NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life

The New York Times covered our group and project in today's NY Times. Here's the blurb about our group:

More than 30 nonprofits have opened offices in a virtual business incubator in Second Life called the Nonprofit Commons that is operated by TechSoup, a group that helps other nonprofits with technology.

Not bad for a lil' fledgling group like ourselves!

So, yesterday I spoke at Supernova about the Nonprofit Commons and about Nonprofits in SL. The reception was warm. Questions that people asked:

Can you make appointments in SL?
• How can you be sure where people are located when they are just typing instead of talking?
• are organizations really making this sustainable?

  Here are a couple blog entries about the Where's The Innovation panel that I spoke on:
  David Weinberger's Joho Blog

Invitation to noWomannoLife Island Opening

noWomannoLife invites you to the opening of its Island on June 21, 8.30am
PST.

noWomannoLife (www.nowomannolife.org) is a Swiss foundation active in the
support of Mediterranean women, and seed (www.seedlearn.org) an NGO
promoting the diffusion of educational tecnologies in the non profit field
built an island dedicated to the non profit world.

The challenge is not only to increase awareness of non profit activities
taking place in the RL but to involve residents in experiencing non
profit.

In my intersection with other nonprofits through the NPSL group and on the TechSoup site I am expanding my focus to deal with emerging technologies in general and how they can be utilized by the nonprofit community as a whole.  My background is in the arts, so expect to continue to see some bias for that industry but my personal experiences over the last two years have shifted my sense of self toward social justice (although being Canadian probably has something to do with that too.)

The iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia brings together pioneers of the free Internet "to make sure that, at its crossroads, we guide the world along a path that will enable the kind of free culture and decentralized innovation that has characterized the early years of the Internet." The summit will occur in parallel in-world at the USC Annenberg Public Diplomacy Island (teleport SLURL).