Talking Point Notes for Bluewave Ogee’s Brief Talk on Friday July 20 at Weekly Meeting of the Nonprofit Commons:
“Thanks, Everyone, for letting me talk a little about what’s still an
emerging effort with our group, the Non-Profit Global Network (NPGN). Like many of you, it’s taking longer than anticipated! 🙂
In retrospect, the easy part (ha!) was setting up the space, although it has taken some time, and then summer happened. And we had a great booth with other non-profits at the Best Practices in Education in SL Conference (a terrific 24-hour conference that we were proud to be a part of!).
There are 2 most important projects in the pipeline. The first is
connecting our presence here with some of the organizations
participating in the global “Design for the Other 90%” effort.
Currently there is an amazing exhibit of award-winning
designs-for-the-people at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. http://other.cooperhewitt.org/
These are designers working in relationship with global/local
development efforts, so it’s a natural fit for many of them to begin working in SL where they can use this virtual world environment to design, build, test, and most importantly, join in co-present conversation with their partners from around the world….at a fraction of the cost. That connection with us is in the early stages.
More importantly and closer to fruition is connecting our presence
here with the global Development Gateway Foundation, office in
Washington D.C.. DevGateway is one of the largest and most active on-line portals for development practitioners around the world to share and exchange their latest news, information, and best practices on an almost daily basis from around the world! They have active participants from 336 countries! http://www.developmentgateway.org/
We have been in conversations with them now for over 2 months, and I am presenting our SL Non-Profit Global Network to them on July 31 in Washington.
They have 673 active blogs and online communities from around the world — so the vision here is no small thing! Critically, the fact that many of the local practitioner groups have Internet access and are online through the DevGateway portal means a significant number of them will be able to make a transition into SL with existing resources.
Interestingly, it’s building real world credibility that takes the
most time, largely because you find yourself not only describing the vision of the group, but you have to first describe what SL is!
“Sooo….Second Life is…well… joining a virtual conversation, a
virtual world environment…”. And you see their eyes start to glaze over…:-)
The incredible machinima movies now available filmed in SL are
helping a lot to communicate a sense of the breadth and potential of creating a presence and, more importantly, a “site for interactions” in SL/RL. If you’re not already, I encourage you to use them. The old “show-and-tell” method is very effective. 🙂
Written by: kanter