[Businessmtg] Moving ASP to the top of selection

[Steve Rankin]

Hi folks,

As I mentioned earlier, WSO defines email groups as 24/7 groups . . . under
Key Definitions on WSO's site: "24/7 - group does not meet at a specific day
and time. These meetings are available all the time via email or private
message boards."
As a result, ASP, like other email meetings, bulletin board meetings,
Facebook meetings, Voxer meetings and WhatsApp meetings is not included in
the list of electronic meetings that WSO posts on their website.

Can we get around that?  Perhaps.  I have spent some time studying the
instructions on WSO's website, I may have a solution.  Actually, two
possible solutions.
NOTE:  Multiple 'meetings' under the umbrella of a single 'group' is NOT a
new concept, and the Group Record forms allow for this actuality.
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Solution A:  Administrative Change Only

1.  Administratively, separate the ASP GROUP into 8 MEETINGS.
	One for the entire week and 7 for each day of the week.
     NOTE: this does not involve any change in the server subscription -
every member of ASP would continue to get every share regardless of which
day of the week they subscribed to.

2.  Revamp the ASP website FORM that walks new members through our doors to
include CHOICES of how the new member would like to join/participate in ASP;
Daily or Specific Days of the Week, or potentially Digest format

3.  Submit multiple GROUP CHANGE FORMS to WSO creating the 7 new daily
meetings that start at X o'clock - we could pick a time using the EST time
because that's the WSO system default for electronic meetings.  I'll throw
out 8AM EST.
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Solution B:  Literal Change

1.  Literally create SEPARATE meetings for each day of the week by CREATING
7 NEW EMAIL LISTS on the server; one for each day of the week.  Of course,
the current list would continue for those wanting to subscribe to all of it.
, separate the ASP GROUP into 8 SEPARATE MEETINGS.
     Ala carte
        A separate meeting for each day of the week.
        Each day of the week is a separate subscription
        Members could pick and choose which individual or combination of
days of the week the subscribed to
        Offer Digest format?  For example, a member could choose to
subscribe to Monday and Saturday and get shares immediately like we do now,
but subscribe to the other days via Digest and get a single email with the
other days' shares in Digest form.

2.  Revamp the ASP website FORM that walks new members through our doors to
include CHOICES of how the new member would like to join/participate in ASP;
Daily or Specific Days of the Week, or potentially the Digest format.
FYI, the "Digest subscription" is when the member receives all of the day's
shares in the form of a single email 'digest' at the end of the day.  We
have disallowed this option at ASP since our founding because it enables
non-participation.

3.  Submit multiple GROUP CHANGE FORMS to WSO creating the 7 new daily
meetings that start at X o'clock - we could pick a time using the EST time
because that's the WSO system default for electronic meetings.  Unlike
Solution A, above, Solution B could schedule meetings at different times on
different days of the week.
We could even offer additional meetings during the week; say a Tuesday
Evening meeting, for example, or that Beginner's Meeting that we've talked
about for years.
Perhaps we might offer a Beginner's Meeting combined with a Digest
subscription to Beginners?
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A.  Could this work?  I'd like to say yes, but I suspect we might encounter
some pushback.

B.  This would be a major change to ASP, which requires multiple Business
Meetings before we finalize the decision and group conscience.

C.  This would result in a one-time project for the SC to implement.

D.  This would result in the Greeters having somewhat more involvement with
our new members.  Frankly, I see that as a VERY GOOD THING.  While our
current web-based system is very efficient, it is also much less personal
than before.  In other words, while that would mean slightly more work for
the Greeters, it would also provide the Greeters with opportunities for the
Greeters to get involved with some personal exchanges with new members to
tailor their ASP membership to suit their needs and hopefully minimize their
feelings of being overwhelmed.
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My personal thoughts . . .

If we keep doing what we are doing, we'll keep getting what we are getting.
Duh.  Which is a slow, but steady decline in members.  At some point ASP
will become like so many other email meetings with just a small handful of
members participating and not enough to pay the bills.

The good news is that ASP has long been considered the best of the best of
the online meetings, and IMHO it still is.  The bad news is that the world
zigged a couple of years ago, and it's not likely to "unzig" in the
foreseeable future.  It was just a handful of years ago when there were only
19 electronic meetings, and almost every online resource pointed to ASP,  so
there was very little competition for new members.  Our biggest problems
were the huge number of new members (not a bad problem) and the large
percentage of new members being overwhelmed by the number of shares.  The
flood of new members is history, thought the problem of overwhelmed new
members is as persistent as ever.

Many online entities solve their visibility problem by paying the search
engines for prime placement at the top of related searches.  I believe that
WSO does that, however that path is not financially feasible for ASP.

The search for an online meeting has evolved such that OLA-IS is only a
minor contributor and WSO is the 300# gorilla, with the exception of online
meetings associated with geographic Districts and Areas.  Personally, I
would like to see OLA-IS become a player because it is more responsive to
the groups, however that will take time, and has its own pushback issues.

Since ASP is truly global, are we have to deal with WSO's methods, our
solution seems to be finding ways to increase our visibility on the WSO
site.  It seems logical that modifying our format from one group with one
"meeting" to one group with 7 meetings, AND listing those daily meetings by
their start time could result in ASP popping up on the radar of many more
people than we are seeing now.

Love and SERENITY,
Steve