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Early attempts

•Bulletin boards/modems/user groups•AOL (email, boards, chat)•alt. groups (alt.recovery.na, etc.)•NArchive (first real history site) •Personal websites•Wsoinc.com late 1995

• Home page, 3 other pages, 2 email addresses (NAStevel@aol.com and LoriWSO@aol.com)

•NA-L and NA-Admin•MAGNAWS

Today

•Bulletin boards (some general, some specific orientation) •Online chat rooms, electronic meetings•Main NA website – www.na.org (evolved steadily since 1998)•Numerous local service committee websites•Streaming audio sites offering NA recovery messages•Multimedia offerings: PSAs, Flash presentations, video•Facebook, Twitter, etc. •Outside enterprises offering one-stop recovery community•Etc., etc. (from the time this presentation was developed, there are probably a number of new efforts)

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Challenges

Strive towards Vision Statement •Cultural and linguistic diversity - map•Maintain fellowship ownership of recovery literature and logos (FIPT)•Anonymity•Sharing local experience/resources (therapeutic value…)•Database (by the time the information is entered, it has changed)•Volume of info vs. user-friendliness (what makes sense to each audience)•Cannot please everyone all the time—prioritization/resources

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NA service committee website considerations(in planning for a local website – PRHB Chapter 10 and Resources)

•Who is your audience? – NA members – General public– Professionals/referrers – Service committee members

•Size and scope?– Is the site aimed at all audiences or select ones– Content aimed at audience(s)– Design– Usability

•Hosting

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NA service committee website challenges(generally agreed)

•What are normal challenges? – Human (who will develop and maintain website, training/mentoring)– Accountability (who has oversight)– Updates (how often is the information checked and updated)– How does your audience find your website (search)– Traditions (anonymity, shared domain, opinions on boards, referrals, etc.)– NA-speak (does your audience understand the language and idioms)

•Other challenges– Bulletin boards/chat rooms (monitoring, responding)– Service committee records (privacy, anonymity)– Linkages (to other websites, maps, other services)

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Other challenges facing NA online

•Popular services such as Facebook and Twitter– Mixing personal and business lives online– Anonymity issues (pictures, privacy, etc.)

•Miscellaneous– Bulletin boards – private or public browsing?– Webinars – considerable knowledge and training needed to make it truly

interactive– Have and have-nots (those with computers and those without) – how do

you keep a level playing field at the local level?– Streaming media and anonymity

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Other challenges facing NA online•Security (twice as much malicious code is being developed as legitimate software)

– Personal computers• Malware – software meant to secretly access a computer without the

owner’s informed consent; e.g. virii, worms, phishing (identity theft), trojan horses, scareware, spyware, rootkits

– Websites (over 1,000,000 websites infected in 2010)• Makes no difference whether it is Linux or Windows; e.g. between June

7-9, 2010, over 110,000 websites running Windows were infected• Types

– SQL-injection – any website that is running a database can be impacted, unless host has taken strong security precautions.

– Cross-site scripting – java script hidden in links leads to potentially wide variety of actions from redirection to installing rootkits and/or trojans, silently.

– HTML-injection – many web editors have vulnerabilities that leave them open to be hacked

• Possible results: redirection, used for spamming, being listed as hosting malware, being blocked, losing website.

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Q & AQ & A

What’s next

•10 min break

•NA in the Digital Age, Part Two

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Panel discussion

“What benefits/dangers do you

foresee for NA in the digital

age?”

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Q & AQ & A