This Friday January 20, at 8:30am PT, we are hosting a special Nonprofit Commons meeting. We are inviting the our community and all residents of Second Life to join us to talk about the proposed SOPA / PIPA bills before the US Congress, and their larger implications for the internet, virtual worlds, nonprofits and education. Join us this Friday at the Plush Nonprofit Commons at this teleport link.

For those that don't know, here SOPA stands for "stop online piracy act" and is designed to go after websites and services that provide links to copyrighted material. Here are a couple of links to detailed descriptions of SOPA:

• CNN http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm
• NY Times http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/copyrights/index.html

Here's Hamlet Au's reporting on how SOPA might threaten Second Life and other virtual worlds:

 http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/01/eff-says-sopa-threatens-second-life.html

Also this week our Mentors continue their overview of different third-party viewers for Second Life, the pros and cons, and what alternatives are out there. Really useful for both newbies and old timers to Second Life. And we close as always with open mic announcements from the community.

This Friday January 13, the Nonprofit Commons welcomes Brique Topaz, founder of Live and Learn in Kenya, Intl, a registered charity in Germany and Kenya. Brique will be talking to us about her work to improve the lives of poor children in Africa. In the past months , she has been using Second Life as a means of raising funds for meals for poor students in Kenya with remarkable success. Learn how she does it and what their plans for the future are.

As always, we feature news from TechSoup.org, we learn something new from our wonderful Mentors, and close with open mic announcements from anyone in the community. Join us on Friday morning at the Nonprofit Commons amphitheater. See you then!

At the final Nonprofit Commons meeting for 2011, I gave my own personal recap of the last year for nonprofits in the virtual world.  Here are my full remarks below.

2011: A Year in Review for Nonprofits in the Virtual World

Here's my own personal recap of some of the major virtual world developments that I thought were relevant for nonprofits and education in 2011.

LINDEN LAB POLICY CHANGES

The year 2011 got off to strange start with Linden Lab rescinding the long-standing discount on virtual land for educators and nonprofits. Worthwhile efforts like virtual PTSD therapy and the SL Shakespeare company had to de-rez due to increased land costs they could not afford. Another sea-change was the merger of the "teen grid" of Second Life with the main grid. For many teens, this meant the loss of their own separate space where they could play, explore, build, create businesses and learn. Since the merger, we have not heard much about teens in Second Life, which is worriesome, since teens are typically not very silent!

Join us this Friday December 30 for the final Nonprofit Commons meetup of 2011! For this meeting, I, Rik Riel, your ever faithful community manager, will be giving my 2011 Year in Virtual Worlds Wrapup . Afterwards we'll share each of our own highlights from our nonprofits over the year, and wishes for the new year. And we'll pass around fizzy drinks to toast 2012 together!

So join us on Friday December 30, starting at 8:30am PT at the Plush Nonprofit Commons amphitheater. See you then!