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Welcome to TechSoup Talks. Today's webinar is Using Second Life to Collaborate and Connect.
We'd like to thank ReadyTalk for sponsoring this webinar series.
My name is Kami Griffiths, and I'd like to introduce our speakers today.
We've got a fantastic lineup of people who have been using Second Life for many years
and are loving it and want to share all of the information they know with you today.
So I'm going to get started by asking Susan Tenby from TechSoup to introduce herself
and tell us a little bit about what she does.
Susan: Hi, I'm Susan Tenby from TechSoup. I'm the online community director
and founder of the nonprofit commons. I just wanted to give you guys a little bit
of a quick overview of what Second Life is. So Second Life is an online 3D virtual world
where all the content is created by the inhabitants.
Kami: So just a quick bio about what you do here at TechSoup.
Susan: Oh, sorry. So yeah, I'm the online community director,
and I am the founder of the Nonprofit Commons, and I manage all the online social media
and Nonprofit Commons' efforts, as well as our online community efforts at the organization.
Kami: Thank you so much and Renne, can you introduce yourself as well?
Renne: Hi I'm Renne Brock-Richmond and I'm a visual artist and college instructor.
And I'm using Second Life as a means to create community and encourage people
to participate more in social media and to connect with folks. It's a great medium
and what I find is that every moment you're in Second Life is a teachable moment,
and I just love that. In the physical world, I'm an arts advocate and I try to encourage people
to use technology to make those connections. Thanks.
Kami: Well thank you. And Jessica Dally can you introduce yourself please?
Jessica: Yes, I am Jessica Dally and I work at Community Voicemail in Seattle, Washington
at our national offices. We use Second Life to help tell our story.
And I'll talk more about that later, so I'll leave it at that.
Kami: Fantastic, now I'd also like to thank Becky and Megan from TechSou
who are answering chat questions via ReadyTalk, and Evonne and Layal
who are working in Second Life right now to stream this
and then answer questions within Second Life.
Just a quick run-through of our agenda for the next 55 minutes,
we're going to go over what Second Life is, the benefits,
how it can integrate with social media tools, how you get started.
I know there were some questions earlier in the chat about how do I set up an avatar?
We'll be talking about that. We'll be giving examples of how nonprofits and libraries
are using Second Life. We'll talk about the technical requirements,
and we'll tell you all about Nonprofit Commons and our future plans here.
So now, we'd like to get started by asking Susan, if you could give us an overview of Second Life,
what Second Life is, and what happens there.
Susan: Yeah sure, sorry about the jumpstart. But as I was mentioning before,
we're an online 3D virtual world where all of the content on the world is created by the inhabitants,
Second Life is. The platform just celebrated its seventh birthday.
And it's really a social creative space, and it continues to grow in popularity
and in member number.
It's an international community; the global audience has about 70,000 users logging in
at one concurrent moment. What they're doing, they're attending live concerts, attending lectures,
classes, parties, creating machinima, which are mixed media movies kind of created in the world,
doing all the things we'd be doing in online social networking in general,
and forming lasting collaborations and partnerships.
But the difference between Second Life and Facebook or MySpace for example,
is that it's an immersive space where a user can actually travel through the space
or in the virtual world, and in a live chat situation you aren't able to inhabit a space.
But in Second Life, you can travel to any location with a quick teleport action.
The user accounts are also different because they're embodied avatars.
I'm sure you all saw the movie Avatar. So in Second Life you can create your own avatar.
These avatars and all the content in the virtual world as I mentioned, are created by the users,
but you don't have to be a tech genius to do it. You just have to be able to know what you want
because the only limit on the visual representation is the imagination of the creator.
So if I want something I can get someone else to build it for me
if I can't do it myself. I just have to have an idea of what I want.
Another important distinction between Second Life and other online social networks
is that there's a real virtual economy where users buy and spend real money.
Linden Lab, the company that's the current company of Second Life predicted
that the user-to-user economy for Second Life in 2009 was $450 million dollars.
And in 2008, virtual goods, entrepreneurs, landowners and in world builders
and service providers generated about $350 million US dollars. So it's real money,
it's a lot of money. A lot of that money granted went back into the platform for land use fees
but the exchange of the money is real. So it's different than a lot of other online social networks.
What we're trying to show nonprofits with the Nonprofit Commons
is that this is a viable marketplace and platform for education, volunteer recruitment,
networking with Real Life nonprofit organizations with similar missions,
and for augmenting your communications and most importantly,
for showcasing your organization's work in a new ways in which one can display and experience
which isn't possible on the traditional 2D web. So you can get a sneak peek
of what it all looks like if you go to YouTube.com/secondlife.
Our goal with the Nonprofit Commons really is to provide a free easy entry point for nonprofits
to join this always on virtual community. We want to teach nonprofits how to use the tool
to meet other likeminded organizations, to raise funds, to increase their volunteer base,
and to explore innovation and most importantly, to share their real life work with the rest of the world
on a platform within a community of support.
Our weekly meetings have been going on for over four years now;
we're the pillar of our community. We kind of punctuate each week with this weekly meeting
at 8:30 am to 10 am on Fridays. That's Pacific Time, which is also Second Life time.
We have an open hall event with speakers at the Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheater,
which you can search for, or if you go to nonprofitcommons.org, you can learn about it.
We have a wiki there and nonprofits from across the globe meet every week to share stories
of their work both in world and in the physical world, which is what we call RL and SL
in Second Life, which stands for Real Life or Second Life.
So within those meetings we help nonprofits share how Second Life
and the technology of virtual worlds can better help them achieve their missions.
So with that I'm going to hand it over to Renne to talk about the other benefits.
Kami: Yes, Renne, if you wouldn't mind just to go through what are the benefits of the 3D world
over the 2D social networking.
Renne: Yes, so Second Life is an immersive environment.
And where that is different than the other social medias, is that you are in a physical space.
It's a dimensional space. Sound is dimensional; you can hear things. You can chat with people.
You can have private conversations and public conversations.
What Second Life allows people to do is to create a community.
Let's see. I'm trying to advance my slide.
[Silence]
Kami: If you don't mind, just keep going and I'll try to get it.
Renne: Okay, can you advance it for me? Thanks. It's just greyed out on me. Thanks. So…
Kami: If you could talk louder too.
Renne: Okay so when we talk about creating a sense of community,
you know we're familiar with the idea that we have first places which are homes,
and then we have second places which are our place of work.
And then really where community is built is within a third place. In some cases a third place
could be a coffee shop. It could be a library. It could be you know, a place that people meet.
And in Second Life this is a place where people meet and build that relationship,
and create the community that they want to participate in.
So when people enter Second Life they have this opportunity to build an immersive environment
that allows people to get that visual, tactile experience.
Then they are able to then do it through cooperation.
So you can see this picture right here we have Jessica, Susan, and myself sitting down
in front of a great audience at our Friday morning meetings
sharing with people. So we get to work together. We create connections.
And you can see this big audience of people from all over the world who come to these meetings
on Friday and share with us.
There's also that bonding cohesiveness that people have a common cause,
a common goal in working together.
Then we create collaboration opportunities. And you can see these empty seats right here?
This is where you can join us.
Another great thing about this is that it creates camaraderie.
In a virtual space, in many respects people connect a lot quicker
than they would in a regular chat room. There's something about you know,
having that physicality that allows you to be connected with folks.
So in that case, when we use Second Life as a social medium,
what it allows us to do is use engagement to strengthen the brand of your organization,
your school, your library, whatever your community mission might be.
When we talk about branding, we think how do you articulate what your mission is?
How are you going to share with people? And in a virtual environment,
you can do much better because people have something they get to engage with.
You can articulate your message distinctly.
You can demonstrate your credibility.
You can emotionally connect with your target audience.
You can inspire participants. People come in and they want to do, do, do. It's fantastic.
You can solidify loyalty.
Now to all of this, like Susan has spoken of, you are represented by an avatar.
Your avatar is your brand, your spokesmodel, your mission embodied.
All of these avatars come in different forms and you can decide entirely
how you want to represent yourself. And you can see that they come in different forms.
There's a few good looking ones there.
And when we talk about what your avatar is, this is the visual representation of yourself.
What I always describe to students when I come into a virtual space
and you're going to use it for social media, this is your chance to show your best self.
So we encourage you to be able to come into Second Life and be that.
Kami: Well this is a really great overview and I love all of the different pictures
and the different scenes that really help illustrate what it's like in there.
So let's talk about how an organization can integrate what happens
in the virtual world with other social media tools.
Renne: Great. So the main goal with social media tools is to direct traffic to your website
or your blog in order to encourage people to know what you're up to.
So when we think about how you utilize Second Life with other social medias,
you want be able to come into the space and share with folks what you're up to.
So I have a little saying here about how you can do that.
Well, I like to create events and I always say we do it through dance.
What does dance mean? To Develop Active Networking Community Experiences.
That's what Second Life is about, is creating experiences. People will remember an event.
People will remember a story. They will remember the connections they make
with people. So when you [indistinct] these different events —
I'm obviously not doing so great with my slides. Thanks guys, for your patience with me.
So we hold weekly events. During the weekly events, people have an opportunity
to exchange links, to be able to share with people their stories. We create notecards
that have all kinds of information that you can pass from avatar to avatar,
which is a fantastic medium to share with people.
Also, people will build stories to inspire folks. So within the virtual environment,
you are able to create essentially an office, a building, an exhibit that's going to share
what your mission is. And when you do that, you have an opportunity to post photos of it
on your Flickr photo stream or maybe even share your story through like a CNN I report.
You can sponsor a fundraiser. You can post those important facts about your cause
and the need for the support through Facebook. So as an event is coming u
you can encourage people through your Facebook groups
and your fan pages to encourage people to participate in the fundraiser.
So when you're having an event, you want to be able to promote it broadly,
not just inside the virtual space.
You can host mixed reality panels. This picture is actually from the Second Life
community conference, where we had an event happening in San Francisco.
And then people can participate from all over the world in Second Life. During an event like that,
people can post tweets, and then you can foster connection using your hash tags and tiny URL's.
You can support educational events. So this is a great way of using your Google groups
to collaborate and promote the different subjects and missions.
You can invite students to learn. Now since I'm an educator, I like to push this kind of angle.
What's fantastic is that you know, a lot of students will come into the virtual world
and they'll be doing research. And you have opportunities to be interviewed by students
to include in papers and slideshows and so forth. When students do projects like this
they'll post their information on Slide Share, or wikis, or maybe in their local newspapers.
You can partner for conferences. So you might want to create a LinkedIn grou
or build a blog in order to encourage people to participate and to connect.
You might be hitting those social networks by being on TV.
Did you know Second Life has its own TV channel? There's lots of talk shows
and game shows that give you an opportunity to share your mission when you get introduced.
What's fantastic is that you can participate in that and then you can be posted on YouTube
and on the channels. It's really fun.
Of course, you can use multiple medias at the same time while you're in Second Life
and brainstorm together. It's a wonderful way of getting lots of people together in an environment.
So when you use Second Life you want to be sure that you're broadcasting to all
your other social medias as you do events, as you have meetings, as you encourage people
to come and visit your virtual space. They're all connected.
Kami: Well I know that there are a lot of folks out there that want to know what is the best way
to get started. Why don't you start telling us about that?
Renne: Yes. The best way of getting started is to think about what you want to do
in the virtual world. Just like any other kind of social media campaign,
you want to consider what you're going to do. I want to encourage you to be patient with yourself.
This is a new environment that you're going to be coming into. So give yourself time,
and encourage yourself as others encourage you. You have to remember you're among friends
and allies, and they're going to be happy to help you out.
So when you start off, these are the steps. You're going to go to secondlife.com.
And here's a screenshot of it. And then what you'll do is you're going to join.
And so when you join Second Life, you become a resident of Second Life.
You'll fill out the information about yourself. You'll put in your real name.
And then also, when you're creating your avatar, what happens in Second Life is you get to choose
your first name, and then Second Life assigns a series of possible last names.
You can always go through and you know, hit it, go back and change, go back and change,
and find a last name that would be appropriate for you.
Now a word of advice I give when it comes to names is pick a name that might be easy
to pronounce. And it usually helps out not to have a lot of numbers in your name.
You also get to pick out a starter avatar. Now your avatar can change all the time in Second Life
but your name is going to remain the same. So you want to be sure
that you consider your name wisely.
Then what will happen is that you'll sign up. It will prompt you to go check your email,
and then it will encourage you to download the Second Life viewer.
The Second Life viewer is the application that you're going to use in order to enter Second Life.
Of course, this is all done online.
Then you're going to launch Second Life and this gives you an opportunity to sign in as your avatar.
So you have your avatar's first name and last name, and your password.
Now, I want to mention that when you are going to be launching into Second Life,
you are going to have an opportunity to choose between going to Welcome Island,
or one of the community gateways. We encourage you to come on in
to the Nonprofit Commons Community gateway.
When you arrive, you'll be right here. And you can see this is the back of my avatar.
So what happens in this space is it gives you a great chance to come on in
and learn what the steps are to participate inside Second Life. It's a tutorial.
You can walk through the space and it's numbered.
And the great thing is there's always going to be someone that might come on by
and help you out. And don't be afraid to ask for help.
You know, a lot of people are just so excited to share. And I'll tell you what,
as an instructor I just can't stop myself. I love teaching people how to use Second Life.
When you're in the space, you want to be sure that you fill out your profile.
And your profile is a mini bio about you. What you want to do in Second Life —
and I encourage you to do this because this is how people learn about each other.
You can come up to any avatar and click on the avatar and read their profile.
And it's a great way of finding out if you have something in common with someone.
You know, are you on the same mission? Maybe you can help them out with something.
So I encourage you to fill out your profile. And you can see my profile on here.
I have a picture of myself in Second Life, and myself in real life.
Of course, there are going to be all kinds of freebies and ways that you can interact
in the space. Your inventory is going to be full of all kinds of stuff, as well as lots of people
who will be willing to give you landmarks and notecards and outfits and all kinds of goodies
to make your experience really exciting. Now, when you're not in Second Life,
you can also take tutorials. And Second Life has a YouTube channel where you can find tutorials
on almost every subject you ever want to learn. Of course like I said, you can ask anyone for help.
They really love to do that. And while you're inside Second Life,
there are plenty of classes you can take as well.
So I encourage you to join us in Second Life where validation and encouragement
creates a cooperative community, a responsibility, collaboration, and enthusiasm.
So please come on back and join us at two o'clock
so I can help you out to create an avatar and join us in Second Life.
Kami: Thank you Renne, that was fantastic. And again, they will have Renne and Jessica
at 2 pm Pacific Time hanging out at Nonprofit Commons
ready to help you get your first step started.
So now I;d like to turn it over to Jessica and find out you know, in what ways
does the work in Second Life reverberate out to the real world?
Jessica: That's a great question. There's a ton of different ways that works.
Just like any type of social media that we do, it kind of comes out and goes back in again.
What I've got listed right here are a bunch of Second Life stats.
I'm not going to read them all to you. But one of the things that's fantastic about Second Life
is its ability to be international and to connect with people who are not near you
in the physical world. That's also possible obviously through things like Facebook
and through Twitter. But as both Susan and Renne stated, the connection that you have
to avatars that you see regularly, it's quite a bit different than simple words on a screen,
even within Facebook with pictures and things like that.
What you can see here too is the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life.
We get quite a number of unique visitors to Aloft and Plush, and our other sims as well.
Those are two of what are called sims, which are basically two islands of nonprofits in world.
A huge portion of those visitors are non-U.S. residents, so it's a great way for people
who are in the United States or are in any other country to connect with people
in a totally different place. We'll actually be talking about that in terms of a library in a little bit,
and how people wind up knowing about what you're doing
who would never have heard about you before.
Another way that it reaches out as Susan had mentioned is through fundraising.
It's not necessarily the best tool to come in and immediately think you're going to start fundraising
in Second Life. Just like any other community tool, you have to first build a community,
tell your story and get people to understand why what you do is important.
With that said, when something like Haiti happens,
it winds up being a very good platform to raise money and to get the word out
about what is being done, both in the real world and in the virtual word.
So Virtual Haiti raised $7,000 dollars, actually over $7,000 U.S. dollars for Haiti relief.
Let's see here, we're also getting about 2,000 visitors a month to Nonprofit Commons.
Some of you may have that on your website but a lot of you may not have that kind of traffic.
And by creating an immersive environment like we have in Second Life,
people are much more apt to really surf around and learn more about what you're doing.
By creating a community, if you're in Second Life right now you'd see that we have about 37 people
watching this webinar from in world. Those are all people who know each other
and know a little bit about what each other's nonprofit does
in a way that you don't necessarily just from perusing words and images at a website.
One other way that —and there's lots of ways that Second Life reverberates out into the real world.
But another thing that has happened quite recently
was the TechSoup Digital Storytelling Event, and using a tool like Second Life to help teach people
how to do digital storytelling, to work together to make digital stories;
that can be very overwhelming. Second Life can be very overwhelming.
But the beautiful part about it as Renne stated, is everybody that has ever been there
has been a newbie at some point. And so you find in that community especially,
that people are extremely willing to help out both in world and out world.
So if you have a question about a tool that you're thinking about using,
it winds up being a really great place because you already have this connection
to talk with other people about that tool to see if they've used it, to see what they're doing
about it and what kind of help you can get. You create a relationshi
that you just don't create in the other world.
I think that's about all I have to say about the reverberating out into the real world.
Although I'm sure there are plenty of questions.
Kami: Sure, we just have a couple other slides here. I don't know if you had anything
you wanted to speak to in reference to the slides that are up.
Jessica: Sure, sure. Yeah, we can talk about that. So we've got three groups right here
that I'm focusing on. It's a fantastic way of doing support; Second Life is.
One of the things that people don't really think about is there's a huge number of communities
that are not able to meet necessarily in a real world situation.
The Boomer Esiason Foundation is a fantastic organization that honestly I personally
did not know about until Second Life came along. And I didn't know about the fact
that people with cystic fibrosis cannot actually meet up in a real world environment
due to their condition and basically making each other sick.
So by knowing that now, I understand better how it is that their organization
can use this tool to allow people to essentially meet up in a virtual environment
rather than just sitting on Facebook, for example, a chat board or talking on Skype
or something like that. You get to go and play with other people that you know.
You get to go and talk and communicate visually with other people that you know.
Preferred Family Healthcare offers a lot of intervention and support
for different driving alcohol issues, so that's an interesting thing to think about.
Most of us know about things like Alcoholics Anonymous or something like that.
But that can be very intimidating to people who are seeking help,
whether that be for a substance abuse issue or any kind of issue.
So allowing this kind of environment where you are anonymous allows you to go in and seek hel
that you might not seek in other ways.
Virtual Ability, very similar in some ways to Boomer Esiason.
I know quite a number of people who are part of Virtual Ability, who are possibly bedridden
or have issues with being able to be mobile. By being in Second Life, they're able to connect
with each other and connect with other people that they would never be able to connect with
in a real world situation. So it winds up being a very fantastic platform
for supporting real life issues. And that can be even your nonprofit and getting the word out
to people that you might not be able to reach physically in a physical space.
Kami: Thank you. And this next slide is a representation of our webinar program
being streamed into Second Life, which is kind of interesting. Can you talk to this?
Jessica: Yeah sure, in fact we have this very thing going on right now,
except you would see a number of more avatars at the moment.
Like I said we have about 37 people enrolled right now. So hello to all the Second Life people.
That's kind of a way that things go back in from the real world into Second Life
and back out again. So in this case we've got a great webinar going on.
People, instead of having to login to Ready Desk, can go into Second Life, watch this webinar
going on. And if you were in Second Life right now, what you would see is there's
a chat going on in world amongst the people who are there. So they're able to communicate
about these different topics without necessarily having to interrupt anybody to ask questions.
They can ask questions of themselves.
I believe Susan is going to be talking about this a little bit. But it's also a way to bring conferences
and other events to people who can't go there in a physical space.
So if there's a great conference going on a lot of us with the current economy,
especially nonprofits, can't afford to fly to all these different places
to go to all these wonderful webinars, excuse me, conferences that we would love to go to.
This allows us to go there in a different way completely,
and still have an immersive environment like you do at a conference
where you can share amongst other people that are attending, essentially.
Kami: Fantastic. So now, we're going to talk about what kind of nonprofits
are working with TechSoup, and libraries, to utilize the Second Life platform.
Jessica: Yeah. So the first one I'm doing is my own nonprofit Community Voicemail.
And not just to self-promote here, but what I'm showing you right here is the upper part
of our office. Down below this we have what looks like a more traditional office
with kind of the traditional things talking about what we do. But upstairs here,
what I've done is created an environment that's sort of a scavenger hunt. In other words,
almost all of these items that you see in front of you, if you click on tell you a story
about Community Voicemail and why it is that what we do is important.
So just a really brief statement, basically, what we do is provide voicemail to people
who are homeless and in transition. My little tagline for that is it's hard to get a job
or an apartment or keep in touch with your doctor when you don't have a phone number
to give them. So a lot of people have questions about that. How do you access that?
How you know, is it still necessary with cell phones? So rather than just simply having words
on a wall that tell people the answers to those questions, this gives them an immersive way
and a fun way, a game way, to go around clicking on items and learning more about what we do
in a way that's much more fun than me just babbling about it.
So that's one of the ways that's fantastic for nonprofits is they can use this world
to create an environment that they can't necessarily create with a website
or even in talking. It allows you a much more visual and fun and playful way to tell your story.
Another fantastic organization that's with us in the Nonprofit Commons
is the Roads to Documentation Venture, And they are a nonprofit from the Netherlands.
And I would never have known that they existed were it not for Second Life,
primarily because there's a lot of nonprofits out there
that you might not know about outside of this world.
Again, this is a library. They use this as a fantastic way to take all of their documentation,
put it into several different languages and make it available to people who might not find it
any other way. Also because of their online presence and the fact that there is an avatar
in world who can answer questions, not all the time but regularly,
they're able to really tell people about what they're doing
and tell their story in a way that's very immersive.
So basically, you can't see it, but there are different stacks of books
that have all the different things that they're doing in different languages for people to explore
and figure out. And again, with most offices there's a way to contact the person
who's in charge of that office, so that you can ask more questions as well.
Then the final organization that I'm showing is the Sierra Club, which I think most people know
who the Sierra Club is. You can't see very well from this picture and you almost can't see it
from any size picture unless I were to zoom out, but I would encourage anybody who's coming in,
we can take you there to see how beautiful this office is.
What you can almost see is that this is actually a tree house. And so the Sierra Club
is not confined to the idea of an office looking like an office.
They can actually set up a whole environment that includes things that make sense
for their organization. So again, in this case, it's a tree house. It's very natural looking,
it kind of helps with the idea of what they're trying to get at, what they're trying to save,
and their mission in and of itself. So the actual office itself winds up being part of the mission
and the visual representation of the mission.
Kami: That is really, really cool. We have just a minute or two
to talk about the technical requirements and the system requirements,
so that we can make sure to have enough time for Q&A.
Jessica: Sounds good. I don't have too much to say here anyway.
Basically, the account is free. It costs virtually nothing to build a location.
There are lots of people to help you, both Xenia and — excuse me, as both Renne
and Susan stated. You'll often hear all of us refer to each other in our Second Life avatar names
as well as our personal actual names. It's one of those things that goes back and forth.
The Nonprofit Commons offers a free office space, but it can be bandwidth intensive.
When we look at the system requirements, you do need to have a relatively new computer.
Most of the new computers can handle Second Life pretty well these days
but if you have something very old it probably isn't going to work well.
Those are the basic requirements for either Mac or Linux or Windows.
And you can get more information online at that link that is up there,
the Second Life support system requirements. It will tell you a lot more about the different things
that are required to go on inter world.
Kami: Great and now, I want to toss it back to Susan.
What does the Nonprofit Commons offer to nonprofits and libraries?
Susan: So the Nonprofit Commons offers free virtual office space to nonprofits
and social benefit organizations. And we also provide advisory services, classes, workshops,
our meetings as we mentioned, and we teach nonprofits
how to use the tools for fundraising, etc.
And you know, as we mentioned earlier we have a global audience and quite impressive stats.
If you think about the time spent on a traditional two-dimensional website versus the time spent
in Second Life, you can see that the amount of time and the amount of commitment
from the nonprofits is quite impressive.
So looking forward, I just wanted to briefly mention what our plans are.
So we wanted to move the Nonprofit Commons outside of just the virtual walls of Second Life
and move it into the Serious and Social Gaming Community.
So we're hoping to launch a partnership with Games for Change.
We're still talking to them about this but the idea is that we hope to have a community of nonprofits
and game developers to create a serious social game
that has a social change awareness campaign angle to it, so education being the focal point.
So this is part of a larger goal to organize a community practice
within this serious social gaming, Games for Change kind of people,
a concept that's been proven by the Nonprofit Commons. We're going to introduce the concept
in kind of a big brainstorm meet up on the 23rd of May in New York City. If you happen to be there
in the late afternoon or early evening, we're interested in having you there and join us
for the conversation. The location is still to be determined, we're waiting on some venues
but if you want to sign up you can just join our Google grou
at groups.google.com/group/npcgames, that's for Nonprofit Commons Games.
So that would be one way that we'd want to grow the Nonprofit Commons.
But we also want to grow our existing vertical communities.
So we have Eco-Commons which is our Environmental Organization Island.
And we want to have more events and more educational campaigns around this island.
And we're looking to have new organizations help us manage
and bring in more environmental orgs into it.
In addition, we want to expand our Health Commons Island to create a partnershi
with Public Health International. Partnering for Health would be the name of the partnership.
And what this would be doing is within the next year or two,
bringing in health related immersive educational campaigns and events
to reach a new larger audience of members. So for example, nutritional awareness campaigns
would take place in this platform, so expanding what the Public Health International phi.org
already does into the virtual world and giving them new opportunities to share
with the existing members of the Nonprofit Commons.
Also finally, we want to expand our Mixed Reality Event Program
and have more multiplatform events. Just to give you a little bit of an explanation on what we do
in that, the core activity with Nonprofit Commons is really events.
And we've kind of pioneered and mastered a way to stream audio and video live in two directions,
creating a mixed or blended reality experience.
So what that means is that if you're in the virtual world, you're seeing what's coming in via audio
and video on a screen in the real world. So you're seeing what's going on in the real world
in the virtual world. Similarly, if you're in the real world you're seeing a projection
of what's going on, the people watching you in the virtual world,
and you can actually see a screen of yourself.
So I'll just go back two screens now, three screens, to show you right here
you can see that will be the experience from the virtual world.
So it creates this kind of portal between the virtual and the real world,
and ends up having an experience which expands the communications
of that kind of event.
What it does for us is it creates a way for us to broadcast our free programming
into the virtual world and also to create a new level of discourse, a back channel.
So as you know, we're broadcasting this webinar right now into Second Life,
but we also do this with our live monthly online community meet-ups that we hold
in San Francisco. We also do this with our weekly webinars.
And what it does is it eliminates the need for travel
and extends our reach beyond our geographical boundaries and limitations.
The additional interesting component is as I mentioned, we have this added benefit
of a back channel. So those of you in Second Life are actually being able to discuss
amongst each other, whereas somebody who's listening on their own computer by themselves
to the webinar wouldn't have that possibility to have a kind of back channel discourse.
Of course we have the additional backchannel of Twitter. So we're trying to kind of
expand the concept of online events beyond the traditional online event modality
that has been going on in the past.
Finally, we just want to make sure that we bring all of this fantastic content back from Second Life
to TechSoup, and make it shareable for all of you to see on your existing online social networks
and websites. We really want Second Life to become one of a constellation
of many online social networks that we have a presence on, and we teach you how
to have a presence on. We're not just trying to sell the virtual world,
but to show you that it's a very important component of a deck
of many online social networks to have a presence on.
So finally I just wanted to while we ask our Q&A, to give you some key links to start with
and I will hand it back to Kami.
Kami: Great thank you Susan, so much. I have a new appreciation for Second Life
after all that fantastic information and imagery. We have a lot of questions
some of which have been answered via the Q&A, but I'll start taking from the ones I think
are being asked most frequently. So people are curious about viruses
and if you're accepting freebies, the things that people give you in Second Life,
could you get a virus? So I'm going to shoot that question to Jessica.
Jessica: Thank you, that's a great question. It is always possible, but it is usually fairly unlikely.
Most of those items have — you have to have a lot of scripts in them.
And it has happened but honestly I have never had that happen to me personally,
and I've never experienced anybody that does that. Usually those types of things
are items that are being what's called "rezzed" or put down. If you think about like brining home
an item from the store and putting it in your house, that kind of thing.
That's what we say when we say "rezzed." Basically, those types of items would be things
that somebody else had put down that might try to steal your money from you.
At the Nonprofit Commons and most Sims or most islands now, basically it's impossible
for anybody else to put an item down without your permission. So it's very, very unlikely
that I've ever seen an item that you might take from somebody else do that.
It's always a possibility but I personally have not witnessed it.
Kami: Great, thank you for that. Question about having the time to do this
and I'll see if Renne could answer this. The question is I guess someone at a library,
but does anyone have any recommendations about timing?
What I mean by this is I'm blocked at work and want to explore library related groups
when I'm at home, but most of the meeting groups I've seen occur during the day.
So what suggestions Renne, would you have for Fria?
Renne: Well I would suggest that you know it's a fair thing for you to say
I would like to be able to access this media when I'm at work.
You know, this is part of being a professional is to have an opportunity to engage with people
in the social media. So when you're at work you should encourage them to allow you
to participate. At the same time, you know, when it comes to working inside the virtual world,
you want to give yourself extra time so spend time at home setting up your system.
Someone asked if you can have a different account for home and personal.
It's exactly the same account. You can set it up at home or at work.
And when you're at home you can start engaging with the folks
that you would want to participate with. If you can't attend the meetings
because you're at work, maybe you should encourage them to allow you to develo
a new meeting that you can attend. And I bet you won't be the only one who wants to be able
to do that. A lot of our social meetings happen after hours when people are at home,
and they are still able to engage and use those things
that we do at those meetings professionally.
Kami: Thank you. And next one Susan, if you wouldn't mind answering,
people have several questions about meetings and board meetings
and how would I set up a meeting? So what suggestions would you give for folks
who are interested in setting up a meeting to you know,
host a board meeting or to offer information?
Susan: Can you hear me?
Kami: Yep.
Susan: Okay. So hosting a meeting, if they're a nonprofit they can host a meeting
whenever they want in the Nonprofit Commons as part of what we provide.
I wasn't really very clear. What I said was that we provided kind of a free virtual office space,
but we also provide meeting space for all organizations and anybody interested in joining
to use the tool. So if anyone wants to set up a meeting, just get in touch with us.
You can email nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org and we'll put you in touch with everybody
to help you get a slide presentation together, and set you up with everything you need.
We'll get a vision for what you want and you can just go ahead and start. It's pretty easy.
All they have to do is set up an avatar and get in touch with us. I guess the starting point
would be email nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org
and it's free and we will help you.
Kami: Great thank you. And there are some questions about cost.
I know everyone' saying it's free, it's free, it's free, but it does take time to set it up.
That's why someone earlier said it was virtually free. But there must be some costs to it.
Let's see, Renne, if you wouldn't mind speaking to this.
You know, if I wanted to set up an office space and put in you know, fancy pictures
or something like, would that cost me money or where would money start coming into play?
Renne: Well money comes into play when you're considering how you want to customize
the experience. To be able to bring in images into Second Life, so for example your logo.
You need to have Linden dollars in order to upload those images, and so it's like 10 Linden dollars.
And you know when it comes to exchange rate, one dollar equals about 260 Linden dollars.
So it's not a huge cost. There are a lot of things that people can get. And as far as free objects
that are in your inventory automatically, or there are developers who are willing to give objects
away that are free that you could decorate your office with and so forth.
But when it comes to trying to create a custom office, or a space, or an avatar,
then that's when you know, using a little bit of money makes the difference.
There are lots of people and a lot of developers who are there to help you out
in the Nonprofit Commons to customize the experience.
Kami: Very good, thank you. And Jessica, a question from Tamira,
are there differences in uptake among different age groups?
Jessica: There can be. What I've noticed and what I've read regarding Second Life
is that primarily the age group tends to be mid-20s and older.
Again, 30s and 40s tend to be the vast majority of people on Second Life. So there's a huge range.
I mean there are quite a number of people, all the way up into retirees
and people who are college students. A lot of colleges use Second Life to educate.
So it really just depends. I think a lot — obviously, there's a teen SL grid,
so you're not going to be in regular Second Life if you are a teen, but it really does vary greatly.
There's definitely not a specific age range like you might see with different tools like MySpace
or something like that.
Kami: So Susan, earlier Renne mentioned how you can promote out to your social network
that you're in Second Life, but is there a way within Second Life
to promote your other social networking channels?
Susan: Yeah, absolutely, that's a really good question. We have certain tools.
There's a thing about Second Life I mentioned earlier that you don't need to be a techie to join.
And what I mean by that is as long as you have an idea, you can get someone else to build it
for you. And Renne had talked about Linden dollars. What you all need to know
is that the amount of money in your Linden Avatar Wallet is never going to be more
than about eight bucks. You're not going to spend a lot of money to do this.
So for example, there are tools that people have to bring in, like let's say your Facebook fan page,
or to bring in an RSS feed of your blog, or your Twitter RSS feed into the virtual world.
And those tools are created by tech geniuses who just want to create and explore
in Second Life, and they're innovators, so they don't charge a lot.
Nothing in Second Life, even if it is a cost, really costs very much.
So you might be able to buy those tools. You just have to go into X Street SL
which is the marketplace and you know it might be like a dollar for a tool like that.
But having said that, we also have something called the Office in a Box for Nonprofit Commons
members which is part of what we provide in creating this community of practice for nonprofits,
is we also provide the tools, not just the space, and not just the structure.
So by that what I mean is that when you join us, we'll hook you up with an Office in a Box,
and in that Office in a Box it comes with a lot of free tools. So don't buy anything
without asking us first because that's what we're here for.
So yes, there are tools and we're happy to teach you how to use them.
And the Friday meetings when everybody shows up at these Friday meetings
at 8:30 am Pacific Time, Second Life time, we can help you out there.
There are a lot of people who are mentors there to help you get started.
Also, one more final note, I'm sorry. One final note is that there is a community tag
which for those of you on Twitter, and Flickr, and YouTube and you know about tagging,
the tag NPSL, stands for Nonprofits in Second Life. You can also go on Delicious
and look at NPSL. So if you see stuff tagged NPSL across the web,
you'll know that that has to do with what we're talking about, so that's an additional —
and of course looking at other tags on Delicious, like Second Life.
Kami: Great, thank you. I just wanted to remind everyone that at 2 pm today
in roughly two hours from now, Renne and Jessica will be in world to help you get started.
So if you have specific questions about kind of how do I do this,
that's when you'll have two people to help you. So hopefully you'll take advantage of that.
So one question for Renne, can you limit attendees to a meeting
if there's someone disruptive? Or how do you deal with people
who might be causing a problem?
Renne: That's a great question. What happens is that when someone is in the virtual environment,
you are in different islands or sims. And each one of those spaces can be divided up into estates
and parcels. And what happens is you have an estate manager
that takes care of some of those things that happens. So if you want to limit the amount
of avatars that can come into a place, an estate manager can set that up so you can say
only 40 people can be in this place. At the same time, when you start having disruptive people,
they can be ejected from the space as well as they can be banned from the space,
so they can never come into that area and bother you again.
It's a great method of crowd control. And it allows you to have private meetings.
Kami: A couple of questions have to do with can I have a personal account and a work account?
Jessica, can you address that?
Jessica: Sure, that's definitely something you can do. A lot of people will have
their own personal avatar, and a work avatar. You don't have to do that.
It's sort of similar to whether or not you're friends with your coworkers on Facebook.
You kind of think about that as the same way. It may be that if your work
is not regularly accessing Second Life that several people would use the same avatar.
They don't necessarily suggest that for the same reason that you wouldn't have one thing set u
for Facebook a lot of times. You know, having that personalization,
knowing who is behind that avatar lends a lot of credibility and transparency to folks.
But it's definitely possible; you can have more than one avatar, absolutely.
Kami: One final question and this has to do with specifically public libraries.
So Susan if you could tell us what are the benefits for public libraries in Second Life?
Susan: Yeah, actually that's a great question and a good one to end on,
because just to bookend the Nonprofit Commons experience,
we started with the Library Community in Second Life. I started by going to Information Island
which is run by Lori Bell, and saw what she was doing. And thought, you know what?
I want to do that for nonprofits. So the best thing for you to do is go and check out
Information Island. You can actually Google "Information Island Second Life"
and look at their website as well. Just like our Nonprofit Commons website on wiki,
they've got a great web presence.
What public libraries are doing in Second Life very, very briefly, being mindful of time,
is they are having their online collections digitized and available.
And there are librarians sitting there at desks at Information Island to answer questions.
So every library has like a virtual office in the same way that Nonprofit Commons does
on Information Island. And you can go there and check it out, walk around.
And I think even the TechSoup library's program has an office there as well.
So IM Lori Bell and look for Information Island.
Kami: Fantastic, thank you Susan and Renne and Jessica. This was fantastic information.
And I apologize to those of you whose questions didn't get answered.
We had about probably a dozen more questions that had to be answered.
So if you still want to ask that question, we've got our community forums.
You'll get a link to that in the post-event survey that will pop up when I close the webinar window.
So post that question to the forums, or at 2 pm, login. You'll receive a link to that to learn more
and ask. And then we'll also give you an email, nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org
if you have questions.
So again, here's a link to the forum, and we'll be sending that out.
If you're new to TechSoup, we've got discounted software, community forums
where volunteers are answering questions, and lots of events that are posted, as well as articles,
and a blog, and NetSquared, and Second Life. There's all sorts of stuff going on,
so check out all that we have to offer at TechSoup.org.
Next week's webinar, Make It Easy to Give: Taking Online Donations.
I'll be hosting that one again at 11 am next Thursday.
We would like to thank ReadyTalk, which donates the use of their service
to help TechSoup expand awareness of technology
throughout the nonprofit sector. ReadyTalk helps nonprofits and libraries in the U.S. and Canada
reach geographically disbursed areas, and encourage collaboration
through their audio conferencing and web conferencing services.
So again, I'd like to thank everyone for attending, and the presenters
for creating such a great webinar today, and the folks helping out on the chat,
and in Second Life. If you have any questions, you can call or email me.
And please take a minute to fill out our post-event survey.
So thanks again, have a wonderful day, hope you can make it at two o'clock to try out your avatar.
Have a great day everyone. Bye-bye.