On this, the 25th Anniversary of the 1995 AA International Convention in San Diego, CA I offer to you my complete box set of digitized tapes and scans of same that I purchased at the San Diego, CA AA International?convention 25 years ago.
I share with you the convention as I experienced it, through the recordings of many of the events that I attended. Of particular note is "AA Meetings and Computer Networking" which discusses early AA online history (yes there WAS online AA before "Zoom" ha!) and I am honored to be able to say that I was a big part of same. I was a member of many of those early online groups and started participating in the late 1980's (and I still am a member of them all in my heart regardless of whether or not they have faded into AA history). I was involved going all the way back to Fidonet, IRC, Usenet, GEnie, Compuserve, AOL, ICQ, The Source, Dow Jones, e-mail (of course), phone, text, instant messengers?and chat apps? and MANY other platforms and ways that the AA message was already being carried digitally. I can honestly say that I have been working AA in parallel, both online and in-person, my entire sobriety.?
And yes, going?forward I will be bringing much more forward from those days, for those here who might be interested in the evolution? of what I call "Digital AA".
But today is a celebration. We are at the very moment, as I write this, 25 years ago that the "Opening Big Meeting" of the 1995 Convention was taking place. What an incredible experience! But don't take my word for it, listen to it yourself, as it is included in this box set of my experiences.
It is a true honor to be able to share these memories with you. This box set, by the way, was one of the only archive pieces to survive a house fire my wife and I endured on February 6, 2017. Most of my archives were reduced to ash, melted plastic and rubble. The fire broke out while we are at an AA meeting, no less. But I have since been able to replace many things anyway and my digital archives DID survive so it is what it is. But somehow? This box set was sitting? in a pile of ash, in excellent condition. I found it in the pile on my very last spot-check pass through the pile of ashes, somehow?protected and unharmed even tough literally everything around it on all sides was totally destroyed. A God shot, perhaps? Well, you certainly would not convince me otherwise.
The box set survived and now, 25 years later, these previously unavailable?recordings are now available?to the world again. I hope you enjoy them.
Technical notes: Any anomalies in the recordings are technical limitations of the original recordings. I assure you, the utmost care has been taken in transferring these old tapes. Anything strange you may hear is on the tape itself and will clear up. Just stick with it!
I offer this release, now hosted and sponsored by AAHL on groups.io, as a gift to everyone in "AA Everywhere - Anywhere" that would like to experience the convention as I have experienced it, by attending many of the same meetings and workshops that I did a quarter of a century ago. Presented by AAHL as a gift of love and service to all. These recordings must NEVER be charged for but may be freely shared. Please link back to AAHL or at least mention us if you do, though. We're trying to be of service to historians and archivists, everywhere, anywhere. Yours In Service, Thom R. Current AAHL Moderator at groups.io
For those who would like to download this as a complete "Zip archive", I will also upload it separately in that format, as one file.?
Enjoy, as we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the San Diego, CA International Convention-- the largest AA convention? ever to be held so far, together.?
Oh and PLEASE, if you attended the convention, please share anything you may have from? it, be it memories, pictures, documents (still looking vor the program for it), in the thread that has been started.
Enjoy!
In Love and Service,
Thom R.
Current Moderator, AAHL on groups.io
The following files have been uploaded to the Files area of the [email protected] group.
By: Thom R.
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