[Businessmtg] Welcome to the February ASP Business Meeting

[Melanie]

Hi ASPers,

Welcome to A Serenity Place Business Meeting.

I'm Melanie, the Secretary of ASP, Chairing this meeting.

This note is to help acquaint you with our business meeting protocols at A
Serenity place. Please read this note carefully as there is a lot of useful
information about the ASP Business Meeting in it.  I suggest that save a
copy of this note for future reference.

The Business Meeting is where ALL routine business issues are discussed and
group consciences taken at the A Serenity Place online Al-Anon meeting.  We
do not discuss any ASP business in the recovery meeting.

The ASP web site is chock full of all kinds of good information about ASP,
especially the pages about the Business Meeting, Trusted Servants.  There is
a link to the ASP web site on the bottom of every ASP share.  Please read
the info on the site before posting questions to this meeting.  For example,
there are job descriptions of the servants, minimum service requirements for
ASP officer as well as a list of all the prior motions made since I passed
the operation & ownership of ASP on to the members 6+ years ago.

Business Meeting Guidelines:

1.  Any member of ASP may attend the Business Meeting.  Attendance is
arranged by responding to the Business Meeting announcement in the regular
meeting.  There is no carryover attendance from one Business Meeting to the
next; each new meeting requires a new announcement and a new response by ASP
members wishing to attend.

2.  Once the discussion opens, subscription to the current Business Meeting
will close and only those subscribed will be able to attend, participate
vote.  There are no proxy votes in Al-Anon.  You must attend in order to
participate

3.  The Business Meeting is typically one month in duration; preferably one
calendar month.  There is at least one month between Business Meetings.
This gives each member, including your trusted servants time off to tend to
the rest of their lives.

4.  The Business Meeting is normally chaired by the ASP Secretary.  The List
Administrator is the Alternate Chairperson.  

5.  The Chairperson determines the agenda of the Business Meeting.  Members
of ASP may submit topics to the Secretary for consideration as Agenda items;
the members submitting topics are expected to attend the Business Meeting.
Please understand that the Agenda will reflect the highest priority topics
first, which means that we may not get to other topics for a considerable
time.  

6.  The Business Meeting discusses one and only one topic at a time.  It is
the member's responsibility to confine their discussion and comments to the
topic currently under discussion --  READ ALL of the new posts to the
Business Meeting BEFORE you post a response.  Members who violate this will
be placed on Moderated Status on the server - your messages will not be
posted by the server until approved by the Moderator.

7.  The Business Meeting is using the KBDM process.
If this process doesn't appear to be working properly, the Chairperson may
switch the Business Meeting to the traditional style based loosely on
Robert's Rules of Order.

    7.a.  KBDM: Motions are developed by consensus after thorough
discussion.  If there is no consensus, then no motion is to be made.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There will be NO MOTION until after the Chair has stated
that there appears to be a consensus and described the consensus.  There is
NEVER a Call for the Question under the KBDM process.

  7.b.  Robert's Rules:  Motions are made from the floor and seconded, with
discussion following.

8.  Voting:  The Chair announces that a vote is to be taken.  

    8.a. There will be no Business Meeting discussion while the voting
is in process.  Unfortunately, there is a history of some members posting
comments during the voting process, so the server will be put on moderated
status during the voting to prevent any posting during that time.  The
voting process will go like this:

    8.b. The Chair will post a full & exact quote of the Motion,
including the names of the mover and second.

    8.c.  The Motion will be posted on the voting poll, usually created
by the Web Master or List Administrator (this may create a small delay)

    8.d.  The Chair will post Instructions to the Business Meeting on
the voting process, including where to vote when the polls will close, and
whether a simple majority or super majority is required to pass the Motion.


    8.e.  After the polls close, the Chair will announce the results of
the vote (and ask the Web Master, which is a position unfilled, to post the full 
text of the motion, mover
and second as well as the actual tally of the vote on the ASP website).

9.  Major or controversial issues.  Issues which would result in a major
change to ASP or are controversial in nature will have a delayed discussion
and voting procedure.

    9.a. Meeting #1:  Announcement of topic followed by truncated discussion
to illuminate issues.  

  9.b.  Meeting #2:  Full discussion of topic.  Discussion may be extended
to following month(s) as needed.

  9.c.  Meeting #3+: Voting on motion.



Examples of Things NOT to do at the A Serenity Place Business Meeting.
PLEASE READ!

a. Do not send Business Meeting shares to multiple recipients.  The server
will reject any message that is also sent to any other address in addition
to the ASP address.  In addition to being rejected, this creates a mess on
the server that needs to be cleaned up by the List Administrator.  The best
way to send a share to the business meeting is to create a listing in your
email address book for Business Meeting and send all shares to Business
Meeting. 

b. Cross talk is acceptable in the Business Meeting.  Unlike in the recovery
meeting where we share our personal ES&H without comment or reference to
another member's share, it is OK to reference another member's post in the
Business Meeting.

c. Do not send attachments of any kind. 

e. Do not send test messages.  If there is a problem receiving the Business
Meeting shares please write Cyndi, the List Administrator at 
list_administrator at asp-afg.org

f. As much as we try to make ASP resemble a face-to-face meeting, ASP is not
a face-to-face meeting.  As a result, there are situations where we do
things differently than they may be done in face-to-face meetings.  

g. Try to remember that our goal is to practice Al-Anon principles in all of
our affairs.  Everyone has a right to their opinions, however opinions are
not Al-Anon principles, and Al-Anon principles need to take precedence over
individual opinions.


If you have any questions about A Serenity Place Business Meeting, technical
or otherwise, please send me a note and I will do my best to answer them.

Love and SERENITY, 

Melanie
ASP Secretary