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SCION AND MOVIETICKETS.COM PRESENT THE FIRST-EVER MS FLY IN SECOND LIFE

Help achieve a world free of multiple sclerosis (MS) by soaring into the virtual world June 11th through 17th. The MS Fly – an expansion of the National MS Societyʼs successful annual walk, is an engaging and interactive adventure dedicated to ending the unpredictable and chronic disease.

Participate in this exciting and cause-worthy event on a week-long scavenger hunt as you journey through the virtual world of Second Life with your avatar and MS Cape. Scour islands for digital tokens that grant you completion of one phase of the hunt. With each new digital token acquired comes a new incentive for the participant and more money to help end MS.

MS stops more than 2.5 million people worldwide from moving. The National MS Society exists to make sure it doesnʼt.

Itʼs Time to Fly! Register now at www.themsfly.org

Written by: kanter

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Four Quick Tips to Publicize Your Non-profit Event

A key strategy for raising the visibility of your non-profit in Second Life is organizing in-world events. There are hundreds and hundreds of events occurring on a given day competing for avatars’ attention and attendance. So learning how to publicize your non-profits events is an important skill to develop.

1. Use the SL Calendar

The first action to consider is publishing your event on the official SL events calendar. This listing is available both in-world under “search” and on the web at http://www.secondlife.com/events . While there is a lot of crap in there, the official event listings are still the easiest way for all SL residents to find out about what events are happening on a given day. Be as clear and concise and eye-catching as you can possibly be — without resorting to “FREE LINDENS” and other annoying gimmicks.

2. Draw on Your Own Community

Your promotion activities only begin with the official SL calendar. Obviously if you have your own website and land, post notices about the event well ahead of time. Use your group’s (you do have an in-world group set up for your non-profit, don’t you?) announcement feature to inform your own constituents and supporters about the event. Make sure each of your supporters and members is encouraged to invite their friends and colleagues. That’s the power of social networking and the “Kevin Bacon” effect.

3. The SL Media / Blogosphere

Beyond that, get the word out to as many different news sources as you can. The SL blogosphere is huge and expanding, as are the number of SL media outlets. The biggies include the SL Herald, the SL Insider, New World Notes, Avastar, the Reuters SL bureau, and the Metaverse Messenger. See the awesome SL blog aggregator created by Tao Takashi, http://planet.worldofsl.com, for other news sources to reach out to.

4. Real World Press

And don’t forget real world press. If your event has a unique angle to it that might be of interest to a specialized news source, draft up a press release and send it out to them. If you can get some advance press, you can drive new people to register for SL just to attend it. SL is still quite a powerful media-magnet, so take advantage while you can.

While we are talking about events, let me point out the sweet social calendaring website http://Eventful.com, which takes the official SL events feed and repackages it in a really cool and useful way.

Using Eventful.com you can set “Second Life” as one of your home locations, search for events by keyword, tick-off the events that you want to track or attend, create custom calendars and groups, and export those calendars to Outlook, iCal or Google Calendar. You can see the feed from the Eventful group as a widget on the right side of this post. You can add a similar widget to your own website or blog super-easily. Check it out!

With a bit of effort and creativity, you can go from “preaching to the converted” to maxing out your sim. Good luck.

Written by: rikomatic

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Second Life in Education Discussion

Via Cogdog Flickr Stream

Yesterday on Twitter,  Alan Levine (cogdog) started tweeting about a Stephen Downes talk in Second Life.

Cogdog barked a few tweets:

"Stephen Downes is speaking Second Life"
"Stephen Downes hammering SL "like Star Trek… with casinos"
"The guy secretly loves second life …"

Crap, I’d love to listen to that session live, but I had a few deadlines.   Luckily, Cogdog left some good markings so I could find the url and return later.

What a great example of leaving breadcrumbs across social media sites to enhance findability.  But wait it gets better …

I left a tweet (or was a it a treat) for CogDog

@cogdog you need to use the flickr fdtoys and add something [on the flickr photo]

Cogdog responded with:

@kanter you had to ask … [see flickr photo]

So, not only do we have the findability, but we increase the potential for adhoc collaboration.

So, I was waiting for the blog posts about the session to filter out to the blogosphere, but I had not time to track them down.    So, was glad that Stephen Downes provided pointers to a few and some reflections:

Good summary of the proceedings from yesterday’s Eduserv conference on Second Life. My only quibble is that the advice, "Second Life is here, now – use it," does not recognize the existence of various alternatives, a number of which were mentioned by several panelists. See also this summary  by Shirley Williams. And Kathryn Greenhill offers a really nice detailed summary.  Jo Kay stayed up ’til  one a.m.  to watch my talk and then was disappointed, not because she disagreed with me, but because the wanted to see more emphasis on the projects and the potential. Fine – and  that’s what the other five speakers provided. And if I hadn’t raised the issues (which are genuine) nobody would  have. Is that a fair way to treat people who are trying to  learn about the technology?  Angela Thomas, meanwhile, posted a summary of the sessions as seen through Second Life.   Andrew Stewart‘s longish commentary, to which I’ve added a comment clarifying part of my argument. Barbara Dieu also commented, saying that my criticisms should not prevent people from experimenting with Second Life. I don’t think I ever said that – but I would certainly recommend caution before making a large financial investment.

I think I’ll watch the 3D space a bit more closely in the future, with an eye to mapping out a strategy, the outlines of which I stated in my talk yesterday.

Some of the reflections and criticisms are similar in the nonprofit space. What do you think?

Written by: kanter

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Reminder: Walk the world to fight hunger this Sunday!

Powerwalk_004

Codelia sends out updated info on the "Fight Hunger: Walk the World" event taking place this Sunday, May 13.  The UN World Food Programme every year organizes a "Walk the World" fundraiser / awareness raising event to draw attention to the problem of famine and hunger around the world.  In towns and cities all over the planet, people gather to walk in support of humanitarian aid and development assistance for the most needy. Now avatars in Second Life can also participate.

The gathering point is now the Dragon Moons Resort (Teleport SLURL) generously provided by Demian Caldera and Nyna Slate. You can also make a donation at that same location and join the "fighthunger" group to stay abreast of the latest developments.

Cross-posted from Rikomatic.com

Written by: rikomatic

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Skype and Nonprofits

Skype is a terrific tool.  It is a software based phone that allows VoIP calls anywhere in the world.  If you place a Skype call between computers–your computer and the computer of the person on the other end–the call is free.   It costs pennies a minute to call to a cell phone or land line.
Skype will allow you to do video calling, share documents, and IM others on the Skype network.
How can a nonprofit use Skype?  I think it can be particularly useful when working on collaborative projects.  These projects could be technology based or not.

  1. Conference calls become free using Skype.
  2. If you have documents to share, they can be sent to everybody in the group by dragging and dropping into a Skype chat.
  3. Skype’s chat feature allows you to see when others in your group are online–and potentially available to talk.

I use Skype pretty much everyday in collaboration with programmers and other project based colleagues.
For the purposes of the Nonprofits in Second Life group, it is used to keep the project leaders in touch with one another.
Paired with other tools, Skype can become a powerful–and free–tool in your virtual kit.  It is a free download, works on MacOS, PC, and Linux.
Look me up, my handle is jmatthewsaunders.

Written by: Creech

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Just a little funny bit that was in today’s SF Chronicle

if you get the San Francisco Chron, check out Leah Garchik on page e8. If not, just look here:

from Public Eavesdropping

Public eavesdropping

“I have to hang up now. I’m in a business meeting for Second Life, and my avatar is speaking.”

— Young woman on cell phone at work, overheard at Brannan Street tech company by Connie Champagne

(In case you were wondering, I was that girl overheard by Connie (she was standing waiting for me after work), and CompuMentor’s offices are on Brannan)

Written by: Glitteractica_Cookie

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Tagging Tutorials, Part IV, REVVER

REVVER is a video site similar to YouTube.  The company is quite a bit smaller than YouTube.  The number of videos on REVVER is much smaller than on YouTube.  While it is a little guy, REVVER is my preferred video site. 
Why? 
The small guy is more likely to try and work with content providers.  You can post messages to the forum on REVVER and get a response very quickly.  The REVVER staff are quite likely to email you directly if you have something you need/want to have resolved.
Posting to REVVER is very similar to posting to YouTube.
What are the steps?

  1. You need an account.  Accounts are free.  Go to http://one.revver.com and click on "register" in the top left corner.
  2. Once you have an account, log in and click on "Upload".
  3. REVVER takes the process in reverse of YouTube–first you choose your file (and you can upload mov, mpeg, mp4, asf, avi, DIVX, 3gp and 3g2).  Click on the "Browse" button and after you have selected your file, choose "Upload".
  4. That opens up a "Title", "Description", TAGS, Web Page, Credits, and Age Level.  Click "Save This Video".
  5. Do NOT leave this page until your file has completed uploading.

You can tag during this process or after you have saved your video.  The Nonprofits in Second Life Group are using "NPSL".
One thing to note is that REVVER is highly sensitive of copyright.  They will not post a video that they suspect contains any copyrighted materials.  Background music can cause a video to be rejected.

Written by: Creech

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Teens create Second Life PSAs on obesity, piracy, intolerance

(Also posted on Rikomatic.com) Youth non-profit Global Kids announces that five teams of teenagers has completed 30-second Public Service Announcements created in Second Life.  The PSAs cover a range of issues including obesity, media literacy, piracy, discrimination and safe surfing on the net. It’s great seeing young people using Second Life to put out positive social messages.

(I blogged previously about other machinima for good.)

Written by: rikomatic