NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life

If you don't know about YouTube you must be living a sheltered life... YouTube is a video sharing site that has successfully captured a huge portion of the Internet video market. It has come under some criticism for allowing large quantities of copyright material to be pirated and uploaded onto the site. None the less, YouTube is a powerful tool that can be used by the nonprofit community to raise awareness and market.

What do I need to post and tag on YouTube?

Information Architecture Inst. (IAI)
Nonprofit Commons 10
iainstitute.org
Stacy Narayan/Stacy Surla

Why is your organization in Second Life?

To look and see what the practice of information architecture has to offer in the design of shared information spaces, like Second Life. To look and see if any IA-type work. Second, to use SL as a platform for our worldwide community of practice

Matt Cowley, Webmaster, WMNF Community Radio
NPCommons Tenant: Space 30
Web Site

Listener-supported, non-commercial, Radio that plays eclectic music and progressive independent news and public radio news.

"We're here to create a virtual radio station in SL, independent news and public affairs, entertainment and fundraising. We'd like to present speeches and talks for discussion, put on concerts, and things we haven't realized are possible yet."

I was asked by a colleague if I would write a "How To" on Qumana.  I've been using Qumana now for several months to post to three different blogs--dogstar.org, imagespace.blogspot.com, and secondlife.techsoup.org.

What is Qumana?

Tagging on blogs can have multiple benefits.  The first is, if your blog is searchable, the tags prove to be a way for readers to find like content.  For example, on this blog (built on Drupal), if you click on a single tag it will return all results that match that tag.

My next few posts will deal with tagging on different social networking sites. This first tutorial will focus on Flickr.

In all the social networking sites that you might post to, there is something in common--tagging. Simply put, tags are little pieces of data that let people know what your information--whether it be an image, a video, or text--is about. For example, you could tag a picture of the castle in Warwick, UK on Flickr with "Warwick castle UK England" and when someone searched on these criteria would have the following results returned:

I participated in a very powerful event in-world today. Chablis Crabgrass put together a wall of fame, honoring cancer survivors. I am posing here with my split screen RL/SL photo as an honoree. In June, I will be 10 years in remission. This was a wonderful use of SL
The event benefitted SL Relay for Life

Stacy Hasselbacher (Lyra Hammerer in SL) sends along information about an opportunity for non-profits to put up a booth for an upcoming education conference:

As some of you may already know, on May 25th there will be a 24-hour conference: the Second Life International Education Conference: Best Practices in Teaching, Learning, and Research. Nonprofits may each have a 6X6 booth with a 25 prim allowance for free.

I just got word that Infinite Vision Media is launching a Social Responsibility Initiative, an effort to allow non-profit and academic institutions to benefit from Infinite Vision's SL marketing and networking expertise. IVM's is launching this new initiative at the same time that they announce the creation of the American Cancer Society's headquarters in SL created by IVM.

I would like to invite you to this fun event during 1st week of May, 2007. Featured events of educational classes, product demo, book reading, video stream/footage of the US legendary rock bank Journey will happen on May, 5th and May 6th.

With over 40 of the most dedicated exhibitors ranging from businesses to nonprofit groups, RL musicians and artists to educational groups, this is a great opportunity to network and to see what you haven been missing in SL in a friendly and professionally designed building of Joysco Convention Center. Located on region/sim name: Convention Center.