MPS MINUTES
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20 JUNE 2018 | 2 PM EASTERN TIME | CHAIR CAROLE C.
Members and Public Service Committee Monthly Meeting
Call to order at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time with the Traditional Serenity Prayer
Roll call: David, Matt, Sharon, Miles,
Bill came in to say goodbye and thank you, Carole, for taking on the MPS Chair role. Thank everyone for your involvement for the past two years. Will always be around if we need him. He leaves it our trusted hands.
Approval of minutes from last meeting: Approved
Open issues:
PSAs: David asked if anyone had successfully placed them. Miles said they have them in two stations in Bellville, Ontario, but has not listened to them. Still waiting on the central coast for WSO to get us a picture or graphic to put on their TV station. Do not have a local radio station. David wanted to know if we are looking for a logo. Carole said she did not know. David suggested talking to Pam and he will check in Florida. Miles wants the information, too.
ACA and Social Media: We started to talk about this last time but did not get an ad hoc meeting going and no one in World Service has set one up either. Chair asked if anyone was interested in pursuing this. No takers. David has looked at groups on Facebook. They are popular; but he has not looked at twitter. Carole is on one of the Facebook sites, but not happy with it because they put people’s pictures and last names on there. David replaces the flat screens of our meditation pages on the Facebook sites with our official one. He does not have the bandwidth to do more than that. Chair is also a little concerned with Slack turning into Social Media. One of the people from California posted something this morning that is inappropriate for the Slack channel. This is supposed to be a work channel. David says to take that down. The person who put it up can take it down. Carole said she would call the person and suggest she take it down. David will investigate Social Media a little more. What he can. Chair will call Bill later to see what he can do.
211 Databases (Denise): Not here, but wanted some questions answered. She wants to know if WSO is on worldwide or only in California or Los Angeles. Who oversees updating the 211 information. She will be going state by state and change if from mental health to social/civic welfare.
Sub - Committee Reports:
Intergroups: Chair, Bonnie
Carole talked to Bonnie. Bonnie is looking for help. We talked about trying to find out what Intergroup is affiliated with meetings. For instance, when one clicks on the Intergroup line, the Intergroup information we can see does not include the IG number.
H&I: Chair, Miles:
• Have one man in Sweden or Denmark and has three names who want to get involved with H&I.
• Beginning with H&I in Canadian prisons, counselors, and public libraries. We clarified for him that we have a budget for MPS. We need to know from Bill who exactly we tell we need books and what kind. Prisons need softcover and glued books only. BRB and Yellow Books are in that format. Carole said she wants us to be more proactive and Miles needs committee people for this work. WSO has a way to have a label on our books that look like we are the publisher, our staff knows how to do that.
• Miles wanted to know if we had a standardized letter to send to prisons, and David replied that we do not.
• Matt said that he has someone who wants information about sending books to libraries and prisons.
• Sharon wants to know what Miles’s email address is. Miles says [email protected]. or it is [email protected] .
Public Outreach: - Need someone to Chair.
Sharon says she will help with it but feels that she does not have enough knowledge to do it.
Regional Outreach: Chair Matt –
• Have not heard anything from Texas about regions nor the southeast (FL, Carolinas) has not followed up on rumors about the northeast. Chair suggested talking to Intergroups from Texas and to Greg.
• David says Louisiana in process of creating an Intergroup because they have six or seven meetings now, but of course they are far away from a region creation.
• The Midwest is going to have a live website by December, with Facebook and newsletter capabilities. Ready Set Go is helping to form the region.
• In late fall or early winter, he will be again sending out an invitation to the intergroups and meetings in the Midwest region That will coincide with the website creation.
• The Greater Western USA Region teleconference was at same time as his IG meeting. GWU now has a website, www.gwuregion.org. The introduction is up there and a bear. Miles asked Matt if he had talked to the Toronto Intergroup. Matt says that he is accumulating a pretty good contact list. Toronto Intergroup is www.acatoronto.org.
Virtual Meetings: David – For the last year they have been dealing with how to deal with disruptions and safety problems. Conflicts with Tradition 1. New meeting software is a huge improvement, because if someone wants to change a meeting they cannot. Now, the website directs a notification to the meeting’s contact person, and they must change the meeting or not if necessary. Things may have settled out. He is hoping they will become their own meeting and he will eventually just be liaison. Registration needs to have safety procedures. The new software for the meeting list will help a lot.
Traveler: Chair, Sharon had questions about the length of articles, etc. Looked under older WSO Minutes. She talked to Jim B to put up a page on the website, so they could post the longer article there. She shortened the article. She will ask that people send articles to [email protected]. Used to have a single sign on, now have a double sign on to confirm. Not sure if we are in compliance with GDPR since we are not a for profit business. Did change the “unsubscribe” process so if someone forwarded the Traveler to someone else, that person cannot accidentally unsubscribe them. Now, if you click on unsubscribe, you must put your email in. By July the Traveler will go out automatically go out on the fifteenth of every month. Also, the Traveler subscription is up 200, since the May issue went out. We are now over 4900!
New Business: Miles.
• Invited to the Secular AA conference in Toronto at end of august. Asked for display and a speaker’s meeting on Sunday. They want an AA person who is also ACA. Originally wanted secular AAs. Miles getting the AA focus trifold pdf from David, so he can get some printed for the conference.
• He is also waiting for a social work organization in Toronto to invite ACA WSO to take part in one of its presentations that they have every five to six weeks. They are an organization that supports Foster Parents He said they requested ACA WSO give them information about our program.
Next Meeting will be July 18, 2018
Adjourned with the ACA Serenity Prayer at 11:58 pm pacific time