Digitizing the Spirit of Service: A Modern Third Legacy Tool (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: Digitizing the Spirit of Service: A Modern Third Legacy Tool. Presenter: Adam M. From the NAATW 2025 Workshop, Cincinnati. Section headings have been revised using the uploaded slide deck structure for Electronic Voting: Polling in Minutes, Not Hours.

[0:00] Presenter Introduction

[0:00] Host: Presented by Adam M. This is a timely and important topic, how technology can simplify and strengthen A.A.’s election process while preserving its spiritual essence. We're delighted to have Adam with us to share his insights and expertise drawn from his years of hands-on A.A. service at many levels. Please join me in welcoming Adam M.

[0:28] Adam M.: All right, can you guys hear me all right?

[0:32] Host: We can't hear Adam. There we go!

[0:33] Adam M.: Of course not. Oh, you can hear me. Oh, okay, good. It's always a fight with, with Zoom, let me tell ya.

[0:39] Host: I can hear you.

[0:45] Introduction: Who Am I?

[0:45] Adam M.: hey everybody! So, my name's Adam, I'm an alcoholic. I’m going to do something a little different here. So I'll move to my presentation here. today I'm going to be presenting on Electronic Voting: Polling in Minutes, Not Hours. So, in the spirit of service, and trying to move things forward. we kinda… have a bit to talk about that. So, who am I? first in the spirit of anonymity, has been talked about a lot today, I've just blurred my photo here, um… This will be posted online, so I don't want that just going all over the place. I've been sober since April 13th, 2016. a bit about some of my service in A.A. I've, uh… served as GSR in Area 16 in Georgia. I did a lot of service as.

[1:38] Adam M.: somebody in YPAA, so I got sober when I was 22, 23, and was involved. a lot in young people in Alcoholics Anonymous. let's see, so… hosted many different things, big committees and stuff with that. I was the chair of the 2018 GCYPAA, which was the Georgia Conference by Young People and Alcoholics Anonymous, um… I've served on advisory for that committee as well, and then when I moved out here to Colorado, which is where I live now. I served in Area 10 as a GSR, and I've held various other service positions in. different types of committees, and my home group, and all things like that.

[2:13] Adam M.: a bit about my professional career. I work in tech and software, it's, uh… not anything… I don't want to bore you with all the details, but I do software development. I'm currently a partner and acting CTO for a startup, and, I have a lot of experience developing and implementing optimized solutions in different business practices.

[2:35] Agenda: Roadmap to Efficiency

[2:35] Adam M.: So, I'll talk a bit about, the agenda today, um. that I'm going to go through. I want to talk a bit about, the current state of voting in A.A., electronically and. not. discuss a little bit more about what we could try to work towards as. as a whole. talk about proposed solution to that, and then where we can go from there. One thing, sorry. All right. the clicker is not functioning. There we go.

[3:09] Identifying Asymmetries: Parallel Lines of Effort

[3:09] Adam M.: So, I talked a bit about, the voting, um. We have paper voting, we have by-hand voting for different motions and things. And within A.A., we have a varying adoption of electronic options. there's a few different ways. I think the biggest thing that really sums up. electronic voting for me. And how that relates to regular polling is. back in… I guess it was 2020. COVID had just happened. we voted, like. everybody was forced into this online sort of thing. So… it's like area assemblies, and meetings, and everything had to go online, everything had to be on Zoom. It was crazy, um. So, with that, we had our area assembly for area 16, and.

[3:55] Adam M.: it was COVID, so what are we? We're on Zoom. It's different, it's weird, everybody's trying to get used to it. there was a previous motion on the floor that had come up for… It was on the agenda for that particular meeting. it was for electronic voting. people thought that we needed that at the area. So, we started to, work on that. Ad hoc committee had done a report and brought back some of the information for that. And, we had that. here in the meeting, and it was kind of. open to discussion from there. somebody… Somebody from the floor had come up and said that. yes, it's nice that, there's different options that we could try to do things quicker, but ultimately, we signed up to be of service, we signed up to give our time.

[4:40] Adam M.: It… that's just how it goes. There's no reason we should implement something like this. I, at the time. felt the need to speak up as well. I did, I do… practice being of service to help with. carrying the message and doing different things in A.A., and, I do freely give my time for that, however. I think it's difficult to kind of. want to continue to do that when the first motion on the floor after every single election that we've ever had is motion to close. We can get literally nothing done. and I think the irony in that is the fact that we voted electronically on Zoom out of necessity to not vote electronically, because they didn't want to.

[5:23] Adam M.: there was a lot of other reasons. There was costs and unknown implications of that, and a couple other things. So it's not exclusively. just, people hating on it, but, it highlighted the… probably similar discussion that I've personally seen in other areas and other committees that I've served on, and that you guys are probably familiar with as well.

[5:42] Identifying Asymmetries: The Burden of the Circle

[5:42] Adam M.: So, I'll talk a bit about. the different types of voting, right? So, if you're familiar at all with serving on any general service. and doing any elections or voting there. we probably all know that process, especially for something like Third Legacy, like. You write name down on a piece of paper, and then you pass those ballots to the front, and they get, passed up in a big bowl and read out, and then. as you're sitting there in our area, it was the. the delegate that would read them off, and then somebody would sit there and, one vote for Josh, and another vote for David, and, it would take, a lot of time.

[6:22] Adam M.: And then from there, you have the possibility of discrepancies, right? So… when you have all these votes and tallies on the board, you have to try to figure out, did all those come from authorized voters? Do those match. and meet the same number of expected GSRs in the room who are authorized to vote at the area level. And the same thing goes in other committees that have. restrictions on the people who can vote for particular things, like elections or certain motions. It depends on the thing, but there's a wide array of different ways that we do that. from there, you have to do math, too, because if you're in a Third Legacy election, you gotta figure out what, you know.

[7:00] Adam M.: when to drop off candidates, when do they meet that, and then if you're doing any regular polling, if you need a two-thirds majority for a handbook change, or for, change to bylaws or something, you have to try to figure out how many people are here, how many people are allowed to vote, and. try to figure out the math for that, and there's worksheets and things, but, it feels like a really big waste of time and energy that could be better spent towards something else, carrying the message and doing the things that.

[7:25] Identifying Asymmetries: Fractured Dimensions

[7:25] Adam M.: we're there to try to do. So, to talk a bit about some of the electronic options, um… So there's not really any single unified electronic option. I've… heard of different people using things like Zoom, Election Buddy, at our area, we talked about physical clickers, like you were in college, you got, 1 to 10 on your. little thing and passing those out. election runner, I've used Discord on YPAA committees as well to run polls, um… it's great that. it's getting something to move forward. Things are functioning in the way that they can, but there's not really anything for. a Third Legacy Procedure. there's not really anything for doing these. You still have a lot of math and calculations you have to do.

[8:14] Establishing Equilibrium

[8:14] Adam M.: And none of these solutions really incorporate A.A.’s unique processes and needs. So, I wanted to bring up a quote here, like. Balance is not something that you find, it's something that you create. I didn't just wake up one day and have a perfectly balanced life with my, girlfriend over here and, my job over there, and all my A.A. committee and service stuff over there, it required a lot of work. It required a lot of time. And, I had to. put in the effort for it.

[8:46] Establishing Equilibrium: Harmonic Proportions

[8:46] Adam M.: So… why do we need electronic voting? I think most people here are pretty familiar. If you're not, I'll kind of. run through some of those things, like I've mentioned in a couple different times, it's like a better use of our time. the average area is going to meet tri-annually. Elections are usually every other year, so one-sixth of all of the time that those committees are getting together is spent doing elections. same thing, when I've served on YPO committees, especially if it's for some of the larger conferences, like we just recently hosted Wacky Paw here in. Colorado, and the voting procedure for that took. forever. Like, it was a very long time, and every time we had to elect somebody new, we had to set up the whole poll and see who could vote, and…

[9:30] Adam M.: anytime you've been doing motions, too. especially if they're, highly contested motions, things that people have a lot of opinions on, and there's a split piece, and, you're like. sitting there, holding your hand up, waiting for people to count, and, it's difficult, and it, can lead to, my next point is, a bit of burnout. imagine not being frustrated about the next election, or the next highly contested motion that you're going to have on your floor. imagine just knowing that you're gonna be able to take care of that and make it easy. waiting for everyone to count hands, to re-vote, see if the numbers match, it's. it's a lot of stress on everyone involved in the process.

[10:09] Adam M.: and I think one of the big things that I really want to highlight is kind of. or next generation, right? Like. I served on a ton of YPA committees when I first got sober. It was a huge part of my early sobriety, and it's really what brought me into serving in general service and higher levels of service with NAA. well, lower down on the pyramid, and if you get what I'm saying. but… that's how I started, that's how I got into it. And, it's… I can see it being a thing, because this is exactly what I dealt with, is. Growing up with technology, being interested in computers, things like that, it's really hard to kind of. get somebody from a younger generation to sit there and go through this arduous process because of our tradition of doing it that way.

[10:53] Adam M.: on all the different committees. explaining what the Third Legacy process is, and then getting people to understand that, and then now… trying to see what happens. Well, any YPA committee that I've served on, with the exception of two.

[11:00] Establishing Equilibrium: Bridging the Divide

[11:10] Adam M.: just… votes as a committee to not do it, because it is not worth… they don't want to deal with it, right? And I think it's important to recognize that. The people growing up with technology, the people growing up with the internet, the people growing up with smartphones in their pockets since the day they can remember are going to be our next GSRs, they're going to be our next DCMs, and they're going to be our next delegates. And I think that's really important to highlight, is, trying to remove the friction for that new generation coming into, higher levels of service in A.A. So, imagine what the perfect system for this sort of thing would be. would look right? I think first and foremost, it needs to present a clear, unified answer to.

[11:49] Adam M.: How do we electronically vote in A.A.? Because there's so many different ways to do it, there's so many different. types of things to calculate, and, how do we do that? It's not going anywhere. we need this answer, because. Ever since COVID happened, we know it's possible. if you were on Zoom at all during that time, you were forced to have to vote electronically. So it's not going to disappear from the discussion of. general service and just A.A. as a whole. And then, it's been talked about everywhere that I've heard from, district and, our central office, all the way to area, and any of… discuss it at a home group that I'm in, and all the different committees that I've served on for Yapa.

[12:33] Expanding the Perimeter: thirdlegacy.org

[12:33] Adam M.: I think, second, it should be. completely inclusive. I don't think that this should be exclusive to anybody who. is, large enough committee to warrant the time savings. I think that this should just be available to all, no matter the size. No matter the group, or the committee, and it needs to be available for hybrid and in-person meetings. this is a hybrid event. I'm here in Colorado. Hey guys! there's… the same thing, people are. doing all these things that we… I don't remember if it was earlier and I'd missed it, because the time changed, but there was supposed to be, or there might be coming up, a presentation on.

[13:10] Adam M.: AI and virtual reality, right? Like, those people need to also be able to coordinate things. in Zoom, you just put a little hand emoji or something. I think it should be a custom solution that adheres to our principles. It should have solid foundations and anonymity. strict data dilution policies and, built for our process and procedure. and be used for that. so I built it. Yeah, it's here. if you're sitting in front of your laptop, you can actually go to thirdlegacy.org right now. and sign up. it's in beta. You can go use it. So, I'll walk through a bit about what it is, what it looks how it functions, and then we'll talk a bit more about. where we could take it from here, and what that might look like.

[13:57] The User Arc: Joining a Session

[13:57] Adam M.: so we have… a couple different ways to join. We got session codes that you can pass out that. define if you're authorized to vote in that particular election or not, or you can print out a page of QR codes. All these session codes are anonymous, they're not tied to anything. And you don't need any accounts to sign up, except with the exception of the organizer who will be putting the polls and, generating these codes. if you used another voting app before, or done anything like this, you're probably pretty familiar, um… you got your different poll options here, you got your time remaining timer, and, you run through the poll from there.

[14:34] The User Arc: Voting and Results

[14:34] Adam M.: select an option, hit vote. Okay, it processes the votes, after all the votes are in, or the round timer's up, then, you get your results immediately. So, there's no more waiting around to try to figure out if that motion passed, or where the next, convention's going, or anything along those lines.

[14:52] The User Arc: Third Legacy Elections

[14:52] Adam M.: so, that's all pretty standard stuff for. some electronic voting solution, but I think the big thing is. the fact that, if we're gonna build a solution to electronic voting. doing every… doing the things that every other item on the market does doesn't really help us. So, why not add their legacy in there, right? So, as you can see up here, we've got this round counter, so… as you start a Third Legacy poll, you can see the round that you're on, and you can see the candidates that are available. so, we're gonna walk through an example here of. secretary, so, for this random committee, we're gonna elect a secretary with the third.

[15:33] Adam M.: legacy voting procedure, um. So, as you move forward, as you can see, there's no winner here, so, there's no two-thirds majority, and we need to move to that next round. So, as we progress through the rounds, the progress bar up here will show you as you're moving forward. that, you're on round 2, here are the results. As you can see, we still don't have a two-thirds majority winner. So, we'll continue through. candidates are gonna drop off automatically, so… We have a very strict set of rules that define how that happens, so we can do it. Automatically. as you can see, David J. Didn't have enough… didn't have more than one-fifth of the votes coming into the third round, so he's not available to select from.

[16:16] Adam M.: moving forward as well, now you have a little less, um. And we'll keep going through is, now we're on the fourth round, and Anna B didn't have two-thirds, or didn't have one-third of the votes in order to move on to this round, so we're left with our final two candidates. once again, moving through, since there was no two-thirds majority in that last one either, we'll go ahead and just automatically prompt for a motion to do a fifth round of voting. Because, we can, why not? So. then, in this case, in this particular example, you can see it went all the way to the very end, the last round. we got to the fifth round of voting, there was still no selection, so we drew it from the hat.

[17:00] Adam M.: and we do that electronically as well. So, I'll show a bit of, the dashboard of the user side, or of the, organizer side. Anybody that's setting up the polls, or… orchestrating any election or motions or event. whether it be, YPAA events, or if you're, a committee for, a state convention. that would be the person setting up the different polls. So, you add your number of voters down here, um. So if you have the concept of an authorized voter, you generate the codes right there. after generating all the codes, you get a unique list of them, and then you can either print out the PDF document for. QR codes to pass out to people. I know at our particular area, 16, back in Georgia.

[17:50] Adam M.: If you didn't register with the group by the time the main business meeting had started, you were considered absent, and they, you weren't an authorized voter, even if you were an authorized GSR. So, that's the same sort of concept here. Each voter only gets one vote, which is pretty easy. I think the thing sticking with that anonymity. piece is the cookies that we need to save on people's devices in order to. track who they're… who they are enough to say if they're authorized or not. Delete themselves automatically after the event. So, there's no tracking or anything, it's just a session code and an event ID, and it's. encrypted and saved on the device, and then it's deleted automatically. They could take their device offline, and it would still delete itself.

[18:36] Adam M.: so moving from there, we have a few different types of poll rounds. this is still in process, so, some of these are changing, but a simple yes-no majority, is there 50% or more or less? A simple majority of a number of different options, a two-thirds supermajority for things like. bylaws changes at whatever level you're serving at, whether that be, your home group or something else, we handle that. And then, obviously, Third Legacy elections, like we talked about.

[18:59] The Straightest Path: Organizer Dashboard

[19:07] Adam M.: So, when you start the event, you just start the event. it's pretty simple. You go set up all your polls, and then you start your event, and that kind of. stops the session codes from being able to join. However, don't worry, that's completely configurable in settings, so if people want to be able to join, if they show up late. that's totally fine, you can do that. And you can add more polls and different things as you move along, um… it doesn't matter if the event started or not. We handle all of that. as you vote, we get, a real-time bar showing. the number of votes that have come in, and what's going on with that. So, as more and more votes come in, you get everything, how much time's remaining, that's all configurable as well.

[19:48] Adam M.: just like before, the graphs are available to the organizer as well, so if they were sharing their screen. at, the front of an in-person, committee of any kind, then you can see the graph and. what that poll looks like. if you need to see exact numbers, too, you can actually hover your mouse over it, and it'll show, a little thing and show you guys could go mess with it and find out. so we'll go back to that vote for Secretary. So this is the same. This is the same exact poll running on the system, that are just screenshots from the two different sides.

[20:23] Adam M.: So we're going to skip through this a little quicker. But, as you can see, same sort of graph, same sort of things, um… here we are on the fifth boat to see if we're moving on to another round or not. David J, Anna B, they both dropped off, you can see, it's probably hard to see, it's a little small up there, but showing you the candidates that are still remaining at that particular point in time. and then, here we go. Charles M, you're our new secretary, and I don't know who you are, if there's a Charles M. On the call, hello, congratulations, it's your job to take notes now. So, and you can see also that it was chosen by the hat. And I think that's really a little segue into my fun fact of the presentation.

[21:06] Adam M.: computers don't actually generate random numbers, so when you… when you tell a computer, give me a random number, it… uses an algorithm and gives you the approximation of a random number, and that's called a pseudo-random number. however, that's not really good for things like this. So, we actually call an external service called random.org, um… So, they're an API that provides truly random numbers, and they use. atmospheric interference, so like reading radio waves in the atmosphere to give you. a statistically random number. I'm not sure, I know there was a talk earlier that mentioned Cloudflare a bit. for their encryption, they actually use a wall, they have an entire wall of lava lamps.

[21:51] Adam M.: and they have a camera pointed at it, and they use that to get truly, random numbers, because computers don't do that. and I got a fun fact within a fun fact. our brains actually create patterns and have subconscious biases. So even when humans are trying to be completely random. we're really not as good at it as you would think. So, statistically speaking. Our hat draw is actually more random than any human… could achieve. And that's not to say that, humans aren't random enough. But, I just thought that was really fun when I was doing the research to figure out how to make sure that, this really followed with the spirit of AA, and allowed us to do what the Third Legacy election is, is like.

[22:30] Adam M.: give this choice to a higher power. Give it to God and get it out of our hands to really put us where we need to get. So, having a not random number wouldn't really do that. So, last thing I just want to touch on is, after you've gone through and done all of this, you have one big dashboard that shows.

[22:47] The Initial Vector: Needed Change

[22:49] Adam M.: how far each election got through, if a, poll did or didn't pass, you can see it just by those green and gray dots. over there on the right. So it makes it really easy to see. Also, all of the data is deleted. So, all the session codes are deleted after 30 days. All of the individual. numbers for what session code voted for what are never actually saved to begin with. They're held in memory and removed at the end of the poll. So, it's really trying to stick with, we don't want any of this data, we have no need to have it. it only leads to problems, and trying to practice the principles and stay within, what A.A. is trying to do. I felt that was the best way to try to build it. So, I want to point out a quote from Bill here. This was.

[23:35] Adam M.: from his general service… from the General Service Conference in 1965. he was giving a talk, to Grapevine. He said, let us never fear needed change. once a need becomes apparent, we cannot sit still and look the other way. I paraphrased it a little bit, if you go do look up that quote, there's a lot more about the. the group of A.A. and all this stuff, and the context around it is… A.A. is very stuck in its ways a lot of the time, and. it's not something that we do on purpose, and it's one of the things that's really helped our fellowship. survive as long as it has. especially when you look at how much the world has changed. since A.A. first started, it's crazy that we're still here today. it's literally one of those, it's not… in our hands. It just keeps happening.

[24:23] Mapping the Coordinates: Build, Test, Beta, Expansion, Launch

[24:23] Adam M.: so I thought that was really, really interesting, and brings us into our next section. what's next, you know? Ultimately, I just want to make this available to any group or any committee that wants to adopt it. There's no reason we shouldn't have some solution like this. I think really the biggest hurdle that we're gonna run into is point 2, like. Ensuring the long-term stability of this platform and this thing. Because right now, I'm hosting the beta on a cloud service that I'm doing, and, that can't happen forever if this wants to grow anywhere past. being a cool novelty little thing. there's a lot of different ways to do that. I know we've heard some things about.

[25:08] Adam M.: open source, and, different repos and things that are available on GitHub, and, I really… I really support open source, and I think that's a great thing, but… In theory, it's wonderful in practice, it makes things a little more difficult, especially when.

[25:25] Adam M.: it's a little different, because everybody here at this conference is here because we're interested in technology, and how that can help us in service. But if you go to a standard committee and say, hey, you need to clone this repo off GitHub, deploy it to a server, you need to set up a database, connect it to all of that, put it online with a website, it just leads to, I got more tech jargon about what needs to happen to set this up. And we could try to simplify it, write good documentation, things like that, but I think it. really, only the committees or groups or people with, the most technical expertise are really going to be able to. use this thing. And that's really gonna create an unintended barrier to access and use across everyone in A.A.

[26:08] Adam M.: and, that brings us into the unfortunate topic of money. If I can quote Cage the Elephant here. there ain't nothing in this world for free. Things cost money, and that's the unfortunate reality of the capitalistic society we live in. there's cost to run. We have server costs, we have database costs, we have API calling costs. Like, all of that stuff is something that we will have to figure out. how to keep sustainable for the long term. right now, it's relatively modest, 15, 20 bucks a month for the server, same sort of thing, another 15-20 for the database. the domain's, 15 bucks a year, I'm not that worried about that sort of thing. API costs will come into that, and that's just depending on how many hat draws there are, but it's pretty minimal.

[26:54] Adam M.: And I don't know if that is what this looks like long-term, because. Right now, it's in testing, there are… it's running on a very small computer online, and. there might be problems that get run into as soon as we have more voters. I've done as much testing as I can, and that's where we're at. I think, like so many other things. this is just something that we have to put in God's hands. on my side, it's, I'm not trying to make money off of this, I'm not trying to sell this to anybody, I'm trying to fix a need that I saw and have dealt with and heard about, talked about in every level of service that I've been involved in in A.A. since I got sober. And, it's just one of those things, if it needs to work out, it's gonna work out.

[27:39] Adam M.: So, with that. If you want to take a look at electronic voting options, if you want to talk about other things like. Other services cost money. It costs money to host our websites, it costs money to do all of those things. and I think the biggest. point that I can. touch on here is. This isn't the first time something like this has really sparked some change. Like, it was… I don't remember when it was, 20… I wasn't here, I don't think I… it was either just sober or not sober at that point in time. But back in 2015-2016, somebody came to this very form, NAATW, and presented a little project they were working on about, making a little app to show. people, different meetings in their area. And that's really grown to the point that.

[28:30] Adam M.: everybody I know that has looked for a meeting with an application uses the Meeting Guide app. And that was talked about here and started as a pet project, and has grown into something that has been invaluable in the modern era for alcoholics to find their way to meetings. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do, is carry the message.

[28:48] Adam M.: So, where do we go from here? how do we move forward? What does this look like? Well, I guess first and foremost, the initial build is done. the, it's… I've done as much testing with the polling and the calculations and the third legacies, and… all the things that go into the application or. done. But that brings us to, beta testing, right? I can only test so much, it's live, you can go… you can go log in, you can go sign up for an account, you can go run polls. all of that can happen right now. And I think that's our next, our next stage is it's been launched into beta.

[29:28] Adam M.: I need… we need people to go use it, see what's cool, see what's good, see what's bad, get feedback about, does this fit the needs that we need it to in A.A., or does it not? and if it does, awesome. If it doesn't, well, what can we change to do to fix that? moving on to, feature expansion from there. I think getting… getting that feedback, right? Prioritizing things, and this comes from, my software development and project management background, is like. We need to decide what's a bug, what needs a fix. what's a need, what has to happen for this to go forward and get adoption, and then what's like a nice-to-have that we can. put on the back burner and get to later. Then we fix the bugs, and build the new features.

[30:11] Adam M.: And then that moves us to, a 1.0 launch, and that's, tech speak for. it's complete enough to kind of. give to people to get using. I would draw that line at. it's good enough for any kind of. large event, something like this, something like an area assembly, something like. a state conference where polling needs to happen in some way, shape, or form. and then having, hosting covered somehow, uh… I think with the hosting costs, it needs to be sustainable for the long term. It needs to be transparent, so there's no questions about, like. oh, how is this happening? Is somebody making money? No. It just needs to be freely shared and given. and also, that's, a couple steps ahead, so… give it to God, if this needs to work out, it'll work out.

[31:03] Adam M.: And if not, it won't. And, we can worry about that in the future. And, moving from there. there's a need. Everybody's really talked about this, it's been a thing since I got sober, and. it's… I think it's time that we can just set a new standard in electronic voting in A.A. And finally, once and for all, answer the question. How do you vote electronically in A.A.? Well, you just use our tool.

[31:27] Discussion / Q&A

[31:27] Adam M.: so, that's what I got for my presentation. thank you, and we'll move to questions and answers.

[31:41] Host: And the butts are out of the seats on their way to the mic. And online, too, we'll start in the room, and then we'll go to Zoom. Go ahead. Hi, Adam. My name is Sean, I'm a grateful alcoholic, and I want to start.

[31:56] Sean S.: by… Just… can… he's still here? Anybody here? I can hear ya! Okay, well, sorry, we just lost video. Anyway, I want to start by thanking you, expressing my gratitude for recognizing a challenge and doing what you can to solve it. I got to participate in my first Area A.A. assembly, about a month and a half, two months ago. It was a very eye-opening experience in which I got to witness the process. of voting in a new panel. And it was something to behold. and the whole time, being the fixer, as I already announced earlier during my presentation, I love to solve problems. So, 5 minutes into the process, and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, there's gotta be. a solution out there to combine with this Excel spreadsheet and this Zoom poll.

[32:48] Sean S.: process that they were using in conjunction with the onsite, and it just seemed like. a lot of opportunity for improvement. biggest thing I didn't see in your presentation was a way to mitigate for the. Lack of confidence that people have in technology. So, right now, there's a raised hand, there's somebody who taps your hand when they put it down, you see a check being put on a board. I… your solution is very streamlined. And as you already know, because you helped develop it, there's a lot happening on the back end. None of those things are visible to the people doing the voting, as far as I could see in your demo. And I think that that is a challenge. that is going to affect the ability for people like myself to get buy-in.

[33:41] Sean S.: Because so many people who are experienced in that process, they demand to know that their vote counted. And that is absolutely going to have to be addressed.

[33:50] Host: Thank you. Thank you. I love this conversation. Let's go online for our first hand. I think that's Paul? Is that Paul? For Denise. Dennis.

[34:06] Dennis: Yeah, thank you, Adam. I'm Dennis, I'm an alcoholic. Yes. Yes. Can everybody hear me? Thank you so much for your presentation, it was very cogent and well put together, and I appreciate every one that has sat through our Third Legacy voting process. well, thank you for… for streamlining this really, really lengthy process. So anyway. The question I had was this, and I'm certain you probably have discussed it, has there been any thought given to how this might be implemented as a Zoom add-in? To, to reduce the barriers to adoption? Thank you.

[34:42] Adam M.: so, no, I haven't really done any kind of. development beyond the initial build-out of the application and the UI. I'm not even sure the process of building something into a Zoom add-in. I think it… I am very far away from the Zoom ecosystem, so, if somebody else wants to take on that project. they are more than welcome to, but yeah, I haven't. It's been built as, an online application to make it easier for people to just. take any device, regardless of what it is, and just. go to a random website, put in a code.

[35:24] Lou: Loop? Thanks, my name's Lou, I'm an alcoholic. had a bit of a chill and. running back my spine, thinking that I was watching another, uh… meeting guide moment at NAATW here, and that, uh. A lot of us have had that. In fact, I can… I can accurately state that at least. 11 NAATWs that I've gone to, I've left. wanting to build a similar app, and I'm envious of your skill, and. Your ability to pull it together and actually do something I've always wanted to do. So, that being said, have you given any consideration. in the process of this, or in thinking through. how it would be used, how you would deal with people. who don't have access to. an smartphone or something that they could use to plug in. in Area 10, for example, we've got a lot of people that. We'll, always vote on paper, regardless what the process is. So, uh.

[36:33] Lou: dealing with, uh. non-web participants.

[36:40] Adam M.: Yeah, so, there has been… that has come up a couple different times, and there's a few different ways that I've had that question fielded. It has been a variation of. How do you handle this without. with people who, A, don't have smartphones, or B, don't have computers, um… Or C, won't do it electronically at all, um. I think the first two pieces of that are a little easier to touch on. So, not having a smartphone or not having a computer isn't really a barrier to using this at the moment. If you have any smartphone or any computer. regardless of the internet connection, regardless of where you're at, regardless of the device, if it has an internet browser, it can work. additionally, there has been some thought on my side of using, another outside service to kind of.

[37:31] Adam M.: send a text message, to be able to relay if somebody could text in their vote if they, don't have a smartphone. as far as moving towards. handling not electronic paper-only voting options. I think, unfortunately. Yeah, and this is my personal opinion, but I think as time moves forward. that will cease to be something that happens. outside of the most dedicated groups, because there isn't… I don't think it's something that's feasible in the long term as our fellowship continues to grow, and as people. who are familiar with technology come in and have more of that innate trust. in something like this, being able to perform on the same level as paper ballots they can physically see. Thanks. Paul, online? is next.

[38:29] Host: Maybe? Paul, you're unmuted? Paul, you're unmuted. Paul, you're unmuted. Paul, you there? No? We'll come back to you, Paul. All right, go ahead, Pierre.

[38:51] Pierre: Hi, I'm Pierre, I'm an alcoholic. Adam, I just want to give you a big shout-out. You are a genius. No. The way you express yourself, the knowledge, how you symbolize the national ATW in your presentation. is amazing, and um… the fellowship needs you, brother. Thank you.

[39:22] Adam M. / Host: Thank you.

[39:23] Karen P.: Yes, Pierre. we'll go to Karen online. Then we'll come back to you, Paul. See who there. Go ahead, Karen, when you get unmuted. Okay, I, if you're an alcoholic. I was just curious, I brought up the Third Legacy, and I've looked at this before, but if I… if I wanted to play with it, would I just add an event? And then build the event to create the… that… All right, cool. That's it! Yeah, sign up, go in, you create an event that symbolizes. what event you're doing, what election, what, committee meeting you're in, and then from there, you just add polls, and you can check the settings thing. It'll let you either. block or allow voters to come in or out. And also, you can reach out if you've got any more questions.

[40:08] Karen P.: And then at the end, would, would you… you would be able to download any reports out of that? we don't have an export function yet, but they're all available in the dashboard, and that's the only thing we save, is… the result of. Course, good enough. the poll and what the poll's name was, and how many votes came in, not who they were by, just the number of them. Right, right, right, right. Okay, and then, of course, um. Yep. and you keep that… if I'm just testing around and doing some crap, I know we're in beta. But I just wouldn't want to be leaving garbage out there. Okay, all right.

[40:42] Adam M.: Oh, well, it cleans itself up. that's part of it, is I add 30 events and they'll all be gone in, 30 days from now. Adam, do you, have some sort of, uh. comment repository for people who want to go in and test it so they can get some feedback on it. It's part of the beta. I don't yet. The best thing that you have, there is a help, there is a contact us, or contact me section, I guess. on the website, so if you just scroll down to the bottom, you can see down there, there's just a contact form, and anything you submit there comes to my email address, and then. I can correspond back and forth with you in regards to that. I think there should probably be, as this is.

[41:25] Adam M.: fairly new. I just put it online, was hey, cool, and got a… a ton of stuff after I posted on the TIW… TIAA form. so many people reached out, I'm not sure yet about the best way to centralize. feedback and discussion outside of the contact form. I could probably put something inside the account information, like a chat or something, but… That's… this is still pretty new. this just got finished up, 2 weeks ago, so we're getting there.

[41:58] Karen P.: Awesome. All right, we'll go to the room.

[42:03] Adam M.: Hey, Peter, Alcoholic Area 38 webmaster. Adam, that rocked. Thank you. I know one of the most painful things, and the coolest thing that we do every two years, is the Third Legacy voting. and I know that there's times we're sitting around and they're just saying the names. It's all right, well, what are we gonna do? So, I… I see a lot of potential here. so the one thing that you… that stood out to me… oh, now I'm over here. is, uh… you said, the hosting might be a thing, and, server space stuff? have you considered, a lot of areas have websites, they already have hosting and that? sort of maybe make it, a WordPress plugin, figure out a way to just have.

[42:47] Adam M.: areas, utilize their already existing. assets in that fashion. I know that might, decentralize things, but I don't know, I was just throwing that out there as an idea, more or less. Yeah, so… I think the thing with that is this is one of those. from the ground-up solutions that. is not really transferable. Like, if we wanted to make this into a WordPress plugin, or if we wanted to make it into a Zoom plugin, or… when I say WordPress, not literal Word, not, literal word or Excel. it would constitute essentially rebuilding the entire application, unfortunately.

[43:30] Audience member: that's just the nature of something like this. It's highly integrated. I just did a ton of updates in order to kind of. get it to function with more than, 40 people on the, super small machine it's running on. And it's not something you can really host on just, any computer or any server or any website. Like, you need the processing power and the database integration. I'm not sure how many people here are familiar with the software development side of things, but, it needs a deployed thing for it to exist, unfortunately. All right, now we're going to go to online. Sam? Oh, let's see if Paul was there. Paul, are you there now? Pop back. There, but not all there. Hey, we can hear ya! What's up? There you are.

[44:18] Audience member: There you go! Hey! We made it! All right, yeah, this technology is very confusing. Congratulations, Adam, that's an awesome, awesome solution. first of all, you didn't miss the A.A. and VR presentation. We got moved to 8 o'clock tonight, so I hope to see you there. Awesome. And then the second one is, did you mention anything about browser compatibility, both at the phone. Safari, Chrome, Mac level, all the other stuff. Anything that we need to be worried about with that? the only thing you need to be worried about is if anybody is running Internet Explorer 8, which. hasn't been around or done anything since, 2012? So it should be on a lot of… a lot of old-timer computers, sure, got that. Okay, good. Thank you. So, yeah. Yep. All right, Trisha. Good question.

[45:08] Audience member: I was just gonna make a suggestion that if it is on your servers and your cost. that you calculated or provided? an amount that an area or other entity would. donate to you to keep this going, you know what I mean? Like, be well, if you contribute X amount. And leave it up to them, we are. Yeah. self-supporting, so we probably would make the contribution to you to keep it running if it was a tool that we liked. Well… ultimately, too, like. This is a… this isn't a, I'm gonna host it on my thing forever, I… I want this to… to live on and become a solution in whatever fashion that happens, and if that's taking donations. or offering it for free for anybody with less than 50 people voting.

[45:59] Adam M.: I think it's really up to us as a whole in A.A. to decide what works best, what has enough transparency, and what people are. okay with. And for right now, the cost is. Like I said, it's like 30 bucks a month, and I'm considering that a Seventh Tradition contribution to A.A. as a whole to get this off the ground and moving. But I appreciate it, for sure, it's something that, we will have to talk about and that is a bridge we will have to cross if this goes anywhere.

[46:26] Adam M.: But it's great. Sam, online? Thanks.

[46:33] Sam: Oh. good afternoon, my name is Sam. I am an alcoholic and tech chair for Area 7 here in California. a couple of comments. One. this digital voting thing at the area level is essential. More and more areas are going to hybrid. and that my good friends over at the California. coastal District 0 or Area 06. Has been digitally voting for a long time now. I know this is inappropriate, but. Go ahead and see me. They use a company called Digital Joy. That they use for cell phone voting, um… And the way that it gets incorporated is. will also create an… because, hybrids and Zoom will create polls in Zoom for people who don't have cell phones. And for those cranky old bastards that want to vote on paper, we'll do paper as well.

[47:35] Sam: But this is something that's coming. So, just food for thought, it really makes life a lot easier. It really does. So, I would… I would encourage every area that's geographically dispersed going hybrid. can you use this, and then… I'm, one of these very dangerous people. I know a little bit about some things. And the thought that I had as you were going through the, how do we roll this out? Was that Meeting Guide app that we all use on our phones? That all started out the same way this started out. No. And I'm just seeing… wondering if, the good folks at NAATW. could do some a conversation. That plots a similar path. On how… how to get this rolled out across a larger segment without it being too expensive, and just. A final thought, that digital joy thing ain't cheap.

[48:33] Sam: It works, but it's expensive. I was surprised at how much it cost. So, anyway, great job, looking forward to seeing this roll out in effective, inexpensive manner. Thank you. I haven't been around an NAATW since the beginning, but I can imagine that this is how things… gain legs and gain traction.

[48:59] Adam M. / Host: we all get excited about it in this room, and online, and then we. start to collaborate, so I love it. We got somebody else coming through the mic. We've got, up to 6 minutes left in this session, so you've got 2 of those.

[49:13] Michael: All right, have a whole lot of time. Michael, I'm an alcoholic. I am the, Area 27 tech chair in Louisiana. So, one of the things that. our Area 27 delegate had asked me about it at our most recent area assembly was. And this is prior to me knowing anything about this. So, this app that you've built, and I'm very grateful for it, and great job. but he had approached me about. Possibly going digital with our voting electronically. And what we could do with that, and I was thinking, something like Kahoot or something like that, right? And trying to build that, and… And the logistics of it, trying to make sure the right people voted and the wrong people didn't vote, and things like that.

[50:00] Michael: kind of a nightmare. So, I appreciate that. One of the things, just playing around with it, uh… Is that I noticed that, I'll be the guy to have to set all this up, and then work with the registrar to make sure that the… the right people get the QR codes or the IDs. And one of the things that I noticed that once you start an event and start a poll. It doesn't really seem to be any way to. to restart that same poll if you needed to. And I can't imagine right now why you would need to do that, but I know. We probably will, because somebody will figure out a way to make that necessary. So, is… They're too true. That's too true! so, maybe… have you thought about that, or is that anything that you think you could add to that?

[50:54] Adam M.: Yeah, I already have the, I already have the button, commented out on the UI, and some of the backend code kinda touched a little bit, but it's definitely something that I know is gonna be needed, is some way to restart or, rerun. I think it's also, a balancing act, too, between. Like, one of the suggestions I got, and I'll tie this back to what I was just saying in a second, about how to. allow people to vote on paper, and allow people to vote not on paper is, well, can you enter, some physical votes into the thing? And, that opens up the floodgates to more questioning of the technology, of, well, how do I know that they didn't just enter the wrong number because they wanted XYZ, and I think it's the same thing of, like.

[51:41] Adam M.: Well, how do we know that you didn't just rerun the poll until, again and again until. you decided that it was good enough, or whatever. so I don't know how I'm gonna handle that. I think people are generally, at least in A.A., a lot better, than humans elsewhere. So, practicing some principles and stuff should, make those kinds of solutions less of an ordeal than it would be in some corporate environment or another application-type thing that I've developed before.

[52:07] Host / Jake: All right, we'll take two last questions. Jake online, and then… are you in line? Okay. Hi, thank you. First of all, like everybody said, amazing. So, Jake? presentation. I'm, curious, I guess in a perfect world. This would eventually be hosted on a GSO server, which we pay for already. but what sort of time frame do you think you see from beta? To when it's actually ready and could be offered. Again, off the top of my head, to GSO to call and say, you could host this and make it available to your area. What's the time frame you foresee?

[52:44] Adam M.: I think it's really dependent upon. how… how much adoption and feedback we get, like. if this, functions well enough, and everybody says, oh, this is… this is good enough, we've run enough polls, we're confident that it's not just going to explode. because I can only test so many, I can run virtual bots that, start to vote, but when you start to get into. weird edge cases of, well, what happens when, everybody vote, just, weird software stuff, is really what we need to get to that point. it's… the biggest hurdles are really going to be how many more things are people going to want to add as features? Because that'll always… there will always be something else that somebody's going to want.

[53:28] Adam M.: there's as many new things as there are people. And, you know. Between that and, just finding the time to knock out the last couple things to get it to that point, I mean… in a couple, a month? Couple months? 8 months, a year, it's highly dependent, and I can't just give, a one-size-fits-all, but like. Soon, I'd hope.

[53:51] Mark: All right, thank you, and one last mark. Mark Alcoholic, Adam, I am just super proud of, what you've been able to do. I was an area chair. when we had that vote to. electronically voted to not vote electronically going forward. In Georgia? Hey! Yes, sir. I was there. So, just the foresight and, it's almost sad, Damon, that we've got, two powerhouses that have left the state of Georgia and moved west. I'm in Ohio now, but. great job, that's all I really wanted to say. It's good to see you, and, thank you for the presentation.

[54:33] Host: All right, let's give him another hand. Thank you so much, Adam. Amazing. All right, we've got one more presentation before we break for dinner.