[Businessmtg] Fwd: January 2024 Business Meeting - Group Rep Report

[Lynne]

 From Anne:

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Happy New Year Business meeting friends!

In December, our GEA (Global Electronic Area) had two presentations 
scheduled for GRs - I attended both.  The Districting Task Force  
presented their recommendation for assigning districts.  There was a Q & 
A session after the presentation and now the GRs will attend the January 
20th assembly to vote on the recommendation.

Note that this GEA leadership team (not the districting  thoughtforce or 
taskforce)  is approaching districting a step at a time, so voting on 
situations in front of us without a larger plan, this means If the 
recommendation below passes, we don't know what happens next, and if it 
fails, we start the discussion all over again with a new Task Force.

Recommendations of the GEA Districting Task Force

* All groups registered in the GEA, regardless of whether or not they 
have a GR, will be placed in districts.

* Groups will be assigned to districts. Groups will not choose their 
district.

* Districts will, whenever possible, consist of up to 20 groups.

* DR terms will align with the terms of the current panel. Thus DRs 
elected during this panel will serve until 12/31/24.

* Because 57% of the GEA groups do not have a GR, it is recommended that 
districts include a mix of groups that have and do not have a GR, so as 
to avoid inadvertently creating districts in which none of the groups 
have a GR.

* The UTC meeting start times displayed in the electronic meetings list 
on al-anon.org are to be the primary consideration for sorting groups 
into districts. Language and platform will have the next highest 
priority followed by language.

* To promote unity and understanding in the GEA, each district where 
possible will include a mix of at least two platforms.

The primary means of sorting groups into district will be based on 
meeting start times, and those will be mapped to UTC - Coordinated 
Universal time.  The Task force had a pie chart that broke the world 
into these "buckets" - a great visual that was not shared with GRs to 
bring back to their groups.   And while, I don't have the pie chart that 
illustrated how the groups would be mapped to districts, this site has 
helpful information UTC Time Standard (timeanddate.com) [1]

The taskforce used the KBDM process to put together their 
recommendation, It is not perfect but it is a start. For us as an email 
meeting that meets 24/7, our placement into a district that is based on 
UTC and meeting start times will be tricky.  I haven't really heard much 
about how that will work for the 24/7 groups and there is still the 
question of accessibility for those groups that are not English, French 
or Spanish speaking.  Again, the plan is not perfect but is a start and 
one that I am sure will be refined over time.

Looking forward to a discussion on this topic.

Yours in Service,

Anne



Links:
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[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc