Help Project Jason Change America

Imagine if you had one of your family members disappear, then you found out there are many unidentified bodies with no procedures to find out who they are.

One could be your loved one and you would never know it.

Project Jason has worked for years to get better procedures in place to help. Now there is a chance to get this matter some attention.

Change.org is hosting Ideas for Change – Ideas for Change in America is a citizen-driven effort to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and Congress can turn the broad call for “change” across the country into specific policies. You can help by submitting an idea for how you would change America, discussing ideas with others, and/or voting for your favorites. Read More

Project Jason is in fourth place, but they need to be at least in third place to make it to the next round.

I’d like to ask for your help, it only takes two minutes to cast a vote. It’s a very fast process and a worthwhile cause.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/establish_national_protocol_in_missing_and_unidentified_person_cases

Please tell your friends, and your groups. Thank you, NPC!

Written by: Beth J. Bates

Real World Impacts from the Virtual World – Nov. 17

Please save the date on this upcoming event in Second Life on “Real World Impacts from the Virtual World” on learning in virtual worlds on November 17 from 3-5pm. There are several of your non-profit colleagues who will be participating including Techsoup, Native Lands, the Ability Commons, the Texas Obesity Research Center, and Global Kids.
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REAL WORLD IMPACTS FROM THE VIRTUAL WORLD
Sneak Preview of MacArthur Foundation’s new island in Second Life
November 17th 1-5PM PST

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the USC Network Culture Project and Global Kids invite you to a sneak preview of a new Second Life sim that features MacArthur programs and grantees. The event will be held on November 17, 2008 from 1-5pm PST.

Join us to learn about how groups use virtual spaces like Second Life to build real opportunities — preserving native peoples’ cultures, creating accessible spaces for people with disabilities, helping obese people make healthy life choices and teaching underprivileged youth about paleontology and science.

This interactive series of events will take place on Foundations Sim and the neighboring archipelago that includes the Network Culture Project, Justice Commons and Aloft Nonprofit Commons.

NOV. 17 SCHEDULE:
1:00PM PST: Emerging Communities and the Public Good Community Challenge: Challenge awardees share their lessons learned. Hosted by USC Network Culture Project

2:00PM PST: Tours of the Foundations Sim will be led by avatars from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Workshop and discussion on International Development Opportunities hosted by Nonprofit Commons at SLURL

3:00PM PST: Panel Discussion on Using Virtual Worlds for Learning, hosted by RezEd.org

4:00PM PST: “Birds-of-a-feather” Breakout Sessions and Social Mixer hosted by Global Kids

More information will be sent out shortly.

Written by: Beth J. Bates

Common Ground Event – ORANGE is in da house!

Group Notice From: Zinnia Zauber

Please join us Thursday at 7 PM SLT for Common Ground @ Plush Nonprofit Commons!

The Common Ground event is an opportunity for nonprofit folks and people curious about our causes to meet and greet on a weekly basis. There will be networking, dancing, and merriment!

To enjoy unity and a chance to go through your clothing inventory with glee – our color theme is ORANGE!

IM Ricken Flow, our awesome DJ, your song requests!

Next week – YELLOW!

Written by: Beth J. Bates

SL Celebration of Human Rights – Dec. 10

As you may have heard there is going to be a Festival in SL celebrating Human Rights starting 10 December. It´s 60 years since the UN launched the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We have started now to organize the festival. How big it will be depends on how many events, concerts & exhibitions YOU send us.

We hope that you all think this is important and will help us to make this Festival a successful one.

A travel HUD will take people to different locations in SL with exhibitions, concerts and events promoting human rights issues. There will also be a website.

It’s easy to participate:

1. We need a title and brief info about your planned exhibition/concert/event
2. A photo in the format 4×3 (e.g. 200×150)
3. The sim name and coordinates

SL Human Rights Festival Organizing Committee

Please send info to:
Any1 Gynoid (Music events)
Bibi Book, junivers Stockholm or Geni Figaro (other events and exhibitions)

Also contact us if you would like to help in the organizing. We meet every Thursday 2pm at Xanadu West.

We still need people taking care of PR, web and graphics. So far we have info here:
http://witch.shacknet.nu/humanrights/

Written by: Beth J. Bates

Transitions: A Place for Dreams Has a Project in the Knight News Challenge

Transitions: A Place for Dreams has a project in the Knight News Challenge. We’d like you to check it out. We hope you love it and will rate it high for us!

http://tinyurl.com/65ujv2

It’s a great project. Transitions is working with Conexiones, a project I have volunteered with for years – some of the kids in it have overlapped with kids in Floaters. Conex kids made the video in the Floaters office. Essentially we’d work with Conexiones kids to get the Transitions program going for this particular population. Conexiones has an existing budget but things have tightened up for them in terms of the people that the group would like to reach.

Having our friends show up, rate, and comment will demonstrate to Knight that we do understand the technology and how to use it (and that our friends do to.)

Written by: Beth J. Bates

VIRTUAL PRAXIS: A Conference on Women’s Community in Second Life – Nov. 15

Many thanks to Penguin Kuhn for passing along all of the information on Virtual Praxis. There is loads of information here, so enjoy and let Penguin know if you would like to attend.

Here’s the program for our upcoming conference — if you’d like to attend, let me know and I will add you to the group.

To be held on Minerva, the teaching and research space in Second Life maintained by The Department of Women’s Studies, Ohio State University
Saturday, November 15, 2008

As teachers, librarians, artists, health care workers, and as volunteers in the many charitable and activist organizations of Second Life, women are a very visible element of our virtual community. The number of women’s groups and community centers is increasing, supported by an informal network of committed individuals. Those who come here out of curiosity often find themselves involved in these community activities, and those who came for professional reasons often find that their interests have widened and diversified as they have come into contact with Second Life society. Is what we do here just relaxation, a metaphor for what we do in real life, or do our Second Life activities have importance for our home communities and for society in general?

SESSION 1: 9:00 am PST

Virtual Concerts in the Park

Linda Rogers (Second Life: Kate Miranda)
Executive Director
Toronto Philharmonia

There was a time when orchestras wanted to reach out to new audiences, they would go out and play in public parks or shopping malls. These days people are increasingly gathering on the internet and in virtual reality to play and shop. As an arts administrator I have been curious about the possibilities of audience development within Second Life. Who are the musicians that are active in Second Life? Why are they performing there? And who makes up the audience?

For the past year as Kate Miranda, a member of the Cedar/Sea Turtle Community, I have learned about music streaming and assisted in the coordination and promotion of a classical music series in Second Life in a venue that our community built on the basis of a public consultation. Music Island now has an average of about 2000 visitors a month, with weekly live classical concerts streamed from around the world. Concerts have included everything from solo piano to one full symphony concert.

Virtual Praxis: In the Director’s Chair

Phylis Johnson, Ph.D. (SL: Sonicity Fitzroy)
Associate Professor & Interim Chair
Department of Radio-Television
Southern Illinois University

This paper looks at women involved in the creation, production, and distribution of news and entertainment content, and provides a wide scan of their contributions in-world. This content is created for and distributed to radio streams and news and entertainment cable services, and printed in magazines and newspapers in Second Life. The discussion specifically investigates the role of “media” women in SL content creation, and the potential impact on the larger media industry. SL users, internationally, are becoming notable media makers, and HBO featured the first documentary produced inside this digital community in early 2008. This paper attempts to create a portrait of an emerging woman producer who resides in this hall of media mirrors, and subsequently considers how much originality is realistically possible during construction in this parallel mediated universe.

The Women of Chilbo

Chris Collins (Second Life: Fleep Tuque)
Instructional & Research Computing
University of Cincinnati

Chilbo is a community of artists, architects, educators, musicians, parents, hobbyists, students, and people from around the world who share a common vision that our interactions and experiences in virtual worlds can have a positive impact on our real world and our real lives. The Chilbo sim in Second Life is the cultural center of our community, but neither physical nor virtual location limits our ability to collaborate and share resources with one another.

SESSION 2: 12 noon PST

A Village of our Own

Leta Hendricks, MA, MS (Second Life: Tamu Oh)
Librarian
The Ohio State University

“A Village of our Own” is a discussion of womanist resources available in Second Life. The Discussion will include a review of Second Life contacts, landmarks, and other womanist sources.

Gender and Race in Ultra-Conservative Groups in Second Life

Randolph Hollingsworth, Ph.D. (Second Life: Bella Yan)
Assistant Provost
University of Kentucky

My presentation will focus on the role of female avatars in racist right-wing groups in Second Life. Why would a right-wing group choose to use Second Life for communication and outreach – and especially in regards to women? Katherine Blee’s Inside Organized Racism (2002) states that women are heavily sought after by American hate groups, making up half of all new recruits. Second Life is ideal for imagining and practicing gender and race, and ultra-conservative groups have found land, groups and events in Second Life that match their needs. There is a clear connection between some white power, nationalist websites and groups in Second Life. Individuals identified in fascist discussion groups and MySpace profiles sometimes post their Second Life avatar names. Portraits of female avatars participating in right-wing groups in SL will be described. Attendees will be given a party favors bag with hyperlinks to important rightwing groups’ websites and SL landmarks to interesting sites. Attendees may wish to be teleported to one particular site to see and discuss the symbolic structures present. In this session, as Ingeborg Reichle wrote in her 2004 essay “Remaking Eden,” (Cyberfeminism. Next Protocols): “the observer is no longer merely an observer, but rather becomes a participant.” The presenter will facilitate a short discussion on the role of gender and race in rightwing groups in Second Life.

Performing Virtual Women’s Community

Lea Popielinski (Second Life: Lette Ponnier / Laertes Parx)
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Women’s Studies
The Ohio State University

This paper will explore the ways in which the concept of “women” in Second Life shapes the building of women’s homosocial environments within SL through an examination of the concept in terms of gender performance. The facility of constructing an SL avatar that is, by conventional definitions of sex and gender, incongruent with one’s physical body, is enough to place such concepts as “women’s community” in tension. This paper will explore the meaning of the phrase “women’s community” through the concept of performativity as it is understood through the work of Judith Butler. I will argue that the physical sex of SL users is filtered through the SL medium to obligate avatars in presumptively all-female spaces to perform “women’s community.” The creation of “women’s communities” in SL is a practice in referentiality wherein tropes that take their meaning in users’ understanding of women’s community come to be recognized and reiterated in the virtual context, but with a latent awareness that gender performance takes precedence over physical sex in the creation of such spaces. One SL space I particularly wish to examine is the Joyous Harmonious Park, formerly known as the Baths of Sisterhood, a women-only relaxation park with a history that seems to involve several characteristics stereotypically associated with the creation and dissolution of women’s spaces.

SESSION 3: 2 pm PST

Panel discussion: Is Second Life a welcoming space for women?

As educators, business people, community activists, artists and musicians, women make a strong contribution to Second Life society. According to the last published metrics from Linden Lab, 40% of user hours in Second Life are spent by people who self-report as female. While their achievements are to be seen everywhere in our virtual world, the energy and creativity of women in our community may face obstacles. Although no formal studies have been published, there is anecdotal evidence of harassment and intimidation. This panel will be one of the first attempts to assess the problem, beginning with a discussion our own personal experiences.

for more information:
Dr. Sharon Collingwood
collingwood.7@osu.edu

conference website is here:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/collingwood7/minerva/conference.html

Written by: Beth J. Bates

More Great Info on the Halloween Party

Many thanks to Anika for sharing the full scoop on the Halloween party…

The Halloween Party on October 25th was great (see the BLOG)! We had a dance party on NPC2 from 4 – 9 pm with lots of NPCers as well as new visitors attending and Ricken as DJ (ty Ricken!). During that time there was trick or treating on both sims…while there was a greater visitor flow on NPC2 due to the attraction of the dance and presence of avatars, we had visitors on NPC1 as well. The dance was followed by 3 free movies at NPC1 at 9 pm SLT (Matrix, Evil Dead and Rocky Horror). There were folks watching all 3 movies in different locations on NPC1. Individual nonprofits received donations from trick or treating as well as the NPC as a group (via GCN) having recieved $1200L in donations from viewers. The biggest benefit was promotion of NPC & nonprofits. However, driving people to the nonprofit offices, increasing visitor awareness, receiving individual NP donations, and just plain *learning how to hold an event like that* (with original decor, streaming movies – with some synched and some not – and trick or treating) and do all the related marketing were additional benefits.

Thanks to the volunteers did the leg work and marketing (Mercedes Ochs and Ronnie Rhode), donated and set up all the decorations (Mel Schaller), helped with the movie setup & test (Parhelion Palou and Ronnie Rhode), and many others who helped in the planning (Ethelred, Zinnia, Mani, Nany, Lore, Ricken and others).

Here are the participating nonprofits, whose involvement and presence we greatly appreciate in making this a event a success:

NPC2: Bridges for Women, CVM, Garden for the Missing, GCN, Great Strides, Kiva, Life Learning Center, National Council, NSW Animal Rescue, Project Jason, SHI, Techsoup and Virtual Ability.

NPC1: BEF, cChaos, Neenah Historical Soceity, SL Democide Museum, STI Universal Child and Virtual Native Lands.

Also, thanks for Techsoup and Great Strides for donating so we could rent/buy the movies! FYI…one movie was a rental and expired (Rocky Horror), but the others are permanent purchases (Matrix and Evil Dead), so we can hold additional movie nights on those existing movies, should folks desire that in the future.

Many thanks to a wonderful collaborative effort!

I forgot to mention that Mel’s original Halloween decorations are for sale (we had Glitter’s OK because they are not being sold for profit), and the proceeds (after costs) will be donated to NPC nonprofits.
Sales were slow at first, but she has received $1170 so far, so a large portion of that coming back into NPC.

Again, we are learning, but there is potential here….:)

Thanks, Mel!

Anika 🙂

Written by: Beth J. Bates

NPC Halloween Party – A Howling Success!

October 25 hosted all sorts of ghouls, goblins and other odd entities at the NPC Halloween party. DJ Ricken Flow rocked the dance floor while party goers went trick-or-treating from office to office. All in attendance had a devilishly delightful time and are looking forward to the next big NPC event. Many thanks to everyone who helped make this event a huge success!

Written by: Beth J. Bates