Please visit us in the Globalhood office space in the Nonprofit Commons. Click here to teleport, or copy/paste our slurl into your browser:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/229/190/26/?title=Globalhood

Thanks for a great semester.

Have a lovely weekend,
-Group 9: Ali, Juan and Theresa

Linden dollars are the virtual currency in Second Life – they facilitate the Second Life economy. (Linden Labs is the software company that developed SL.) Linden dollars are used, as in the real world, to buy and sell property, merchandise and any items built and developed by avatars in SL. Linden dollars do have a real world exchange rate. It fluctuates based on the market, but is currently stable at approximately $250 Linden dollars to the $US dollar, according to the Second Life Currency Exchange. Check out the Second Life Wikipedia entry for more on the Linden dollar.

To date, we have raised $1500 Linden dollars, donated by friends in the Nonprofit Commons community. While our office was free of charge, that money will go toward maintenance costs for the space. It is our hope that at some point, we can raise enough L$ to make a dent in real world dollars for our nonprofit. However, right now our focus is more on just establishing our presence, networking within the NP community and raising awareness.

Thus far, Waxalka has used the money to upload images for the space. Each photograph and each poster image (text) cost L$10, as well as each slide of the Powerpoint presentation. Waxalka will continue to use the donations to upload more media, and to work with Sara and Frank when they return. The reminder of the funds will be transferred to whoever they decide should manage it.

You may be surprised to learn that it is very possible to make real world money in Second Life. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer article explains how. The 21-year old featured in this article makes $2,000 a month creating machinimas (videos) for SL virtual clients. Wow!

The sustainability of our project lies in Globalhood’s commitment to the nonprofit community in Second Life, and commitment to maintaining their space. As part of the tenant agreement, Globalhood committed to maintaining an SL presence for a minimum of two hours per week, and at least two hours per month of volunteer service in the Nonprofit Commons. Having no previous SL experience, the Globalhood staff will need our help in introducing them to the platform. Our team, led by SL veteran Waxalka Zoom, will provide the Globalhood staff with training and continued assistance and instruction in that process.

Future goals:

Frank and the Globalhood kids will return from the Dominican Republic in mid-August. Upon their return, we plan to:

1. Coordinate with the ethnography team to obtain media that the Globalhood kids developed during their DR trip. We hope to display some of their video, photography, blog postings, etc in the Second Life office.

2. Throw a launch party in-world. We will use the Nonprofit Commons How To guide to promote our event, reaching out to TechSoup, Nonprofit Commons, and both Social Marketing and Virtual Learning Environments students.

We are aware that this project is a work in progress and will continue to develop and grow. Waxalka and Aiyana were SL members before the course, and will continue to be available for SL training in the future. Waxalka in particular has taken an active role in facilitating this project. She has made a commitment to the Nonprofit Commons, offering her skills in creating machinima for Globalhood and other nonprofits associated with the NPC. AliQuig’s SL experience was limited to the perimeters of this course, but she will see the project through the launch party.

Note to Jason and Josephine: our group is also willing to collaborate with fall semester (or any future semester) SM and VLE students, should they be interested in taking Globalhood’s SL presence to the next level.

Also, to our classmates with an interest in Second Life – we can always use volunteers! Bonus points if you have building experience or can create machinima.   Admin work and simply maintaining an avatar in the office is appreciated as well.  Contact rubioj05@newschool.edu or quigleya@newschool.edu if you’re interested.

P.S. Sarah/Billy/Emogene of the ethnography team – we’ll be in touch, once we’ve all had the chance to finish up our summer semester coursework.

Our first step was to partner with a nonprofit. The initial obstacle we encountered was determining how Second Life could be a feasible and useful platform to further the nonprofit’s objectives. Both NPs focused on children’s issues, and the Hispanic AIDS Forum expressed concern that their children did not have access to SL technologies. Globalhood expressed interest in exploring a SL presence, however, so we decided to partner with them. We decided to gear our SL space towards adults in the SL community, with the goal being two-fold: 1.) raising awareness and 2.) raising money. The NP community in Second Life is eager to expand and grow and support (with time and advice as well as money) new causes which have expressed interest in SL.

The next step of the process was to prepare a proposal for Globalhood that explains what SL can offer. Globalhood had previously not been exposed to Second Life so they will need continued guidance on the ins and outs of the unique platform. But they are eager to partner with us and jump right in.

Next, we formally applied for space in SL with a New Tenant Application. After we were approved, began to formulate a plan for filling the space. We decorated the office space with furniture, media and a donation box.

We are pleased to report that we have already raised $500 for our nonprofit, thanks to a very generous donation from Mercedes Ochs. Waxalka befriended Mercedes through the Nonprofit Commons, and she has been instrumental in helping us secure free furniture for our space. Many thanks, Mercedes!

Aiyana and I (AliQuig) also met up in SL today, and she took me to a sandbox to play around at bit with building.

Building Practice in the Sandbox

The Nonprofit Commons is a nonprofits-only community office complex in Second Life. This real estate was generously donated by the Anshe Chung Studios and is being managed by TechSoup and a group of volunteer residents, with the goal of lowering the barrier of access to Second Life for nonprofits. Qualified nonprofit residents will get access to a free nonprofit space in Second Life within the Nonprofit Commons complex. This complex will be the home of many future nonprofit fairs, conferences, and events. The location of the commons is at Plush Avenue SSW and can be found by searching Nonprofit Commons in the places tab.

For more information, visit: www.nonprofitcommons.org and please contact Glitteractica Cookie or Coughran Mayo in-world, or email susan@techsoup.org.

* We have a community of nonprofits in Second Life and hold regular weekly meetings every Friday from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. PST.

*The Nonprofit Commons is open for business and packed to capacity with 32 nonprofits housed free of charge in the nonprofits-only community. We have a waiting list of several more.

*There are many images of us at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/npsl/

* For more information on what we are doing in Second Life, please visit our blog at http://www.nonprofitcommons.org and our wiki at http://npsl.wikispaces.com

* Join our discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/TechSoup-Second-Life. This Google group is also good for all announcements and discussions. It is more of a free-for-all about nonprofits in SL.

*We save items on the web (blog articles, news, relevant links) under the tag NPSL. Use this for del.icio.us and technorati tagging. This tag is fed into our blog.

* We offer a community of practice and free office space to nonprofits in SL.

*There are two SL groups – “TechSoup.org” and “Nonprofit Commons”. Join the TechSoup.org group in Second Life. The nonprofit commons group is a residents-only group and will only accept residents of the nonprofit commons community.

*The in-world TechSoup group is a more general Nonprofits group for nonprofits in SL. This was our initial group and it’s very large. If you want to send announcements to the larger nonprofit community in SL, or to broadcast messages about whatever activities you are having in SL, please feel free to use this TechSoup group for that purpose. You do not need to be a resident to post to this group.

*If you have any questions, IM Glitteractica Cookie in-world.

Here are a couple “before” snapshots of our (as you can see, currently empty!) space. Stay tuned for our progress!

Some social scientists are opposed to the ‘useful’ potential of new media, and argue instead that the ‘virtualization and globalization’ is detrimental to communities. They argue that creating a community that relies on ‘real time’ versus ‘real space or real life’ creates a disconnect that no longer relies on the geographical and physicality of traditional societies. Taking into account the work of the Frankfurt School, Srinivasan points out that the prevailing discussion of new media has focused on a “passive understanding…as a set of technologies that are imposed on the public, rather than as a tool that can be used to achieve locally and culturally specific visions.” He observes that the appropriation and use of the technology must go beyond simply making use of it and that it should serve “specific community needs” and that only then the new media can become a “catalyst for new interpretations and alternative paradigms.”

His observation is relevant because he brings attention to the fact that technologies and new media can not only be consumed in terms of already establish norms but rather be a tool to redefine conceptions about communication, archiving, oral history or preservation of identity. Furthermore, it is important that media (new or old) can articulate a message according to the needs and cultural values of the communities that use them.

Using the example of Faye Ginsburg’s work with the Inuit cultures, Srinivasan writes that Ginsburg work shows “the importance of re-purposing the Frankfurt School critique of culture industries within a model of appropriation that places those traditionally disadvantaged into the position of creator and broadcaster.”

I find the observation useful because when users of media become creators (such as in Second Life) the control over content becomes a tool of empowerment for anyone experiencing the act of creating, sharing and consuming material in a horizontal model.

Citing more examples (Brazilian population among others), he writes “technologies are appropriated by indigenous groups to achieve community-focused cultural, political, educational and social objectives” and that the use of technology can then be “in a larger play with national and international notions that define the concept of ‘indigenous’.”

The same could be applied to the work with other communities such as undeserved urban communities (Globalhood, Global Potential), gay latino youth or transgender communities (HAF). The use of media and the appropriation of the media could serve as a way to disseminate / broadcast / construct concepts that redefine ideas that people might have about these populations and could then help to remove harmful ideas of stigma and prejudice.

It’s also instructive to use his work with the Native American population around San Diego to understand how new media can be utilized in ways that incorporate the cultural makeup of a community, and how the use of media can help overcome and/or help challenges faced by certain aspects such as fragmentation (physical in this case) and how the flow of information afforded by the internet helps to build a sense of community and to link people that were otherwise be disconnected. Additionally, he points to the advantage that the communities can gain in order to create a ‘bank’ of oral history or to create a permanent record of cultural artifacts.

He also mentions the importance of creating relationships with the leaders of the community, or of engaging other “community infrastructures” to build the technical tools that will later reinforce those already physical – geographical ‘nodes’ of the population.

Until people are not ready to consider the importance of new media as a given, that approach is perhaps the one that will give better results: building personal encounters (face to face) that in turn will help to the creation of a more virtual and networked interaction.

I say that because it has been my experience with this project. Building relationships with the members of Globalhood has been essential to the implementation of our plan.