A.A. World Services Presentation (NAATW 2025)

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability from the original caption file. Speaker names are standardized using first name and last initial where available. Timestamps are adjusted so the edited audio begins at 0:00.

Presentation: A.A. World Services Presentation. Presenter: Bruce H., Senior Project Manager, A.A. World Services. From the NAATW 2025 Workshop, Cincinnati.

[0:00] Presenter Introduction

[0:00] Buck R.: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back in person and online. We're very pleased to welcome Bruce H., Senior Project Manager at A.A. World Services. and a valued non-alcoholic member of the AAWS team. Bruce is leading the digital asset management program. That's a key initiative, helping AAWS to organize, preserve and make accessible its growing library of digital materials for the fellowship. Bruce brings with him a deep project management experience and a strong commitment. to supporting A.A.’s mission through thoughtful, well-structured technology. We're delighted to have him with us today. Please join me in welcoming Bruce H.

[0:47] Bruce H. / Buck R.: Thanks a lot, Buck. Such a nice introduction, and it’s great to see you. Good morning. It’s nice to see you too.

[0:55] Opening Remarks

[0:55] Bruce H.: I appreciate the opportunity to join your group and speak a little bit with you today. my first time speaking with the group, so please just smack me on the nose if I'm, you know, the wrong pace or doing something wrong. I’m going to talk to you a little bit just about tech services, what's going on with our group, who we are, and then happy to do my best to answer any questions you have. I’m going to start by seeing if I can find my screen here. Are you seeing the screen with technology services on it? Got it.

[1:31] Technology Services Department

[1:31] Bruce H.: Yes, great. First off, we are, as Buck said, the Technology Services Department. We're a fairly small group at the GSO. It's Lorna Graham, who I'm guessing most of you know or have spoken to, or, you know, seen her speak at one point.

[1:47] Buck R.: she's our… go ahead. Hey, Bruce, sorry to interrupt. Actually, could you pull down your screen share and redo it? We're only getting about half of the, uh… the slide right now. this… the technology services one?

[1:59] Bruce H.: Yeah, it's, being cut off halfway at technology. Huh. That's… okay, you want me to stop and try starting again? just zoom out a little bit. Or reshare your entire script. Yeah, let me… let me give it a shot, hold on. Any better, or no? Okay, great. Is it… now is it okay? That's perfect, thank you. That is perfect. Okay, good. I'm just… I'm sharing from the other, you know, the presentation mode. okay, great. So, again, we are Technology Services. Lorna is, is the head of our department. I'm sort of… I wouldn't say an outlier, but my role is a little bit different than the others in the team. I'm a project manager, which means I work on all kinds of projects throughout GSO. and then we've got Mili and Allan, our more business analyst roles. Mili, I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. She's been…

[2:53] Bruce H.: been with the organization for quite a while. Allan just joined. We're thrilled to have him. He's been here a week or two, and he's already just fitting like a glove and doing great stuff. and then we got Pedro and Daniel, who are sort of frontline support and deal with kind of making everything work, I'll say. You know, if somebody's printer goes offline, if they can't log in, anything like that, they sort of keep everything running. and then, in terms of what we do, just on a big picture, we manage, essentially, the ERP platform, which I'm going to talk about more in a second. we support corrections correspondence system, CCS, we support OnBoard, and we actually introduced OnBoard. That was a project I worked on.

[3:36] Bruce H.: and that touches on all the boards, AAWS Board, General Service Board, General Service Board, Grapevine, as well as supporting the conference and the World Service Meeting, so we're kind of getting our bang for our buck out of that. It's a fantastic tool, and it's sort of… taken us a big step forward from where we used to be. digital asset management repository, which we're calling Asset Connection. and Buck mentioned that, and I'm gonna get into that a little deeper in just a second. managing the overall technical infrastructure, this is what I was sort of alluding to partially with Daniel. and Pedro, but also just managing everything, from the ERP system to the printer network to the Wi-Fi. to app support, all kinds of things like that. And then, of course, project support.

[4:27] Bruce H.: cybersecurity, obviously becoming a bigger deal with everything that's going on with AI, and that's sort of accelerating, and we do have a vCISO, Chief Information Security Officer, virtual, who we work with, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about specifically what he does. and then organization-wide management of all the licenses, Smartsheet, OnBoard, Outlook, Microsoft 365, everything we use. just dealing with making sure everybody has the right licenses and can use them, and we're not paying too much, and we're… all that sort of thing. so I can pause there. Buck, I don't know if you want to, like… should I take questions as we go, or wait till the end? I'm fine either way, because I see two hands up. Um… does somebody have a question? Bruce, those hands are not up for questions. So…

[5:21] Bruce H.: route. Those two hands are, um… are from tech, so, we'll take questions and answers, if you don't mind, Bruce, after you've completed the task, okay? Thank you, thank you.

[5:35] ERP Platform

[5:35] Bruce H.: Sure thing, yeah, no problem. Okay, I'm gonna keep going then. this is the, the ERP system. And, I'm gonna do my best to give you a walk through it. I'm not a complete expert in every single aspect of it, but the concept here is to give us, like, a single, united… source of truth over most of the things we do. It includes… it includes people, it includes products, processes, finance, all kinds of stuff. So just going around the clock here, I mentioned users, this is members of the fellowship. you know, people who buy stuff in the bookstore, people who make contributions, general ledgers, the finance stuff, and the taxes, and accounts receivable and payable. all a world that, like, Zenni and Paul live in and breathe in, and that's where they do all their work. And again, keeping it centralized.

[6:26] Bruce H.: we've got Celigo, which is a, sort of a, sort of an API interface to the warehouse management system. So all the product, and then purchasing, getting down into, you know, tying into the website, and Molini's team with operations. items is just kind of everything, like, an item is a thing in NetSuite. Translation and Licensing, this is requests coming in globally to get a translation or get permission to reprint something in their territory, and we've built, TL Connection, Translation Licensing Connection, connection off of NetSuite, that was another project that I helped with a little bit. and that's a portal for them to make these requests, and it makes it easier for the translations and licensing team to manage these and follow them, because they get tons of them.

[7:16] Bruce H.: so it gives them a little bit more of a structured way of handling it. And then we've got, GSO Literature Committee, not really much to say on that one, but there is the… the next one is access… I'm sorry, areas, districts, groups, and members ties into users, and the interface we have, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with, Fellowship Connection, gives folks a portal into NetSuite without being a NetSuite user, so it lets them manage… basically manage their own data and make sure we have the correct information at the same time. And then it ties into, again, the contribution site, the online store, SCA is Suite Commerce Advance, and that's just the name of a tool we use that helps us build these stores.

[8:01] Bruce H.: And keep them on top of NetSuite and integrateeracting with NetSuite. And then the CCS, which I mentioned, AA near you, Campaign Monitor and the conference, all the information about the conference. so that's sort of a very high-level walkthrough of the ERP.

[8:16] Digital Asset Management System

[8:18] Bruce H.: next up, I'm going to talk about the digital asset management, and this is… Buck… Buck mentioned it up front. This is one I'm super excited about, and I think the organization is super excited about. a DAM is a way of, keeping all of our digital assets in one place, and I say that with a little bit of a snicker, because it's sort of obvious from the title, but we… are going from a world where we're not centralized, and we'll have stuff spread out, and there might be, like, a pamphlet that publishing has, and somebody from staff asks for it because they need to send it to somebody in the professional community, or a member of the fellowship, or whoever.

[8:59] Bruce H.: And that's great, but then it happens again the next week, and they have it saved on their desktop, so they send it, or they shared it with somebody else, and they sent them that. But meanwhile, Publishing has a newer version, and all of a sudden, we've got multiple versions going out, and people are getting old, incorrect versions. So, in the world of a DAM, everything is centralized in this sort of centralized database, and you can see here from the graphic, I walk through it. Publishing has a version of a pamphlet, and they are the one responsible in this instance, for literature. With uploading that to the DAM, and then there's a workflow that everybody knows, that lets everybody know there's a new version in there.

[9:37] Bruce H.: And rather than somebody sending that pamphlet from their desktop or from a hard drive they have, or maybe they put it on a thumb drive to go to a meeting, They share it from the DAM, and the DAM is literally built for that. They go in, they browse, they find their item, And then they click a share link, and it gives them all kinds of options about how, you know, do you want to let them download it, do you want to let them just see it? How big do you want it to be? Do you want it to be a thumbnail, or do you want it to be the full version? There's lots of flexibility, and that way, we're ensured that once all the sharing is powered by the DAM, everybody's getting what they need to get, and the proper, latest, updated version, whether it's going, like you see on the right side, fellowship to professionals,

[10:17] Bruce H.: going on AA.org, that's a project we're actually working on right now. We're doing an integration with the platform that the website is built on. So that it's gonna save a boatload of time for the communications team, because right now, they're spending so much time managing this stuff

[10:27] Sharing Is Powered by the DAM

[10:34] Bruce H.: individually, sort of piecemeal. Like, for example, they have a pamphlet that's on a page at AA.org, And it gets updated, they have to find the update, they have to go in, edit that page, and change the thing. What's gonna happen in the future, after we're done with this project, is that they'll… Publishing will go back to my example, up to P91, they'll get a new version of that, and they'll upload it to the DAM, And the workflow is so that it will now automatically publish to AA.org. So, we're getting a lot of efficiencies from that. We're super excited. again, keeping going down the list here, publishing sends stuff to printers, documents going to staff, board members, GSO staff, anybody, really. So it's getting back to that common theme that I mentioned, which is the single source of truth.

[11:25] Bruce H.: So, the DAM is a project we launched last, end of 2024, And so far, what we've done is we've built a portal for staff, so that they have sort of easy access, they don't have to be full-on DAM users, but they have easy access to just the literature they need. and it'll be a project that continues. We'll, expand this, continue populating it with different assets as we move on. So that is… that is the DAM, and I'm just… sorry, I'm just looking to see if I… missed anything on that one. customized staff portal I mentioned to you, yeah, and the integration with, with the website platform is something we're most excited about.

[12:05] Questions and Discussion

[12:07] Bruce H.: Okay, so I'm gonna move on, and basically, that's… that's the stuff I wanted to cover. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. And, um… yeah.

[12:20] Patrick M.: One moment, please. hands up. Any comments here on the floor? we have a hand, and we have, Patrick. M from Area 72. He's the tech web chair. Patrick, you here? There you go. Yes, I am. Hello, uh… Well, sorry, yeah. So, thank you so much for this, Bruce. This is… This is wonderful. first I want to acknowledge, I know you guys have a ton. Are we back on? Okay, I know you guys have a ton of work just managing the tech and digital stuff. just at the office, um… One of my favorite pieces of literature to share with DCMs is the. Conference Advisory Actions pamphlet. It blows their minds, they love seeing all the decisions that have been made, answer so many questions. and sometimes they want background information, previous year's conference reports, background material stuff for some of the.

[13:23] Patrick M.: things, and so, if you know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, you can get your hands on them sometimes. I'm wondering for, like. conference background material, conference reports, is there any plans on making. That information more widely available to the fellowship for people who are involved in service structure that may want to.

[13:42] Bruce H.: see that stuff. That's a great question, and I will… I'll say that I don't have an answer to that, but I certainly, obviously, work with the folks who we, you know, who are in OnBoard running it every day, where a lot of this documentation is published. I can go back and speak with Lorna and, and the team and find out if there is… if there are plans for that. There are none that I know of right now.

[14:07] Audience member: Thank you. in person, please. And became an alcoholic area 16. one of the things we have on our web, it's, broken links to AA. dot org is anytime we link directly to the PDF on the pamphlets. We've had to link up to the page that then links to the PDF. Is this, DAM? Is that going to… change that, or do we just link to the page that then shows the pamphlet, which requires a second? It will change it, and that's a great question, because how it's gonna work… Click. and again, I'll run the risk of being too technical or not technical enough, because I know this group is super technical. that will have an API call that will get the asset itself when it's set up and published. But after that, it's gonna be pulling from a direct link.

[15:00] Audience member: a public link, so you will be able to access that directly, and it will update… if it updates, it will update the asset with the same URL. Does that answer your question, Ray? Good. Online, Ray M, Area 30.

[15:20] Ray M.: Hey there, Ray from Area 30, Alcoholic. I have something that's not necessarily in this presentation, but maybe you might have some insight on. we started recently taking, um… digital contributions, and obviously a lot of groups don't know their group numbers, but I know. on the website, they're able to. Search the group number, and the group comes up. Is there… Anything you can talk about, about how that was done, if that's something that areas can recreate. to make sure people can find their group numbers other than. us doing outreach to each group.

[15:59] Bruce H.: I'm not sure if I'm following the question, and also, I apologize, Ray, your face was up, so I said Ray to the person who the last question was, so I apologize to the person who asked the question about the link to the site. Ray, can you rephrase that a bit? Is that about finding the group number? Yeah, when you do digital contribution on AA.org, you can actually search the group number, and the group comes up, but I just don't know how you guys actually do that, and if we can recreate that somehow. At area level, so people can find their group number, and we can attribute a group number to a contribution. Hmm. we don't. I mean, it's just connected directly to the back end, that search.

[16:41] Bruce H.: but it's an interesting question. You're saying, give the ability to local folks in the area to find their group number independently, right? Yeah, that's correct. Like, on our area website, if there was a way to do that so that, we could, uh. have people easily find their group number and do an area contribution. Okay, I'm just writing this down because I want to make sure I get that right. I… there isn't now, but I can certainly ask about that and see if anybody has thoughts on it.

[17:10] Audience member / Bruce H.: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. In person, please. hi, Bruce, I was curious, is there, like, a read-only API access for Fellowship Connection? You said it was NetSuite, potentially it's already available? and the other question was, what's the base software for your DAM? That's all. yeah, we, the first part, I'm sorry, what were you saying? Like, an API for Fellowship Connection? Yeah, sorry, it's, basically touching on what Ray was getting at, if there's some, like. you know, um… you know, API access to be able to, like, search. the group names to get those fellowship numbers. One of the things our area, like, we try to coordinate the. the actual IDs for the groups. And that's all based on Fellowship Connection IDs. This is something that we looked at a while ago, but…

[18:02] Audience member / Bruce H.: Yeah, there is no API… there's no open API available for that, Right. With that being said, if it's, like, a specific need for something you want that we could potentially build into Fellowship Connection, Maybe what I would suggest is if you can email me sort of a little more detailed version of what that request is, I'm not talking about, like, business requirements, but just… Maybe a short paragraph of specifically what it is, and then I can bring that back to the Fellowship Connection team, and we can see if that's something that we can do and that is possible. Okay, and then this… I'm sorry, the second part of your question? We'll be glad to. Thanks. Thank you. the baseline software for the DAM. Oh, yeah, yeah, I…

[18:41] Audience member / Bruce H.: We typically don't, talk too much about the products we use, and it's mostly a security thing, because The less the world knows about us in terms of platforms, certainly when it comes to security, yeah. So, thank you.

[18:55] Beth: I retract my question. Okay. Hey, Beth! Beth Online, OIAA. Hello, Beth. Please unmute. Alcoholic, I'm a past delegate from Area 15, way back when, and before we had. very… any technology at all, I think. And, I'm currently working with OIA, which is the online intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm serving as the chair of the Policy and Admissions Committee, and. Somehow, I think I've gotten into something that's really over my head in terms of technology. and my question is, you didn't mention anything at all about Google Group, so I'm assuming that. a GSO is not using Google Groups. We're using Google Groups in OIAA, and. I found it incredibly. confusing with my. lack of technical background, and I was wondering, um.

[19:53] Beth: One of our past officers told me she cried for 3 days after they introduced Google Group, so it's very complicated and confusing for me. And I was wondering if you have any experience with it, and if GSO has ever considered using it and decided not to for whatever reason. I was just wondering if you can share anything at all about that.

[20:13] Bruce H.: I think I can share a little bit. I don't know if it'll be helpful. if I remember Google Groups, it's been around, right, for a minute? I remember it being terribly confusing. Mm-hmm. Yes. That being said, I'm a big fan of the Google Office Suite. Like, in my personal life, I use Sheets and Docs and Drive and all that, and I find it fantastic. we at GSO are a Microsoft shop, as we'll say, and it's just… that's what we're set up with. And to switch to something, or not even switch, but to supplementally use the Google Suite, it would open up a whole new world of licensing and security issues, so it just… it wouldn't make sense to do it, because we're so deeply embedded with Microsoft, both, like, like, Azure and the Office Suite, Outlook, there's all kinds of tools. We use SharePoint, OneDrive, and all that.

[21:05] Bruce H.: So does that answer your question, Beth? Yeah, mostly the fact that you found it confusing when you first looked at it. Thank you very much. Absolutely, thank you. Thank you, Beth. Lois, if you would, please. Helos! Hey Bruce, I'm Lois, I'm Alcoholic. I'm curious, I don't think you said anything about this. I recently was looking at the budget reforecast that came out. and I saw that there was this capital expense for an analytics reporting data warehouse. Looks like a large capital investment. Can you tell me, more about that? How you guys are going to use that, and if the fellowship. Like, the benefits to the fellowship of that at all? That is one that I, I've spoken with, CSD a little about, communications department.

[21:53] Bruce H.: I do not have an update on that, and I wish I did, but absolutely, if there are any questions, reach out to me or directly to Julie. I'm happy to, you know, be middleman or whatever.

[22:05] Audience member: it's not my project, and I don't believe there is an update on it. Thanks, though. Okay. Thank you. we're not online, so… yes, please. Hi, my name's Jackie, thank you so much, for everything you do.

[22:24] Audience member / Bruce H.: actually, I have two questions, but, I guess the fir- one of the questions I have is. So there… I believe they're working on it, but do you have any update, or are your… is your team involved with. the online contribution page. and group contributions where they have to look up either their name. location or their group number, and then there was no option if they. Most likely, majority of them don't have that information or know it. And so then they were giving a lot of group treasurers are giving individual contributions. and that's messing up… reporting. So that was my number one. I was told that they were gonna work on. doing something, um… That would help group treasurers, with unidentified groups. And then I had a question about. The web analytics and how many… if we know how many, um… Visitors are coming from AI.

[23:25] Audience member / Bruce H.: sites. Hmm. both great questions. the second question I'll answer first, because it's a quicker answer, I don't have details on that, but again, that's something we can either reach out to the communications team, feel free to contact them if you have a connection with them, Mm-hmm. If not, just ping me, and I'll make sure and get you an answer on that one. And I don't know if they have an answer specifically about AI-generated traffic. That's an interesting question. and knowing Julie and the team, I bet they do, but we'll find out. and then your second question, um… Yes, we are looking at that. Actually, right now, we're in the midst of a project to make some improvements to the group. contribution and recurring contribution aspect.

[24:11] Audience member / Bruce H.: of the contribution site. I'm not… I might have lost you a little bit, because I wasn't sure about the search. You can search by… I think it's by group number, by group name, Yeah. by location… so there's several options. I don't… hopefully nobody's ever left stranded in terms of making a contribution, an attribution for a contribution. Oh, a lot of them are, because I work at an intergroup, and the thing is, like, there's… 30 as bills, I mean, looking up as Bill sees it, which is the name of a meeting, there's probably thousands. And then, location-wise. if the name is based. I mean, they get everything wrong. They… and a lot of the original group records, what the group was called when they registered 20 years ago, you know, Valencia Smoke.

[25:00] Buck R.: free is now a blue plate, special plain language big book. So, like. I actually think it's… it's really off. So… Thank you. Is there, um… I'm curious about this point, though, because, like, I do… I do user testing on a contribution site, so I've done, like, hundreds of contributions, and what I do when I'm doing that, because I do it sort of rapid-fire, is I just type in SAT for Saturday, and I know I'm gonna get a ton load of groups. Yeah. is it… is it possible for them to narrow it down? Only, again, going back again to there's several ways to search. Oh, oh, maybe we can connect about this offline. I think a lot of the special workers would have. experience answering these questions as they call us. Thank you. But yeah, we'll do that. Are you frozen?

[25:54] Dan K. / Bruce H.: Frozen Bruce! That's cool. Tech 12 needs some help, please? We have, Jake online. for your work. Once we, uh… get Bruce back. I'm doing that now. We are connected. You can finger salad. That's me, yeah. I sent him a please reconnect, we're waiting. I think he might like the… did I say what he might like? You might like the, um… Can you guys hear me? Gary nudged Carolyn. Yes. I apologize, I don't know if that was on my end or yours, and I don't know where you lost me. I'm visiting my daughter… Yeah, we were talking about going out for ice cream, but uh… but that… that being… that… Hi, welcome back, Bruce. we have, Jake. from Jake Canada, who's gonna ask you the last question. Okay, great. Hi, Jake. I think you're on mute, Jake. Yep. Thank you. There you go.

[27:39] Dan K. / Bruce H.: Oh, can you hear me now? Okay, so we've been talking a lot about AI. Is anybody on your team or at GSO that you know of? Looking into a stand-alone AI that we can have. Access to, or do you know much about that? yes, we're working on it, not specifically, like, developing a standalone AI for access to the fellowship, I mean, that's a concept, obviously, but not something we're working on right now, but we are all over AI. We've got a policy that's in place that's been approved by the board, we do have use cases that are outlined for use at GSO, like meeting minutes and stuff like that. part of our policy and procedures includes that everything is distributed… everything that's distributed is reviewed by a human, like, we never take meeting minutes from Zoom or, uh…

[28:28] Buck R.: co-pilot or something like that, and just send them out. Everything's reviewed, and another key component of that is no PII, no personally identifiable information, goes into any generative AI tool. so I sort of gave you a broad answer about our work with AI, specifically, I can bring that back to the team, but I know of no specific effort to, like, develop an agent or a tool or something. to make available to the fellowship or to the public. Are those policies accessible? Josh? Thank you. Go ahead. Uh… that's a good question. I don't think there… I know they are accessible at GSO to the team, 35 miles. I don't know that they're sent out, and I'm gonna go back to an answer I gave earlier. I don't know that we would distribute that, just, again, in the utmost security,

[29:17] Buck R.: putting our privacy and AI policies out in the world is… yeah, you get it.

[29:18] Audience member: We're okay. We're having a problem. Absolutely. Thanks, Jake. Thank you. Thank you. Bruce, as a heads up, just been told by Heidi, we're going to 1135. There were a couple of people in line. on… online, in person, please. Yes, sure. I'm Greg, Alcoholic, and… My question has to do with technology organization and structure and. I know as a project manager, it's like herding cats. You deal with vendors and platforms. each committee has their own idea of what great software and services are available. Would you, use, managed service providers from the outside and work them into the budget? And we take our… not lead, but we… your example at New York. As a way to manage all kinds of, uh. processes that happen at intergroups and sometimes large groups and assemblies and whatever areas.

[30:24] Audience member: yes, we do. Like, we work with our vCISO that I mentioned earlier is part of an organization that we work with. as a provider, and they manage, sort of, they're sort of second-tier support for us, so we've got Daniel and Pedro, but obviously they can't be everywhere all the time. and, like, they, for example, they support a board meeting, so if they're at the board meeting doing that, and somebody's printer dies, or somebody has a problem,

[30:51] Bruce H.: So they're sort of second tier as a managed service provider. Does that answer your question? Well, yeah, things like cybersecurity, stuff like that, is obviously something to be aware of, and someone else can do that. Oh yeah, no, and believe me, we definitely rely on the experts when we don't have it internally. Thank you. Thank you. In person, please. Hey everyone, alcoholic. Um… I know recently you were the Technology and Communications Department. And the two separated, I think. Well, my question is that, many years ago, we spent a lot of money on a communications audit. Which seemed to have a lot of excellent insight into what our communication problems were. But I've never really seen anything happen as a result. Where are we with that communications audit?

[31:51] Bruce H.: wow, I'm gonna have to, again, say I'll get back to you. I… if we were communications and technology, it was before my time, probably. Was that more than, like, 5 years ago, 5, 6 years ago? so I don't have an answer for you, but you're talking about a communications audit that was done How long ago? 5 years. Okay, yeah, I don't know about that. I started… I think it was coming up on 6 years ago, but I… I will have to check. I don't know of that. I can certainly find out.

[32:26] Matthew L.: I'm just gonna make a note. Thank you! Thank you. Online, please, Matthew L. Um… So, this question is with regards to the Fellowship Connection. And I think it might be a good idea to, uh… make it more accessible to registrars. And, uh… I had, uh… Created the one field. entry system for… Integrating Meeting Guide with AI, the meeting guide information? And I'm wondering how… we can get, uh… Fellowship Connections simplified a little bit. and user access to… So, enable our registrars. the non-technical registrars to. To be able to search for meetings to help the treasurers in the district. Yeah, in terms of the access, that's set by Member Services team, and I don't want to try and speak to that, because I don't… I'm not as familiar with the levels of access.

[33:39] Matthew L.: in terms of, like, who gets it, like, registrars, DCMs, that sort of thing. in terms of accessing the information, Fellowship Connection is sort of a layer that sits on top of the ERP. and connects it so you can view the information, but you can also own… you do own your information, and you can download it and use it. Like, a lot of people will keep… manage their data in Airtable or Smartsheet or Excel, whatever it is. and do what you want with that data. So, does that answer your question? at least partially, hopefully. I think you're muted, Matthew. Matt, you're muted. You good? Thank you. Thanks.

[34:24] Sarah: In person, please, Sally? Sarah, excuse me. Hello, everybody. My name is Sarah. I'm an alcoholic in the outgoing DCM for District 18 in Area 26. Bruce? Thank you so much for your presentation. especially enjoyed the digital. asset management. System, which I think we. could use… maybe we have it in District 28. I mean, Area 26, oh boy. Numbers, in our area, but if we don't, we should. I'm gonna go back to Fellowship Connection. as an outgoing DCM, I finally learned how to use Fellowship Connection. for the purpose of tracking down groups. And combined with the Meeting Guide app. I've done a lot of footwork. comparison of data and, um… It's just been working wonderfully. Hard to navigate. Fellowship, connection. but the sad thing is that at the end of this year.

[35:38] Sarah: I'm gonna be cut off. from access. So, we're coming at this. several different ways, and asking for. access to Fellowship Connection. the previous person asked about it, too. and I wish it were not limited to the registrars and the current DCMs. Okay, I'm just… I'm trying to get some of that down.

[36:03] Bruce H. / Sarah: I'll leave it at that, thank you. in person. okay, yeah, so the gist of what you're saying is you wish that access were broader, and you're… sorry that you're losing the access, because now you're finding it helpful. Is that correct? Yes, that's the problem. Thank you. I hear you. Okay, great. I'll… yes, I'll take that message back.

[36:26] Buck R.: Thank you, Bruce. I think we have one more person in person, and here we go. Trisha D? Alcoholic? Hi Bruce, thank you for everything you do. You too? Thank you.

[36:38] Trisha D.: I just want to say about the… the AI policy. our, like, AA world takes office processes often as an example. so I understand the sharing, the specifics of platform use opens us up to, like, attacks and things, but an AI policy? Seems more innocuous than that. what exactly is a security risk of releasing the AI policy? Other than, you know, opening you guys up to. Yeah, I think it's a good question, and I'd want to… People questioning your decisions. get some feedback from Lorna, but my take on it is that really any information about how we operate is only going to give a foot up to somebody who's potentially trying to do an attack on us, or a phishing attack, or… or a larger scale, DDoS kind of thing, whatever, because anything they know about what we do and don't do,

[37:41] Trisha D.: is… it's just like sharing the playbook, and I see your point. I'm not going to be able to say specifically what one item of information is bad for that, for a specific reason. But I think it's just a general concept that we don't share the playbook, because once people know how we operate, it makes it easier for them to operate around us.

[38:02] Bruce H.: That being said, your point is a good one. You could use this information. So what I'll do is I'll bring that back to Lorna, and we'll talk about it. We'll see if there's a way, you know, controlled sharing, because obviously if it goes to you or to a person who needs it, or whatever, that's a little more controlled than publishing it on the website, you know? Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, our delegates. Would love to have it. Okay, awesome. And I… yeah, I will… I will get back to you on that one. Bruce, on behalf of everyone, listen to this, we're gonna clap for you now. Thank you, Bruce. Well, thank… So, Bruce, so Bruce, when I come over, when I come up, we'll do the ice cream and hot dog and pizza thing. Absolutely. And all the Chin… and all the Chinese food. Absolutely. thank you for being with us, and we appreciate you very much.

[38:46] Bruce H.: I really appreciate you inviting me and letting me in and hearing your questions, and hopefully it was helpful. So thank you all so much.