Author: Nonprofit Commons

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Parcels of Land

Tonight Frank gave a group of us a turorial on how to manage the land in our little community. Having never thought about what goes into managing a sim before, I was impressed by how well thought out the system actually is. I’ll probably start out by using WESTAF as a guinea pig to reset the name and so forth, but once I’ve got it under my belt let me know if you, a tenant, needs help. I’m happy to see what I can do for you.

Written by: Creech

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We’re Getting Closer!

We had a brief meeting on Wednesday about the Nonprofit Commons Space and Tuesday Gutierrez/SaveGuimaras Wind will be the in-world liaison. Stay tuned for more news …

Written by: kanter

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How do I find non-profits in SL?

I often get asked "How do you find out what non-profits are active in Second Life?" There is an enormous variety of non-profit, socially conscious, humanitarian and activist actions going on every day, but they are not always easy to find. Given the wide range of activities, there is not one definitive list of non-profits available as far as I know. That's how big Second Life is.

Here are some suggestions of where to start though:

  • Get the TechSoup Non-profit HUD (Heads Up Display): Put on this handy in-world device and you can do your own self-guided tour of the dozens of non-profits that have provided information to TechSoup. This is not comprehensive… yet. But it's definitely a good way to get a snapshot of what's being done out there. You can find it at the TechSoup space on Info Island (teleport SLURL.)
  • Use the SL Event Search function: I like the web version, versus the in-world one. The category "Charity/Support Group" is particularly helpful at narrowing the hundreds of events going on each day.
  • Join the Eventful Group "SL Non-profit Events": I created a group on the calendar website eventful.com that aggregates non-profit events going on in-world. The advantage of eventful groups is that you can subscribe to it as an RSS feed, and download the events to your own Google or iCal or Outlook calendar.
  • Join the SL Non-Profit Email List: This is kind of hard to find on the SL website, but there is a listserv for non-profits active in SL. You can ask questions on the list to others who have year's of experience and tons of non-profit contacts in SL.

I'm sure I've forgotten a few other resources for finding out about non-profits in SL. But these are good places to begin.

Written by: rikomatic

Posted on

More on Uptime and Nonprofits

Greg left a note mentioning the free monitoring service, Monastic. It doesn't have as much functionality as SiteUpTime.com, but you can monitor 100 sites. If all you are doing is trying to track when your site(s) are down then it seems like this might be a better solution than SiteUpTime. So, as an experiment I have both monitoring systems monitoring the Tech Soup in Second Life site. If I have any revelations, I'll share.

Powered by

Written by: Creech

Posted on

SL Non-Profits in Running for $100K in Project support from NetSquared

"Net2logo"The NetSquared conference is set for May 29-30 in San Jose, and they are looking to fund 20 new tech
projects for social good. 150 projects were submitted to their competition, competing for $100,000 cash from the NetSquared Innovation Fund. They are inviting people to vote for their favorite nominated projects between April 9-14.

There are a number of SL-related proposals on the table including:

So stop on by NetSquared and vote for your favorite tech project, SL-related or otherwise.

Written by: rikomatic

Posted on

Uptime and Nonprofits

Recently I had an Skype message from Susan, our "nonprofit administrator herder" for the Nonprofits in Second Life project. I have to assume that she was posting to the site, or perhaps reading some recent content. In any case, she IMed me because the site was down. I'm acting as the Web master, so this made good sense. I probed a little bit and came to the conclusion that the server was completely unresponsive.

I sent a quick note to our very good friends at Social*Signal who have generously donated the server space. It turned out that it was a system-wide issue with the hosting company that they work with.

So how can a nonprofit track uptime/downtime of sites they run? Obviously you can't sit and watch your site all the time. You can use software that sends a request to your server every so often and the software waits for a response from the server–no response means the site is probably down. If you don't have the skill set to set up this kind of monitoring software, there is a free or nearly free solution out there–http://www.siteuptime.com. It takes five minutes to set up and it will start monitoring your site immediately. If you only have one site to monitor, it is free. Three sites cost $5/month. Six sites cost $10/month.

Site uptime is now enabled for the NPSL site. I get an email when the site goes down, when it comes back up, and a report each month on how much time was offline.

Written by: Creech

Posted on

Notes from March 30th meeting

Notes from March 30th meeting

Present:
• Frank Foley
• SaveGuimaras Wind
• Creech Antwerp
• Angela Ge
• Johnny Austin
• In Kenzo
• Annie Octavia
• Ozma Malibu
• Be Janus
• Docent Alturas
• Beth Kavka
• Xin Revolution
• Dana Childs
• RiverSong Garden
• Glitteractica Cookie

Website is up! If you want to blog on the site, contact Creech Antwerp and he will help you start blogging at: http://secondlife.techsoup.org/ Comments are open for all users, so if you want to start commenting on blog entries, please do so!

Also, tag your own stuff and anything you stumble upon on the web that is related to nonprofits in SL at w/ NPSL tag.

If you don’t know what tagging is, here is an article on ten tips for effective tagging: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/page5508

Our group’s video! Big Kudos go to Frank Foley for getting the first version of our video together in like 24 hours! You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9KvaIrzS8k
It is also on Dogooder.tv: http://www.dogooder.tv/Orgs/techsoup/?MovieID=280 and Creech loaded it up on the http://secondlife.techsoup.org/ site too! This video is being enjoyed at NTC by many.

Nonprofit Commons Update:

Save G is going to be our sim mgr. She will be the tenant liaison and will be the point of contact for our tenants. Thanks Save G!

New orgs who are interested in being a part of the commons should still email me at susan@techsoup.org

Annie Octavia and Save G are mapping out the commons and helping to assign spaces to orgs. We will do our best to accommodate all requests.

If you want a new poster for the NPC, please IM Johnny Austin or Frank Foley.

All avatar hands needed for bug testing. If you see bugs, please email them to Frank Foley (tom.maroney@gmail.com) [9:08] Frank Foley: and just be sure to send me coords so i can find the prob.

You: and ozma is our volunteer manager, and she will contact all volunteers about meetings and tasks that need doing.

[9:10] Frank Foley: if you are listed as a volunteer in the NPC group, i took all permissions way down in short term
[9:10] Frank Foley: but if you need permssions in the sim once we move in there, let me know
[9:10] Frank Foley: i just want to make sure no buildings get returned or screwed upl

Sim is being transferred over to us, Frank will let you all know update at today’s meeting.
anyone who sees anomalies on sim, email frank

Wiki-
Angela Ge is still working on transporting the data to the new wiki, and she will send us an update when she is ready to do so. From last mtg: [9:25] Angela Ge: just need clarification on design at a later stage, till then i will port over content which should take a max of 2 days at the most.. the wiki install is complete, am having issues with ssh/ftp-ing to the site to complete it.. [9:27] Angela Ge: 1st of april at the latest. Thanks, Ang!

[9:40] SaveGuimaras Wind: does the website have a link to the wiki page?
[9:40] Angela Ge smiles
[9:41] You: it will when ang launches it

MOUs

[9:16] You: yes, i will send around a confirmed list of residents to you all
[9:16] You: maybe i will work with annie to put it in a google doc?

TechSoup Space: [9:52] Ozma Malibu: billboard is changed (Thanks!!)

9:52] Ozma Malibu: one issue: it is supposed to be a landmark giver – no clue how to do that yet
[9:52] Ozma Malibu: so it links to the website instead
[9:52] You: frank knows that
[9:52] You: email him
[9:53] You: he will tell u how]
[9:53] Ozma Malibu: I started changing the photo album as well, not finished yet but old
[9:56] In Kenzo: you can set your use there. i have tons of arhives not on the web
[9:57] In Kenzo: so if you're looking for somethign in particular that you can't find, let me know, i shoot religiously
[9:57] Beth Kavka: me toopics are gone, some new ones up but not captioned
[9:53] Ozma Malibu: ok, will email frank

[9:58] You: ervyopne tag your photos NPSL
[9:58] You: and leave them public

Update from InKenzo:

[10:04] In Kenzo: we have a new island! that's the first fun bit.
[10:04] You: docent, defintiely in the plan
[10:05] In Kenzo: good visionary artists, educational groups and dance/music projects coming together for a fun AMO Island, along with a health and nutrition FOOD island that will host Second Harvest inworld.
[10:05] In Kenzo: we have a few projects coming up on the teen grid, i've been meeting with barry @ Global Kids on how to pave the best path for nonprofits working with teens.
[10:06] Docent Alturas: Maybe invite public artists to display works.
[10:06] SaveGuimaras Wind: yes! public artists
[10:06] In Kenzo: definitely bring in artists here!
[10:06] SaveGuimaras Wind: yoohoo
[10:06] In Kenzo: i brought dancoyote to our island to install, along with alex grey (a RL artist)
[10:06] In Kenzo: to help us start our new island with images that inspire us.
[10:06] You: whoopie
[10:07] In Kenzo: i have an inworld better world scout friend who does installations on connectivity, and there's a handful of SL artists who have amazing works to install if you ping them.
[10:07] SaveGuimaras Wind: or what we can do is ask all the NPC tenants to come up with their public art side by side with artists

And we ended with a very fun tour of the NPC and a photoshoot!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/sets/72157600036898489/

See you all next Friday. We will be in sessions here at NTC, so Beth and I won’t be able to attend today’s meeting, but it will be led by Frank. So go there! We may try to pop in at the end (9am is ending time today)

Written by: Glitteractica_Cookie