Best Practises for Non Profits in SL

A number of papers have been published recently with findings from the SLCC 07 conference. One of these papers is prepared by Rik Panganiban and is called Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life.

This report is a preliminary examination of some of the best practices of non-profits active in Second Life, inspired by a series of discussions that took place during the “nonprofit track” at the Second Life Community Convention in August 2007 in Chicago. This past year Second Life has become a testing ground for exploring the possibilities of using virtual worlds for the social good. Given the fairly recent entry of many non-profits into Second Life – many
non-profit offices are under one year old – these findings and recommendations are very much subject to revision. Indeed, we consider this just the beginning of a much longer conversation about what is the role of civil society,
philanthropy, and the public sector writ large in the virtual world.

Download the paper here.

Second Life ain't dead

Second Life ain't dead yet. Despite what most media in the Netherlands and Germany tell you. It's alive and kicking. That's what you can read in the Dutch e-zine Emerce today as it runs a story on Edwin Rijkaart's visit to the SLCC. Mr. Rijkaart is the proud owner of Virtual Amsterdam, which has been purchased recently from Stroker Serpentine after an earlier deal gone down the drain.

Here some translated tidbits from the Emerce article:

What's going down in Amsterdam?

"Since our putchase we've done various things. Some buildings have been relocated, especially those involved in erotic merchandise. We have also added several new buildings, like the virtual replica of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (which figures, since Rijkaart also owns www.beurs.nl, a dutch stock site). We'd like to draw larger crowds in the near future to make the sim more attractive to shopowners. That's where the money has to come from."

How do you want to draw these crowds?

"We're going to connect the 2D and 3D internet, through our sites Beurs.nl and Buienradar (a site where you can see if it's raining by radar). Through the forums of these sites we want to give people an easy access to virtual Amsterdam. We're looking for an interface with which people can easily switch between the sites and the sim. Once a week we're going to organise Stock sessions in the virtual stock exchance and for visitors of Buienradar we're going to do a monthly meetup on climate chances."