[Businessmtg] More Districting Analysis & Thoughts

[Steve Rankin]

Hi folks,



This note is going to ramble and rant a bit as I provide a mix of
information, data, stats, observation, commentary and personal opinion.



I’ll start by mentioning that the GEA Task Force PowerPoint slide
presentation included some slides that were what I’ll call informational.
Unfortunately, I only did one screen capture and that slide didn’t even
show the full chart.  Worse, at the second presentation, the Chair
instructed the members to NOT take screen captures of the information
presented, and they have refused to provide us with the information on the
slides.  Why?  The purpose of these discussions is supposed to be to reach
an informed group conscience.  If our GRs are not provided copies of the
background material and told to not make their own copies, how is the
fellowship supposed to make INFORMED group conscience.  Yes, this pissed me
off.  Duh.



Well, being a bit of a maverick, I’d already done one screen capture of a
chart that supposedly demo’s how they would divvy up districts.  I’ve
uploaded the image to
https://asp-afg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DTF-Districting-Example-at-GE
A-Task-Force-Meeting-2023-12-02.jpg

As you can see in the chart, the 24/7 meetings such as ASP are allocated
into 1 district, and there appear to be 5 Spanish-speaking districts, but
nothing for the plethora of other language meetings.  The purpose of this
chart is to rationalize their plan by showing how the number of GRs in each
TIME ZONE is similar, however we need to remember that districts will be
limited to just 20 groups, not the 53 to 75 that show in the chart.



In ASP’s case, there are 17 English speaking groups in the 24/7 category (5
platforms), yet the GEA chart shows 64 groups since they lump us in the
5:00am to 11:45am Time Zone.  In other words, the 27/7 groups were lumped
into an oversized Time Zone as a means of balancing out the number of groups
in that district, not because we have something useful in common.



When I look at the list of electronic meetings on WSO’s site, I find the
following English-speaking meetings:



1.	Al-Anon App              107      Phone App
2.	Bulletin Board             2          Bulletin Board
3.	Chat                            14        IRC Chat
4.	Discord                       31        Messaging
5.	Email                          13        Email
6.	Facebook                    1          Messaging
7.	Free Conference Call  20        Video conferencing
8.	Google Meet               1          Video conferencing
9.	Phone                          110      Phone
10.	Second Life                1          Video conferencing
11.	Skype                          1          Video conferencing
12.	Voxer                          1          Voice messaging
13.	Whats App                  2          Messaging
14.	Zoom                          740      Video conferencing

TOTAL                       1,031



DOMINATION. Zoom meetings represent 72% of the 1,031 English-speaking
electronic meetings, which leads to 6.2 Zoom GRs/District.  Since 57% of the
groups do not have GRs, there are only 9.6 GRs/District, which means that
65% of every District’s GRs represent a Zoom meeting.  That is NOT fair
representation.



ARBITRARY DISTRICT SIZE.  The problem lies in the GEA’s limiting districts
to an arbitrary 20 groups. The only reason to impose an arbitrary number of
groups per district is to create a false sense of representation.  I’ll
offer two examples of traditional geographic Al-Anon districting.  First is
my District 15 in Northern California when I was a District Rep; we had 42
groups in the district and slightly over half had GRs attend district
meetings.  Another example is the current Los Angeles Al-Anon district in
Southern California.  They have over 200 face-to-face groups and over 100
Zoom meetings in that district.  My point is that there is no arbitrary
number of groups in each district.

But what if a district becomes too big or . . .?  Well, that’s actually
simple, and I had the opportunity to be a part of it when I was a GR and my
District 15 split in half at the Berkeley/Oakland border.  Groups north of
the Berkeley/Oakland border became part of the new District 26, and those of
us to the south remained in District 15.



LANGUAGE.  There are currently 18 languages listed on WSO’s site.

     Bulgarian               4

     Czech                     1

     Danish                    2

     German                  2

     Greek                     3

     Spanish                  310

     Farsi                       18

     French                    5

     Hindi                      10

     Hungarian              1

     Italian                    15

     Japanese                 1

     Dutch                     2

     Polish                     3

     Portuguese             1

     Russian                  20

     Turkish                  1

            TOTAL           399



NOTE.  According to the WSO website, there are currently a total of 1,430
electronic meetings registered with WSO.  Compare this number with the 300
quoted by WSO in December 2020 & approx. 900 two years later.   → 72
districts.



The GEA Task Force’s plan is to determine districts by:

1.	Time Zone first, then by
2.	Platform second, then by
3.	Language

So, when we apply this algorithm, it follows that a Spanish-speaking meeting
where the majority of the members live in Peru might be lumped into a
district of most members in Florida.  Or the Bronx.  Or Puerto Rico.  This
is the sort of stuff that can happen when the GEA makes the decision who
belongs where, instead of allowing the groups to make their own decisions on
which district they want to belong to AS IS STATED IN THE SERVICE MANUAL.
FYI, the GEA stated that they don’t want the groups to decide because then
each new group of officers/GRs would make new decisions on which district
they wanted to be in.  Excuse me, but I don’t recall that being a GR
decision, but instead it is a Group Conscience decision.  A message that I
am getting here is that the GEA’s experience is that the officers make the
decisions, not the members - this is not what I like to see in our
leadership.



PLATFORMS.  I am concerned about the proliferation of platforms BY BRAND
instead of technology.  What WSO has established is a division of electronic
groups by brand name.  For example, Zoom and FreeConferenceCall are the same
technology, merely different vendors.  Separating them strikes me as the
equivalent of dividing face-to-face meetings by the denomination of the
church they meet in.  If we divided groups by technology, we’d be able to
reduce the number of platforms by 50%.

Interestingly, in WSO’s 2021 membership survey, they only divided the field
4 ways: face-to-face, online meetings, phone, and WSO’s own mobile app.

I found it was also interesting that when the members of the greater Al-Anon
fellowship were asked what type of meetings they attended, 76% stated they
attended online meetings.  Hmm, if 76% of the fellowship has attended online
meetings, why does that portion of the fellowship only have 1 Area and 1
Delegate’s vote at the WSC?



Love and SERENITY,

Steve