Information we need to list your meeting

If you run an AA meeting, it’s important to keep the information about the meeting up to date. It’s the responsibility of each AA group to let us know about new meetings and changes to existing meetings. Also it’s important to let us know if the meeting closes down.

To tell us about changes to your meeting, see this page – Report Changes to the Meetings List

What information do we need about your meeting?

This page describes the various information shown in the meetings list.

Information shown on In-Person Meetings

(1) Meeting Name

This is the name of the meeting and must be unique.

It is often just the name of the suburb or town plus the day of the week. Or can be some other AA related name chosen by the group.

It should never include the name of the venue or the institution where the meeting is held. Doing that could imply affiliation with or endorsement by an outside enterprise. See AA Tradition Six.

Generic names like “AA Steps Meeting” or “Keep It Simple” might conflict with other meetings elsewhere in Australia. So, in these cases, the town or suburb is added to the name to make it unique.

For consistency across the site, and to make it easier for users to locate a meeting they are looking for, we always include the Day of the Week as part of the name as well.

(2) Venue Name

This is the name of the building where the meeting is held.

Each venue should be know by a single unique name. i.e. It would be confusing if one meeting had the venue name as ‘Carlton Community Centre’ and another meeting in the same venue called it the ‘Parmerston St Community Centre Carlton’ if it’s actually the same building. So, if you are adding a new meeting, and you know there are already other AA meetings in that venue, be sure to use same venue name as currently used by other meetings.

If the name of the venue is a generic and could appear in other towns/suburbs, you should include the suburb or town name as well. e.g. Don’t just put “St Mary’s Church Hall” or “Community Centre”. Instead put “St Mary’s Church Hall Redcliffe” or “Community Centre North Curl Curl“.

It’s good practice to search on Google maps to see how the venue is named there. Using the exact same name as it appears in Google maps is very helpful when people are using their phones or navigation devices to find your meeting.

(3) Venue Address

Our software uses Google maps to verify the address you give us for the venue. We want the address to match the address exactly the address newcomer will see when using a phone or device to navigate to your meeting.

So, again, it’s good practice to check your meetings address by searching on Google maps and making sure they match.

(4) Venue Notes _^(optional)

You can (optionally) add extra information about the venue to help members find your meeting.

** Note: If you change the or add to the Venue Notes on one meeting, that same note will appear on every other meeting at that venue.

(5) Meeting Day / Meeting Start Time / Meeting End Time

Day of the week for the meeting. If the meeting runs on many days, there must be a separate meeting listed for each of those days.

Start Time of the meeting. This should be the starting time of the actual meeting, not the time the doors open for socialising beforehand. If members can arrive earlier, you might want add a note to the (7) Meetings Note section to indicate this e.g. “Doors open at 6:30pm for coffee and a chat. Meeting starts at 7:00pm”. It this example, the Start Time for the meeting would be set to 7:00pm.

End Time of the meeting. Listing the end time as well as the start time helps members to plan their day and to know when to organise transport after the meeting.

The timezone for the meeting is automatically determined by the location based on (3) Venue Address.

(6) Meeting Type flags _^(optional)

The meeting type flags tell members something about the meeting.

When searching for meetings, users can filter their search by meeting type. This is useful for when a member is looking for a particular type of meeting or amenity.

You can choose any number of these flags.

When the “Closed (alcoholics only)” type flag is set, they system automatically adds a note to your meeting that says:

Closed meetings are for A.A. members only, or for those who have a drinking problem and “have a desire to stop drinking.”

When the “Open” type flag is set, they system automatically adds a note to your meeting that says:

Open meetings are available to anyone interested in Alcoholics Anonymous’ program of recovery from alcoholism. Nonalcoholics may attend open meetings as observers.

(7) Meeting notes _^(optional)

This gives more information about the meeting and the meeting format.

Be brief. A wall of text here is not helpful. Keep Tradition Eleven in mind – the notes should be about attraction, not promotion.

(8) Group Name _^(optional)

The Group Name is optional.

This is especially useful where the Groups holds multiple meetings per week. The Group name and the Group Notes are shared across all the meetings that belong to the same Group Conscience.

(9) Group Notes _^(optional)

Notes about the group.

When a group has multiple meeting across the week, the Group Notes are shown on each meeting. This is useful when, for example, there is a change to the contact for the meeting. It only needs to be changed once and this is reflected across all the associated meetings.

Group contact details can be added here and/or notes relevant to the group. e.g. “We hold a Group Conscience meeting on the last Friday of each month.”

(10) “Group Email” button _^(optional)

The Group can optionally add an publicly available email address. This is very useful when members want to contact the group. We encourage all groups to have an email address we can share publicly.

Make sure that the email address you supply does not include the surname of an AA member. (Refer to Tradition Eleven on anonymity.)

This button takes the user to their email app and initiates an email to the group.

(11) “Group Phone” button _^(optional)

The Group can optionally add an publicly available phone number. This is very useful when members want to contact the group. We encourage all groups to nominate a phone number we can share publicly.

If supplying a personal phone number, please ensure that the member is aware their number is being published on the open web and is available to everyone worldwide. Their full name won’t be published, but they should be aware of the privacy implications of having their phone number published.

This button opens the user’s phone app to call the group.

Other information and buttons shown

(12) Meeting name tag

This is automatically added to the end of the meeting. It is one or more of these:

• In-person
• In-person and Online
• Online
• Inactive
• Women
• Men

(13) Next Meeting Date and Time

The date and time of the next meeting shown here is automatically calculated by the system.

(14) Scheduled start countdown

When the meeting is due to start in 24 hours, a countdown to the scheduled start time is displayed. This may help a user when planning to get to the meeting. It is especially useful for Online meetings. (See Online meetings section below.)

(15) Get Directions Button

This button takes the user to google maps to help them navigate to the meeting. To ensure this is accurate, always supply us with the precise venue name and the address of the venue as it appears in Google. (Good idea to check this yourself. Google the name of your venue and check that it matches up.)

(16) “See all details and request changes” button

This button takes the user to a single page showing the meetings details and a map to the meeting.

At the bottom left of the page is a form that can be filled out to request a change to the listing for the meeting. See the “Report a changes to the meeting list” page.

Information required for Online Meetings

For Online Meetings, all the information above is relevant, except for Venue name (2), Address (3), (4) Venue notes and (11) Directions button.

For Online Meetings, buttons and information about how to connect to the online meeting are shown in the left column instead of venue information.

Note that Hybrid Meetings (those that are both In Person and Online) include the Venue details (2), (3), (4) & (11) as well as the online connection details (17), (18), (19), (20), (21) & (22).

(17) “Join with {platform}” button

This button is a link to the url of your online meeting.

If your meeting is via zoom, you can copy the url from Zoom invitation (available within the zoom app) and send that to us.

The zoom link looks something like this if it has the passcode embedded:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6227932717?pwd=OWVQdjVodiswc1F0UHZiUWtkRlZGdz09

Or like this if the passcode is not embedded:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6227932717

When telling us about changes to your zoom meeting, it’s best to copy and paste the whole of the zoom meeting invitation verbatim into the ‘Request to this listing’ you fill out. That way we will have all the information we need to set up the link to your meeting correctly.

For information about how to set up and host an AA Zoom meeting, see the Zoom Guide for AA website

If your online meeting is on a platform other that Zoom, the system can cater for that as well.

This is the list of platforms the system caters for. Others can be added on request.

• Bluejeans – bluejeans.com
• Discord – discord.gg
• Dialpad – meetings . dialpad . com
• Free Conference – freeconference.com
• FreeConferenceCall – freeconferencecall.com
• GoTo – goto.com, gotomeet.com, gotomeeting.com
• Google Hangouts – meet.google.com
• Jitsi – meet.jit.si, vgood.stream
• Paltalk – paltalk.com
• Skype – skype.com
• WebEx – webex.com
• Zoho – zoho.com
• Zoom – zoom.us

(18) Online Meeting joining notes

This is the written information about how a user can connect to your meeting.

For a zoom meeting, this is usually the Zoom meeting ID and the passcode (if there is one).

To deter zoom bombers, some groups decide not to publish the passcode. Instead they supply an alternative way of getting the passcode for the meeting via email or txt.

See this “Does my meeting need a passcode?” page to help you decide whether to use a passcode on your meeting or not.

(19) “Join by Phone” button

If your meeting can be joined by phone to hear the audio, this is the dial number required to connect.

It may be just the phone number, or it may include all the button presses needed to get straight into the meeting via phone.

(20) Join Meeting by Phone Notes

This is a text description of how to join the audio meeting.

It should include the phone number and any access codes or passwords required.

(21) Meeting Origin – Location Name

This is the name given for the nominated location of the meeting.

This is usually “Online from {suburb or town}” or “Via phone from {suburb or town}”.

(22) Meeting Origin – Location Address

This is the location nominated as the the place where the online meeting originates.

** Important note: This location is always necessary as it determines the timezone used to adjust for daylight savings.

The address nominated is usually an Australian town, city or suburb.

The address should never be an actual street address. It is just town or suburb, the state and the postcode.

Our policy is to only list meetings where the group originated in Australia. We do not list meetings that originated in other countries.

It is possible for an Australian Group to nominate a city outside Australia as their location. The Group might do this catering for international members and want to follow a different daylight savings timezone. e.g. An Australian Group might nominate London as their location so that the meeting follows British daylight savings rules rather than Australian daylight savings rules.

Our lists are maintained by volunteers, so we don’t have the capacity to run an international meetings directory. To find international online meetings, the front page of the meetings website provides a link to the International Online Meetings page published by the AA-Intergroup.

(23) Next Meeting Date and Time for online meetings

The system calculates the time and date of the next meeting. This is based on the timezone of the town/suburb nominated in (20) Location Address above.

If the meeting is due to start within the next 24 hours, a countdown is shown on the end. See (14) above.

In the case of Online meetings, if the user viewing the list is in a different timezone, this date and time is re-calculated and displayed according to the users time zone.

When a next meeting time has been re-calculated for the users timezone, it appears in Purple instead of grey.

For example, when a user in Perth looks at the list, all the Eastern State meeting times are converted and displayed in AWST time.

And when a user in the Eastern States views the list of meetings, they see the times from WA, SA and NT converted to AEST, (or AEDT during daylight savings months).

(24) Help button for Zoom

This button appears for Zoom meetings only. When clicked, a popup window gives the user some simple instructions on how to connect. It also gives the user a link to the “How to attend a Zoom meeting online” page where they can find more information.

(25) Help button for Audio connection to Zoom

This button appears for Zoom meetings where they have been set up to allow phone access to the audio of the meeting. When clicked, a popup window gives the user some simple instructions on how to connect. It also gives the user a link to the “How to attend a Zoom meeting from a phone” page where they can find more information.