Delegate's Report Archive

Delegates Report - March 2008

Fellow WSEA 92 Members,

Since I last wrote a lot of activity has happened in the Area in regard to the upcoming Pre-Conference Assembly and the General Service Conference. As I mentioned in the February Newsletter the Conference Agenda items would be arriving at my doorstep shortly, and they did! This years GSC will have 54 main and 16 sub agenda items for the 13 Conference Committees, in total the background material contained 607 pages of information. This is where is gets interesting, the final Agenda items finally became available at about 2:30 PM our time on Friday the 15th and I needed to be "in" Ritzville at 12 noon the next day to meet with several of our past Delegates (Gene D., Mike Mc., Dave Mc.) and our current Alt Delegate Mauro P. to have the Agenda selection meeting. I pulled an all-nighter (getting to be pretty common these days) and got the agenda items to the meeting in good order and we had a thorough, thoughtful selection process. I am so very grateful for their assistance and gratified that our Area has such qualified servants.

As a result of the selection meeting the number of agenda items was boiled down to 9 with about 150 pages of background information. At this point I would like to make it clear that the purpose of the selection meeting is not to simply reduce the number of agenda items that are forwarded to the Area, rather it is a process by which your trusted servants with all of the ability that their experience has provided them, make careful decisions as to which of the many agenda items are germane (especially relevant) to our Area. That does not mean that every agenda item that was selected will provide me with a yeh or neh vote at the conference, some are "special interest" items that will allow our Area to have healthy and dynamic discussions about their relevance. The meeting in Ritzville adjourned around 8 PM and I arrived home around 11:30 PM and was at it again by 10 AM the next morning (Sunday Feb. 17) with Mauro as we spent most of the day on the phone pouring over the selected agenda items asking questions to make sure that if some additional information was needed by the Area Committee at the Agenda review meeting we would have that material ready for them. The rest of the week was spent reading background material and preparing for the Agenda review meeting.

The review meeting in Spokane on Saturday the 23rd at the Alano Club was well attended. Two WSEA 92 past Delegates and the current Alt Delegate were present as well as most of the Area committee. The members present were divided into 3 groups each with their list of selected Agenda items to consider. Their function was to further refine the back ground material into a format that would address the fundamentals of the agenda topics in a few sentences for placement into the Conference Agenda Topic Summaries for the Agenda Workshop attendees to use. The groups did a great job and the resulting summaries were reviewed by the entire body for final edit at the close of the group sessions. Many of you have seen these summaries already at the Agenda Workshops and I think you'll agree that turning 150 plus pages of background information into a 3 page summary was work well done. Thanks to all of the Area Committee that made themselves available to this vital process of the Conference structure.

Sunday the 24th I was up at 6 AM and shortly there after headed out into the Spokane Valley to find a printer that was open early so copies of the background material would be ready for the Workshop starting at 1 PM. Let me tell you not much was open on Sunday, and when I finally found a printer that said it would be no problem to make the copies, when I got there is was definitely a problem, but we worked it out and I got to the Alano Club just in time to get set up for the meeting. The Workshop in Spokane went great and was good preparation for the Workshops in Yakima and Waitsburg which went very well. All have been well attended and I think most have left the meetings enthused about developing an informed group conscience to bring back to the Pre-Conference Assembly in April. What has been most gratifying to me is the attendance by GSRs and interested members. It is rewarding for me to see a new GSR come into the meeting room with that look of confusion and leave with a smile and a vitality for service that they had not possessed on arrival. Tomorrow (March 15th) I will be in Cashmere for Districts 5, 12, 19 and 23's combined Agenda Workshop and March 30th in Grandview with Mauro for Districts 16, 21 and 24's Workshop. Additionally, time permitting, I am hopeful that I can attend the Combined Committee Quarterly Workshop in Ellensburg on the 29th.

I can finally say that I've been to Alaska! But have only seen a couple miles of it. PRAASA this year was held in Anchorage and it was very busy. Three presentations, committee meetings and panels took up the time that I had "up there". I wish we would have had more WSEA 92 members in attendance but our Area members that were there represented us well. Ginger was there in her capacity as a Non-Trustee Director, Jill chaired the CPC roundtable, Duane was a panel presenter, Mark was the timer for the "What's on you Mind" sharing session and Jeff supported us all. I would like to especially thank Dave Mc our panel 56 Delegate for all of his work in preparing the informational packets for me to provide to the Pacific Region Delegates at the Delegates luncheon in preparation for our bid for the 2011 Additional Forum which will take place at this years GSC. OK...start planning for PRAASA 2009, it'll be a little closer and a little warmer when it meets in Oakland, CA. Our hosting of the Pacific Regional Forum (Aug 29-31) got some good PR as one of the questions during the Delegates "Ask it Basket" was inquiring about information for the Forum and I had the opportunity to share with the entire PRAASA about the new flyer on our Area's website.

Thankfully this last week (3/10-3/14) I had the time to get caught up with some of the paperwork and contacts that I have missed over the last month. If you are in need of anything that I may be helpful with please give me a call and I will do my best to be of service. Until we meet again, take care.

Yours in the Fellowship,
Rad M.
WSEA 92 Delegate Panel 58