and exempt professionals and 47 supporting personnel. In 2019, G.S.O. welcomed more than 3,000 visitors. Archives responded to over 1,450 requests for information and research in 2019, with over 1,500 new items archived.
• AAWS Highlights (latest dated March 6, 2020; given the date, one can see that the coronavirus pandemic was not yet on GSO’s radar screen):
            • The Records department is experiencing a two month lag in the distribution of GSR, DCM, and new group kits.
• Accessibilities/LIM – The assignment has received 44 submissions from members on “A.A. for the Older Alcoholic” and fifteen shared activities experiences on Cooperation with the Elder Community. Story submissions will be evaluated by the subcommittee on “A.A. for the Older Alcoholic.”
• The amount of Conference background totaled more than 1,000 pages, which was approximately 650 pages more than last year, and the tight deadline turnaround to translate the background into French and Spanish by the first week in March, additional help was hired.
            • Corrections – The Corrections Correspondence Service continues to link the alcoholics on the inside with the alcoholics on the outside. Currently there are only 38 alcoholics on the inside waiting to be linked.
            • Web sales: Total web sales (A.A.W.S. Online Bookstores) for January stand at $945,890, which accounts for about 69.33% of total sales for the company.
            • Audiobooks Update: Six pamphlets – “Access to A.A.,” “This Is A.A.,” “Is A.A. for Me?” “Is A.A. for You?” “The A.A. Group” and “Questions and Answers on Sponsorship” – to be recorded in English, French and Spanish.

Delegate’s Bulletin Board
• In addition to the three postings relative to PRAASA, on April 11 I posted my delegate’s report to the Board on 4/12/2020, a remote communities write-up created by Maryka (Cooperation with the Professional Community chair), and this sharing session will also be posted. Thanks to Jesus for translating these postings, and to webmaster Rainer for posting them, usually within 24 hours.

Ed L, Panel 70 MSCA delegate,
msca09delegate70@yahoo.com
(760) 964-0012