On Monday, October 4th, we were alerted to a blog post by Nelson Linden announcing that Linden Lab would be removing the discounts provided to the non-profit and education sims. There were a lot of comments flooding into the blog post, and Twitter was abuzz with Second Lifers with their speculations.
We immediately sent out the following response to the news:
“We are committed to remain a free space for nonprofits, and we hope we can help provide space to newly displaced nonprofit and social benefit orgs who will be forced to move because of the rent-hike.”
As of the writing of this post, there have been over 200 comments posted on Nelson Linden’s blog entry. It is a great sign to have this many concerned Second Life residents, and it will hopefully inspire them all to work together in finding solutions for these concerns.
John Lester, aka Pathfinder, a champion of the nonprofit and education causes in Second Life, wrote a great blog post discussing these changes. I think he summed it up best when he said:
“I’m happy the discount lasted as long as it did. As for the reasoning behind this new decision by Linden Lab, I have no idea and I’m not interested in speculating. What I’m interested in is the future of educators and non-profits in virtual worlds in general.”
We, at the Nonprofit Commons completely agree with his interest in looking to the future for educators and nonprofits.
We hope that you can join us at this Friday’s meeting, where we are having Terrance Linden speak about the migration of the teen grid members over to the main grid. It may be a good chance to ask your questions to a live Linden who has the inside scoop.
Also at the meeting we have social media for Nonprofits expert Amy Sample Ward , to discuss NetSquared and the FACT Social Justice Challenge
We welcome any members of the Second Life community to discuss the situation on our Google Group. Rik Panagibian , from Global Kids , started the discussion here . Feel free to join him and continue the conversation with us.
For those of you that would like to connect with us to discuss this, we can be found on the web at the following places:
Twitter @npsl
Weekly Networking Event: Wharf Ratz, Aloft every Tues., 8PM SLT
Monthly Networking Event: The first Thurs. of every month, at Common Ground , Plush, 5 -7PM SLT
Written by: Layal