Global Kids Streaming Live from National Service Learning Conference in Nashville on March 20

Tomorrow, March 20, Global Kids will be streaming from (and participating in) the National Service-Learning Conference in Nashville, TN for the third straight year. The conference is an inspiring gathering of over 2,700 students, teachers, youth-workers and volunteers focused on service learning. For more info on the conference, please see the conference website.

For those who can’t make it to Nashville, Global Kids will be streaming several sessions from the NSLC live to the Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheater (click here to teleport ). The complete schedule is as follows:

7 – 8:30am PST: Plenary Session
Exciting entertainment and inspiring keynote speeches from Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, the Executive Director of Community Service Volunteers, the UK’s largest volunteering and training charity and Dr. James Hildreth, Director of the Center for AIDS Health Disparities, Meharry Medical College

11:45am – 1:15pm PST: Global Kids Workshop: Virtual Worlds for Real World Service Learning – Intro for Educators
Learn about service-learning projects in virtual worlds such as Second Life and Habbo Hotel. You will gain a deeper understanding how virtual worlds can create more meaningful learning and service in your community.

1:30 – 3pm PST: Global Kids Workshop: Global Kids Workshop: Online Tools for Offline Action – How Generation MySpace Can Change The World
Join Global Kids to check out a variety of cool tools for your service-learning projects both online and offline. Discover how you can use Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, and others to make a positive difference locally and globally.

Both of the workshops will have interactive activities for the avatars to participate in. See you all there!

Written by: rikomatic

Sign the Pledge – Feed Hungry People

Hunger in this country has always been a problem, but with the current state of the economy and the rise in unemployment, it is hitting families worse than ever.

PledgeToEndHunger.com has rallied with Tyson Foods, Share Our Strength, Hum. Minds at Work, Kompolt and Mediasauce to help support the efforts of food banks.

There are several ways that you, the individual, can help feed hungry people right now:

  • Sign the pledge
  • Write a blog post to help promote the campaign
  • Spread the word and encourage others to make the pledge

How easy is that? By just signing the pledge, you will automatically send 35lbs of food to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas from Tyson Foods. What’s more, if your state generates the most pledges, Tyson will send two truckloads of food to your state.

So what are you waiting for? Go to PledgeToEndHunger.com and sign the pledge. It’s quick. It’s easy. And you will be putting food in the mouths of hungry folks.

Written by: Beth J. Bates

N2Y4’s Mobile Challenge

As you might know, NetSquared – an initiative of TechSoup Global – is focused on launching Open Innovation Challenges designed to recruit and fund Web and mobile-based social-benefit projects.

This year, NetSquared’s Global Challenge and Conference, N2Y4, focuses on mobile innovations that support communication and progressive social change. N2Y4’s Mobile Challenge calls for world-changing ideas about how mobile applications can help citizens, groups and others create a better world for everybody.

The NetSquared Community will vote to select the top 14 Projects, and those Projects will be featured at the N2Y4 Conference, May 26-27 in San Jose, California. There, Project developers will have the opportunity to come together with great minds from the business, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and nonprofit sectors. The final three Projects will receive cash awards.

Written by: Beth J. Bates

Last Chance to Present in the Nonprofit Session at NSLC

We still have one NPC slot open for the Nonprofit Commons sessions to present in-world to the real-life National Service Learning Conference in Nashville, TN, 3/18-3/21. Further details on the conference are below, but this is a great chance to reach a 2000+ audience of folks, especially if you are involved with service projects/service learning in Second Life.

Our time slots for NPC nonprofits (in 30 minute increments) are:

Thursday, 3/19, 9:00 AM SLT

Thursday, 3/19, 9:30 AM SLT

Friday, 3/20, 9:00 AM SLT

Friday, 3/20, 1:30 PM SLT (Penguin and Glitter will be presenting on NPC in this slot)

So far, we’ve heard back from two other folks (Buffy and Muse Carmona) who expressed interest in presenting, but we still have one more open. Please email Brad or IM Bradford Raymaker in-world if you are interested.

If you IM’d Bradford before about your interest and we somehow overlooked you, let us know and we’ll make sure you are included.

Written by: Beth J. Bates

What is Your Organization Doing in Second Life?

The Nonprofit Commons provides such a great venue for forward thinking nonprofit leaders to share their ideas, challenges and friendship. There are exciting things happening – events, social gatherings, meetings of the minds. We want to share what your organization is doing…on the blog!

If your organization is executing engaging initiatives in Second Life (and in RL), please let me know. I want to blog about what YOU are doing!

Some of our neighbors highlight what they are doing in SL on their website, so here is a shout out to those keeping us informed!

If you have something that you would like us to blog about, please shoot me an IM in SL – Cordelia Gothly.

Written by: Beth J. Bates

Last week to help, humiliate, AND fundraise

Originally posted on TechSoup Blog

With the economic slump, a lot of nonprofits are feeling the crunch, especially when it comes to travel and conference budgets. That’s why our friends over at NTEN are reaching out to the community to pitch in for the scholarship fund to help up to 57 nonprofit folks attend the annual NTEN conference.

NTEN has until Sat. Feb. 28th to make their goal of $10,000 and they have just a little over $2,500 to go. But should you need more incentive to pitch in, NTEN’s executive director, Holly Ross, has upped the ante. Holly has pledged to do one of three humiliating tasks if NTEN is able to reach their scholarship goal. Convio is sweetening the deal still further by matching scholarship funds making your dollar go twice as far.

So if Holly is prepared to publicly sing, play an instrument, and/or eat quite the bacon recipe, isn’t that worth taking a few minutes of your time to help a nonprofit colleague? Donate now and in the meantime, Holly will keep working on those dance moves.

Written by: penguin kuhn

Highlights from the Feb. 20, 2009 NPC Meeting

Health Panel PR (Glitteratica Cookie)

The Health Panel expo in SL will occur on the 27th of May in conjunction w/our own conference, NetSquared. That is, we will have a mixed reality portion in the real conference. If anyone is interested in being a part of this, please let me know.

We would love to have people at the RL conference to answer questions to the conference attendees about SL, and about what you are doing here, etc. The conference is going to be in San Jose.

We are looking for someone to take on a critical volunteer role – we need someone to take on the coordination of the PR. What that would mean is that you would coordinate which online publications we would promote this event to and we already have a list of 50 or more, but you would help us find the right blogs to post the event announcement to listservs to promote this kind of event (a health panel in SL). You would assign promotion tasks to certain volunteers so the same lists don’t get the same announcements. Glitteractica Cookie: this is the perfect kind of role for someone who wants to get involved with us, and is not a builder or a scripter, but is very into online social networks and online community engagement.

Discussion led to formation of a committee:
-Ozma Malibu (will organize list of tasks)
-Kali Idziak, DrG Zeiler (will respond tonight)
-In Kenzo (can be on committee and provide additional links/resources/places to promote)
-Ricken Flow (will be on the committee to stay abreast and report back to the larger committee)
-Abbiee Benazzi(someone would have to tell me what to do but I would be willing to help)
-Zazoom Zimminy(may be able to help, particularly with writing pieces)
-Lehlou (put on invite list)
-Rhiannon Chatnoir (can help with any graphics)
-Muse Carmona (will send the notice out to listservs and things but hasn’t got a lot of time to work on it)
-Impeccably Peccable (would love to be a part of the PR team)

Lehlou Barrymore: Can you tell me the time frame that the announcements would have to be sent?

Ricken willcoordinate with Glitteractica to makethe first meeting of this PR committee

This should possibly be on the wiki.

NPC: Who we are and what we do (Glitter and Penguin)

Penguin Kuhn: It occurs to me that we haven’t checked in for awhile about everything it is we do here at the NPC. Who we are, what we do. Smash is one of our wiki gardeners who will be cleaning up the wiki to have this info. more clear to everyone, but we wanted y’all to have an elevator pitch for when folks ask you about the Nonprofit Commons. (Coughran has a fantastic elevator pitch that is on the wiki: http://npsl.wikispaces.com/Elevator+Pitch)

Penguin Kuhn: This has also been translated into 10 different languages It needs a little updating to reflect our new sims bit it is a good place to start with explaining what we’re all about. Anika has put together a terrific 1-pager for us that we will also post to the wiki. This is ideal for printing out as well for
people unfamiliar with Second Life.

Glitteractica Cookie: the idea is that when people look at you with a blank stare, you are able to point them to something that makes sense

There’s our wiki of course: http://npsl.wikispaces.com And our community blog: http://www.nonprofitcommons.org Community blog means that anyone interested in blogging can do so. Just sign up for an account and email me your username & we will get you set up. Beth Bates/Cordelia Gothley in SL is our blog coordinator and a good person to check in with if you are interested in blogging.

The “npsl” tag stands for “Nonprofits in Second Life” and this is the tag we use to tag any articles, press mentions, pictures we take, etc. So if you have pictures you’ve taken from NPC, please upload them to Flickr and tag them “npsl” Glitteractica Cookie: on flickr, del.icio.us, technorati, slideshare. Penguin Kuhn: That way, this information is all together and it will also show up on the nonprofitcommons.org homepage

If you use Twitter, we have a Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/npsl

Smash Lane: there are links to the blog from the wiki, one of them at least is broken right now.

Zinnia Zauber asks: can anyone tweet on the npsl?

Penguin Kuhn: I also have an “About the Nonprofit Commons” notecard that I passed on to the in-world groups and I will send this

Penguin Kuhn: http://www.slideshare.net/tag/npsl is where we have presentations related to Nonprofit Commons in Second Life. You can also add yours there. The 1-pager, Buffy, also has these links

Now that our community is expanding we want to focus more on some of our larger goals as well, including. Regular training classes (scripting/building/etc.) We’ve had some, but would love to do more. Finishing our web directory project is another project. And Ricken and Tech Coleslaw among others will be helping us have in-world office hours at the TechSoup office. The Johnson Center will also be resuming their “Avatar on Duty” sessions on Aloft. This is a chance to meet and discuss real-world philanthropy w/ experts in the field.

Anika also did a wonderful report about the impact of our work. It is here: http://npsl.wikispaces.com/Validation-+Nonprofits+in+SL

Buffy Beale also has a couple of discussion papers if anyone wants, reasons why to join or stay in SL. One is up under the Development area, Buffy will mail to Serene to put on Blog. Also please mail to Glitteractica, Zinnia Zauber,

Ozma Malibu: I am presenting a paper at AERA in April about the NPC but a scholarly paper – it’s on empowerment.

Ronnie Rhode had an article published this week in Campus Technology Magazine about education in SL. Lots of activity on that message board too. It is still on the front page, second link on the left. Thanks to Ozma for the interview, too. (She is quoted in it!) http://campustechnology.com/Home.aspx. Ronnie Rhode agreed to blog on the NPSL blog and mention the article. (Coordinate with Penguin for password)

Fractor Project (Josephine Junot)

Glitteractica Cookie: I want to introduce Josephine Junot, to present her amazing work in SL, and she is the winner of the MacArthur DML award! …I met Josephine in NYC last week and i was so impressed with her that i invited her to speak at the NPC

Josephine Junot: thanks for the invite…The first project I’ll talk about is Fractor (http://factor.org) Fractor is a breakthrough technology that gives news-readers instant access to opportunities for positive civic engagement. Basically, it’s a web app that will connect news with nonprofit needs. Often the influx of daily news can be overwhelming. Disasters, violence, poverty, crime & war are the regular tally. Readers comment on the world being out of control or at least out of their control. They might ask, “What can I do?” In fact, there is much that can be done, & developing a path to the solution is the first step. This is where Fractor will come into play. Our dev site – if you want to take a sneak peek – is http://dev.fractor.org We are in private beta right now and some things are still being developed, but you will be able to see it in action for the most part. Within Fractor ‘facts’ & ‘acts’ are organized on a single, intuitive page where every news story will be linked to real-world actions that users can pursue. At the technological heart is a recommendation system and aggregator that pulls recent news from multiple streams, drops it into categories.

Glitteractica Cookie: are u familiar with Oh My News and Cause Global? Josephine Junot: yes have heard of Oh My News but not Cause Global – some synergy? In Kenzo: sounds like synergy with SocialActions too, love the connection between facts and acts 😉 any1 Gynoid: URLs of sites mentioned http://english.ohmynews.com/ http://causeglobal.blogspot.com/ http://www.socialactions.com/

Josephine Junot: yes, SocialActions pulls in aggregation of causes in a similar way (but doesn’t have the news component, if I can remember correctly) What we really wanted to do is bridge the divide between inspiration and action so that when one reads a news story and gets the feeling of being overwhelmed and wanting to ‘do something’ – you can in one click

In Kenzo: How do you see this integrating here in SL? (I think it’s a great idea BTW, thanks for helping us make the connections)

Josephine Junot: We plan to have an SL presence in our 2nd stage development that takes advantage of the community we build online and in RL and integrates it with efforts in SL…During our first year, we (I and my co-founders, Ben & Hugo) came up with many different renditions of the concept, before settling on the essence of the idea (news w needs)

(SLIDES) So here you can see our home page on the dev site – http://dev.fractor.org where the left column is facts and right col is acts. We have someone writing the recommendation engine behind it so it should get more fabulous with use 🙂 Just to give another peek- here’s the ‘original sketch’ and here’s a news item expanded so you can see the Acts that match with it you can also sort by type of action (volunteer vs financial vs services or goods inkind)

any1 Gynoid: / great model… perception tied to action

Josephine Junot: yes! We are hoping that it gives people a diff way of interacting w the news

Saitek Blanco: Does it have a local scope as well?

Josephine Junot: As nonprofits – you’ll be able to create acts and have people ‘join’ them

Lehlou Barrymore: How will the site be funded?
Josephine Junot: good question – we got a MacArthur Foundation award that enabled us to manifest this first version

Josephine Junot: At this point – what we really need is for nonprofits to sign up and try it out. Nonprofits can go to http://dev.fractor.org and also there are tutorial vids on http://fractor.org

…I’m at the We Media conference pitching fractor in their grant competition next week. We are finalists. Vote for us! Here’s our entry on the Ashoka Changemakers site (We Media conference): http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/node/16996

So my other project is Kidz Connect. Kidz Connect connects youth in diff countries via media art, performance and collaborative creation in SL. (We ran out of time. Josephine will be back in two weeks to talk more about Kidz Connect.)

If you’d like more info/have any questions, just ping me in world or at josephine@funksoup.com or follow her on twitter @funksoup

Open Mic

Zinnia Zauber: Part of what makes the Nonprofit Commons so amazing is the people. You are invited every week to mix and mingle at three events at NPC. Wharf Ratz Tuesday Night Extrordinary Dance Extravaganza at 8 on Aloft. Common Ground which is our weekly networking event every Thursday night at 7 pm here on Plush. And, this meeting every Friday morning at 8:30. Take the time to attend these events and network with people who have Common Ground – Common Goals – Common Good!

Next Thursday In Kenzo will come out and do a Common Vision color party. In Kenzo: so you all get to experience a rare treat….we’ll talk about @amoration and the recent tour we are working on, and you will get to meet my dad on his virgin SL experience! So if you’re curious about the @lightningtemple whispers or want to talk about other netweaving fun come out. Zinnia Zauber: Our color for the night is Heliotrope. See the little colored box next to the Common Ground poster. If you have any music requests please send them To Ricken Flow. In Kenzo: http://blip.fm/evo Ricken, there’s lots to pull from there.

Nany Kayo: Gentle Heron of Virtual Ability will be the guest on Metanomics this Monday Feb 23 at noon. Metanomics is a weekly interview show where guests discuss and answer questions about issues of interest to organizations in virtual worlds. http://www.metanomics.net The shows are simulcast in real time at several locations in SL where all of the combined audiences have access to the same open chat stream to ask questions that are forwarded to the guests and the host, as well as make comments. Some of the brightest and most productive people in SL are in the Metanomics group. Its worth checking out. I’m looking forward to Gentle’s show. The guide dogs are going to be there, too, from what I hear. And other tech for disabilities will be discussed. Love those guide dogs.

Louise Later: Max, the VHH VIrtual Guidedog, will have a 10-minute segment on Metanomics: with host Robert Bloomfield. The show is live on Monday, February 23, 2008 The show starts at Noon PT and ends at 1 PM. Virtual Helping Hands (VHH) is a coalition of four groups, united in our mission to bring people who have disabilities into Second Life™ so everyone can enjoy what SL offers—entertainment, education, employment, and engagement. The Virtual Guidedog group is currently focusing on those who are visually or print- impaired, but those with real life physical disabilities also benefit from the guidedog. We’d love to have you in our group of supporters in the audience at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Metanomics/130/140/54. Come and see Max the Virtual Guidedog do his tricks!

any1 Gynoid: 11am slt Sat Feb 21, 2009 – LIVE MUSIC & POETRY – Junivers Stockholm plays live music with Poetress Laurette Serene Bechir and Medora “Voice of the Sirens” Chevalier THEN TALK … Alexjo Magic – Doctoral Reseacher on Israeli-Palestinian Women in Conflict secondlife://Halve Maen/2/46/22 very cool gig!

Ricken Flow: NPC in metaver messenger http://www.metaversemessenger.com/ – (article written by Ricken Flow) Our next article will be on Virtual Volunteers if anyone has any quotes on what vounteering has meant to them please send them to me

NPC URLs:

The Wiki – http://npsl.wikispaces.com
Coughran’s Elevator Pitch – http://npsl.wikispaces.com/Elevator+Pitch
Community Blog – http://www.nonprofitcommons.org
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/npsl
Slideshare Presentations related to NPC (add yours) – http://www.slideshare.net/tag/npsl
Anika’s wonderful report about the impact of our work – http://npsl.wikispaces.com/Validation-+Nonprofits+in+SL
Article by Ronnie Rhode about education use of SL – http://campustechnology.com/Home.aspx

You can see the raw chat log from this meeting on the wiki.

Written by: SereneJewell

Highlights from the Feb. 13, 2009 NPC Meeting

Meet Your NPC Neighbor (Niama Meyersohn)

Rock The Path is a non-profit holistic retreat and educational center located in Camden, Maine. The “Path” is the journey that each of us travels during our lifetime and to “Rock The Path” is a direct invitation to take part in the unabashed exploration and expression of your greatest potential.

Rock The Path offers a range of informative and experiential programs that provide effective and easy-to-use tools to enhance and improve health and wellness. Programs include but are not limited to, stress reduction, relaxation, meditation, pain reduction, concentration, sleep, creativity and the exploration of consciousness. In SL they will be duplicating some of their their programs…..and combining them with other distance learning technologies. Rock The Path is holding its Excursion Weekend Workshop in Maine on 2/20-2/22 and we want to offer 1 NPC. www.RockThePath.org member a Free spot ($350 value), if anyone is interested. Check them out at www.RockThePath.org

NPC tenant update (Penguin, Kali Izdiak)

We have had a few offices vacate and have some new orgs that are coming in. We’re accommodating almost everyone on the waiting list at this point. Penguin Kuhn: Priceless and MagazineKidd are two of our new folks. Welcome aboard! Youth Venture is leaving so Penguin will need a volunteer to help Ricken with the wiki since Sally will no longer be w/ us. The beautiful Eco Commons has lots of space for enviro orgs. We’d like to get more tenants in there, so please spread the word to any environmental orgs that you know that may be interested. Questions from DonPaul Cale: If we have a current office space, can we look at the ones that are being vacated and choose to move? Penguin says connect with Kali about this. Ricken Flow will be putting in an app today for avatar action center. Page Putzo know several orgs and will pass the word around. Penguin reminds tenants tenants that we periodically have a look at offices/tenants and make sure that the residents are staying actively involved per our agreement. The office agreement is that you spend 3 hours a week in this sim or whatever NPC sim you inhabit. Glitteractica reminds that you don’t need to have an actual office to join this community. Penguin notes we have loads of great volunteers that don’t have a space. Penguin Kuhn says we need a wiki gardener! Wiki gardener helps organize the wiki in a way that is clear and logical for people finding info. about us. Smash Lane may be interested.

NPC session at NYLC (Bradford Rainmaker)

Brad Lewis (Bradford Rainmaker) is a Program Officer at Learn and Serve America at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), in Washington, DC. We support AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve and Senior Corps programs around the US and mobilize over 2m Americans every year in volunteer roles meeting unmet needs here in the States. (www.nationalservice.gov) “I just wanted to let you all know that we’re going to have some opportunities to share our life with those first lifers who are involved in service-learning (community service tied to curriculum). My federal agency (CNCS) is participating
in the National Service-Learning Conference in Nashville, TN from 3/18- 3/21. (More on the conference at: https://programs.regweb.com/metro/NYLC2009/registration/). We have the opportunity to introduce SecondLife and the NPC to conference attendees, and Global Kids will be streaming portions of the conference live into SL and Teen SL, as well as doing some workshops on their programs at the conference.” Time slots are available for NPC nonprofits (in 30 minute increments.) There will be 2300 attendees and 1/3 of them are youth, every year. The “live” booth at the conference will be staffed by our National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, www.servicelearning.org. If you want to present, this is a great opportunity to share yr work with a governmental agencies, state agencies, nonprofits, tribal groups and youth groups of all stripes and others … this is an audience who doesn’t know us that well yet. Visit the website for information on funding for service-learning programs (approx. $350,000 – $450,000 per year for three years for community- based programs) by visiting: http://www.learnandserve.gov/for_organizations/funding/index.asp. Muse Carmona offered to present for Gimp Girl.

Virtual world design project (JudyArx Scribe)

“I been teaching Architecture for 12 years at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I am here because I am hooked by SL and what
it can do. SL is hopeless as a document or production management tool- and that is why I love it. …in SL we will be able to talk before, during and after the project. All sorts of ideas can be played with – the wildest ideas -the nature of the absurd –and also the realistic. But the treasure is that at each step of the way the students will have to be convincing… you …and me. What I hope you will be good enough to help us with is a process of surveying – and we promise to make it fun and as painless as possible- to work out what is great about NPC – what is familiar and friendly –what is troubling –what more NPC could be. Should it be one community with a similar look everywhere? Or should everyone be absolutely different. Should we be aiming for NPC to be the busiest Sim of SL -Do you want or need to achieve 1000 notecards delivered to 1001 different avatars daily? Or is it a quiet place? My guess is yes to it all. From that rich soup students will start to make proposals- to plan events – to document – to build –to prototype. And you will be pleased to hear we will do that without harming one hair on the head of the current sims. Auckland University has it’s own sim for this work and is purchasing another to support this project . But we would like to be part of NPC so we can build a relationship of creative practice and we can engage in Research by Design.

The nuts and bolts are that we will be a team of about 20 and we will set up an office in Bali Natural. At this stage I imagine that in early March we will start asking people to interact with different ways of collecting information. In a further weeks or so they will have presented ideas, had feedback, represented to critics. This will include Keystone Bouchard, Scope Cleaver, Tab Scott, most importantly Yourselves and as many others as I can convince….After that will be six weeks where we can implement something -it may be one idea or bits of many ideas or it may be none. These students will be third years students. They will be expected to put at least 30 hrs a week into the project. At Auckland University there will also be 115 first year students being introduced to Digital ideas and I would imagine they will want to visit. We are engaged with Virtual Africa- putting a possible project together… And have some Master’s students looking for advanced work in SL. We are hoping to have a final exhibition of interesting projects from the School at Dakota Skies Gallery. Can we come and play? and do something useful for you?

Open mic

Zinnia Zauber: I invite you all to Common Ground which is our weekly networking event every Thursday night at 7 pm here on Plush. On Thursday, Feb 19 – Avatar Action Center is sponsoring Common Ground. Our color for the night is Gossamer Green. I encourage you to attend to get to know your fellow nonprofits in Second Life and share what you do while dancing. Common Ground is a weekly event to network on Plush for all to enjoy. We brainstorm, share, and boogie! Common Ground is every Thursday at 7. Remember that Coughran has his Wharf Ratz Tuesday Night Extraordinary Dance Extravaganza at 8 every week on
Aloft! If you are interested in sponsoring a Common Ground, please contact Ethelred Weathermax or myself to set a date and
get details!

Muse Carmona: Just a quick reminder that I’m doing a community study of NPC for a class in online community design. You can find more info here http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/6470/spring09/rese…. Also if anyone is willing to be interviewed in voice for about an hour about your nonprofit, please contact me.

Ricken Flow: NPC/Tech soup will announce in-world office hours soon

Penguin Kuhn: Yes, very quickly, we have some dates for the health panel event this will be on May 26th or 27th. We’re going to see which one is best, but it will definitely be one of the two so stay tuned for more details. More here: http://npsl.wikispaces.com/healthpanelevent. Glitteractica Cookie: google group for this community is at http://groups.google.com/group/TechSoup-Second-Life and we are looking for volunteers to help with event.

Glitteractica Cookie: also, for those of u who do not know, we have a blog at nonprofitcommons.org, a wiki at http://npsl.wikispaces.com

The raw transcript for this meeting can be found at the NPC Wiki.

Written by: SereneJewell

Highlights from the Feb 6, 2009 NPC Meeting

Black AIDS Awareness Day (Ricken Flow)

Feb 7th is National black aids awareness day and we will be having a program right here at Nonprofit Commons, starting with a video on hiv/aids and African Americans an open discussion and the wordl music by harleymc. Everyone is welcome. More information at: http://www.blackaidsday.org

TechSoup Stock Info. (Playa Fairey)

Playa Fairey works with Glitteractica Cookie at TechSoup Global. She is Ricci Powers, Sr Accounts Manager at TechSoup Global in RL. Tech Soup is in San Francisco. The mission is of TechSoup Globals is “working towards a day where every nonprofit organization and social benefit organization has the technology recources they need to operate at their full potential. As the Sr account manager I work with largeorganizations, like YMCA, BCGA, to make sure their affiliates understand our donation programs.” TechSoup Stock handles the product donations for 37 different software and hardware companies, like Microsoft, Cisco Adobe, Symantec, ect. Each Donor Partners has a different area they want to focus their donations on. To qualify for a software discount, (up to 95% off retail prices!) a U.S. organization needs to be a 501c3 and outside the US they need to be the equivalent to a 501c3. Eligibility requirements at https://www.techsoup.org/stock/restrictions.asp. Currently Techglobal is in 23 countries including the USA and is expanding rapidly. In TechSoup forums and learning center you can also learn about these products- how to choose the best one and how to use them at http://forumstechsoup.org. There are also some webinars at http://www.techsoup.org/go/webinars . In April Tech Soup will be running a Green tech promotion with helpful tips and resources for saving the environment and money in honor of earth day.

Ricci will investigate options for nonprofits working under a fiscal sponsor umbrella. Also investigating accessibility products.

Full details about TechSoup Stock are at http://www.techsoup.org/stock and http://www.techsoup.org/stock/gettingstarted. Ricci’s email is rpow…@techsoupglobal.org, phone is 415.633.9341.

Open mic

Zinnia Zauber: Thanks to Project Jason for sponsoring Common Ground last night! Eggplant Purple was all about!. Next sponsor is Avatar Action Center on Feb
19 with Gossamer Green. Common Ground @ Plush is a networking party every Thursday at 7 PM SLT. We have a color theme each week. Next week
is Frangipani Yellow! That’s the color of a plumeria flower or champagne! Common Ground is one of our weekly networking
events we have dancing, sharing and such this is an informal gathering of nonprofits inworld. Coughran Mayo also hosts an event every tuesday night, wharfratz. Join the Techsoup group to receive reminders about these events.

Ronnie Rhode: if anyone is conducting actual academics within SL for a university or college, or if you know anyone doing something beyond just building replicas of
campuses, actual applied academics here, please get in touch with me. I need the info for an article for an education publication. Thanks!

Serene Jewell: About academics, be sure to check out the presentations that were made at the recent education faire. There’s a page on the SL Wiki that links to slide shows and pdfs at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Education_Support_Faire

any1 Gynoid: Human Rights Fest.. now rebranded Human Rights Network… Plans to host weekly speakers and discussions 2pm slt Thursdays…#1 we need speakers on major RL issues… Energy, Human Rights, Global Finance, Education, Poverty, Health… etc…#2… Does it make sense to host discussions here? or at Aloft? … Our mission is to bring together groups… for social benefit events…Pls Contact Any1 Gynoid …May host discussions at NPC – coordinating with Glitteractica Cookie.

Penguin Kuhn: i’m on the board for a nonprofit, all volunteer at this point. we match cancer patients w/ free yoga classes. I am brainstorming ways that we might
benefit from having a SL presence. So if you have any ideas, let me know. Our website is here: http://www.yogabear.org. Since we are small and volunteers at this
point, want to make sure we do this in way that is sustainable & worth our while. Ronnie Rhode knows woman who teaches yoga exclusively. Ozma Malibu remembers obesity study about how practicing a body image in SLmade it easier to do the same in RL.

Penguin Kuhn: Now a quick eco commons announcement.Jac is still rounding up potential tenants through his networks. Talking with Sage and Ricken. Eco Commons needs some tenants, so please reach out to any of your networks and spread the word to anyone you think. If you haven’t checked out Eco Commons yet, it is gorgeous. You do not necessarily have to be a 501(c)(3); just be a social benefit organization Penguin Kuhn: we will soon have a brief blurb about eco commons that we will pass on as a notecard & also post to google group

any1 Gynoid notes that Amnesty-E lost their home sim… contact is Millay Freschi

Glitteractica Cookie: We are having an all-day health expo in SL and in the real world but mainly in SL to be held in conjunction with our
NetSquared conference. NetSqaured is TechSoup Global’s web 2.0
program and this all-day event will feature panelists from health realted nonprofits and hopefully health information island will
be a presence in this event. Iif you are interested in learning more, we have a google group specifically for the planning of this event and if you are interested in participating in the planning, please IM ricken Flow http://groups.google.com/group/npsl-health-expo?hl=en
is the link to the group. If you are interested in being a panelist, or just participating, pls IM us or Ricken Flow there is also information on the wiki http://npsl.wikispaces.com/healthpanelevent this event is scheduled for either May 26-27, no firm date yet

Ricken Flow: yes Keep your eye on the Meteverse Messenger http://www.metaversemessenger.com/ We will have ongoing articles about NPC

Remember Nonprofit Commons and Aloft have space for public events, just contact Glitteractica Cookie or Penguin Kuhn

If anyone tags stuff on flickr, slideshare and del.icio.us please use tag NPSL.

Written by: SereneJewell