The early beginning of Staying Cyber was in January 1997
January 16, 1997 is the earliest record I have of the email meeting. The actual first “meeting” was an email from me to Thomas L., who I sponsored, that I cc to my sponsor, Joe H. That was probably the first week of January. Though it may have been earlier, it certainly was not later.This email is from Judy K. to Tim V. Either Thomas L.or I made the original suggestion for a regular email meeting. Judy K came up with the name “Staying Cyber” after a couple of other traditional name proposals were floated.
07:08 AM 1/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I'd love to have a serious Email meeting. May I suggest a few guidelines?
>1. Everyone "signs in" so we all have each other's address and get all mail
simultaneously.
>2. We designate a leader for the week who chooses the topic.
>Alphabetical
order on the >Enail listings would be simplest.
>3. Leader writes on topic by Sunday night.
>4. Everyone who wants to "speak" replies by Wednesday
>5. Comments on the comments by Friday.
>6. Leader officially designates the next week's leader on Friday.
You can see from this next email that not everything went smoothly
Author: Judy K at Internet
Date: 4/1/97 11:08 AM
I'm trying to find a volunteer to lead this week's Staying Cyber -- but have not been able to ...yet. Do I have a volunteer? Don't all speak at once, but Email me so we don't have 2 leaders at once. JD and I are frustrated that this meeting's not running smoothly. Do you all want to continue with it?
Barry L joins Staying Cyber…
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 08:48:59 -0500
From: Barry L
To: Tim V
Subject: Online aa meeting
Tim,
Jim J told me about your little email meetings,and I would like to join in, Is the only requirement for membership a desire to stop drinking,and an email account? I have both. Please let me know what the deal is.
Barry L
Then Tim G proposed…
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 09:34:28 -0400
From: tg
Subject: Meeting Option
To: xxxx@ptd.net
Cc: trg
Tim,
With all of the problems people seem to be having with sending mail to everyone on the list, duplicate messages, missing messages, scheduling leaders, knowing who the leader is, new members being added (eventually losing members), etc., I've been thinking about a different option for the "format" of the meeting.
I've talked to my friend Bart who I'm working part time for (Access OnLine) and there is a way that we could set up a private "Bulletin Board" on his server to be accessed through the Internet/WWW.
Users would need a login and password to get in (for security), which we could make global (everyone uses the same). It could be "drbob" and "billw" or something like that (keeping it simple). After entering, members can read messages posted by other members and post there own message as well. There could be a page for the guidelines so anyone could view them whenever they want as well as posting the current topic and leader, a schedule for leaders, member listing w/e-mail address, etc.
New members could just be given the URL and password for access to the meeting BB, then we could post an announcement of new members.
I am of course assuming that everyone has Internet access, which is most likely, but we would have to take a survey. As long as we keep it small there would be no charge, which would be no problem because I could go in and clean it up when necessary. I figure we could keep the current week's meeting and maybe the previous week's meeting available and I could go in every week and delete the old stuff.
Let me know what you think and if you want to try it we could ask everybody, have a vote or whatever is necessary. I would still have to make sure it's definitely O.K. with Bart because we've only talked briefly about it. I didn't want to go any further if you're not interested at all.
You would of course be contributing or at least observing (your choice) of the construction of this thing, nothing to be done/added without your approval. I know that you started this thing and I'm not looking to take that away from you. Barry L. also does professional website design and I know if the three of us work as a team that we could put something really cool together.
Let me know,
Tim
One month later…
From - xxx@ xxx
Tue May 13 11:18:35 1997
To: 25 members on email at this time …addresses deleted
Subject: Meeting relocation.
Dear Staying Cyberites,
Our meeting this coming week will be at the test site"www.1acc.com/meeting". (that's a one) J.D. is scheduled to lead.
Anyone has until this Friday, May 16th, to test the web site, make suggestions, comments and complaints.
After Friday, please refrain from using the site, other than viewing, until J.D. has a chance to post his topic. J.D. has from Sunday noon (or whenever the site is cleared) until Monday noon EDT to post his topic. If no topic appears, any member may "chair the meeting" on a first come basis.
There will be some guidlines available on the site and ample opportunity for discussion about group conscious issues out side the meeting discussion. For now, please keep comments in the meeting to the topic, and sign with first name and last initial. Please do not use last names or email addresses, we are concerned about the 11th tradition.
For now this site is still limited to our group, and cannot be reachedthrough general search engines.
I'm looking forward to some great sober cybriety:-)
Many blessings, Tim V.
We didn’t all agree this was the best idea…
Subject: Email meeting
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 16:35:19 +0200
Well Hello Folks,
So of us who liked the personal touch of the " Staying Cyber " email meeting have been talking about continuing with that format as well as posting on that great new website. Right now there are four of us and I was asked to send out this email to see if any of the others might still want to continue. i am going away for the long week-end and when I get back I will inform those interested if we seem to have enough interest to maintainthe email thing.
In fellowship
J.D.
We struggled to work the program in the new medium…
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 15:03:50 –0700
From: "Tim G"
Subject: Re: True feelings.
Timothy V wrote:
>
> Tim G
>
> The true feelings are those expressed in the second closing. I feel
> hurt, confused and angry by what I'm getting via email from you re:
> Staying Cyber. When I reviewed the first email I decided that that
> closing, while expressing my anger, did not convey my feelings
> accurately. Hence, I edited it, but mistakenly sent the first anyway.
> Please accept my 10th step.
>
> Sorry, Tim
I appologize as well. I've felt exactly the same way about your messages to me. This is crazy. I will call you tonight so that we can talk instead of this back and forth email.
Tim G
These emails are selected from 120 pages of emails I have saved on 3.5”disk. I have another disk with the entire text from the May 18 and Jun 1, 1997 meetings. While this gives some insight into the chronology and evolution of Staying Cyber, it misses entirely the great work done by Barry L and Tim G between April 14th and May 15th to create this web site, and also, their loyal, sometimes thankless service since then.
Staying Cyber arrived on the World Wide Web in October 1997