Some Favorite Communities in Second Life

Second Life is full of interesting places and fascinating people, but when the two come together in a community: that's when the real fun of SL comes to life. I was invited to write about an incredible community in SL called Chilbo. Chilbo Public Library is one of SL's most famous libraries. And the community itself is very intriguing. Chilbo comprises multiple sims which are inhabited by artists, musicians, poets, writers, and many other creatives. One current project is Poetry Benches. Chilbo is inviting poets gridwide to participate. You sit for a spell on a Poetry Bench and a poem appears! Cool! In the picture, I am having an SL brunch with Chilbo resident artist Kristine Kristan and our friend Kelp Parkin. Behind us is the Cat Cage, Kristen's very arty SL house. Check out the community website and blogs at Chilbo.org; which are quite impressive resources about SL culture (great links on the side navibars!).

Kelp Parkin and I met through another great SL community, New Citizens Inc (NCI). I've been teaching free classes at NCI for 2 years, and we just started a new course on Photography & SL Journalism. Kelp is an NCI Helper, one of our many volunteers and students. NCI hosts social events and build contests, as well as free classes on just about everything to know about SL.

I've invested quite a bit of time in 2 other SL communities... one I'd describe as inherently activist, and the other are RL professionals working for social benefits organizations.

Four Bridges Project sim is a collaboration of Amnesty International-E, PeaceTrain, and many other activist groups (a few logos are pictured). Four Bridges groups have organized numerous gridwide events, week-long Woodstock-like affairs, like Peace Fest, Earth Week SL, SL Human Rights Festival, Second Pride Festival, and Imagine Festival. These folks are very spontaneous and thoroughly knowledgeable about RL activist issues and how to utilize SL for action and creating awareness! You can meet a lot of high powered activists through their community and get involved in world rocking projects. The Four Bridges team works effectively across group lines gridwide to bring together terrific art, music, talent, ideas, and energy.

Nonprofit Commons has achieved cross-group collaboration in the real world of charities and social benefit organizations and brought them all into Second Life. They have gathered together over 100 RL groups and concentrated them on several sims such as Aloft NonProfit Commons (pictured). Groups like Kiva.org for RL microlending and The Jason Project for RL missing children, and OpenCafe.org.za which teaches South African youth about open source technologies. I've done the music promotion for a few of their sim launches and it's clear that everyone wants to work with them (easiest gigs I’ve ever done!). They are great do-gooders one and all. Check out their meetings on 8:30am on Fridays in SL at Plush Nonprofit Commons. You'll meet dozens of RL nonprofit organizers, sharing their best ideas. Now that's SL community!

By Any1 Gynoid

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Eye on the Blog: Lindens "to Retire the Current Mentor Volunteer Program"

Upcoming changes

The company has decided the time to evolve and grow as a volunteer community has come. While the official Mentor Volunteer Program has been an extremely valuable endeavor, its sheer size has made it increasingly difficult to support, and we need to reallocate our resources at the Lab for other Resident-focused programs. We've decided to retire the current Mentor Volunteer program—launching new opportunities for expanded volunteerism within Second Life.

For more information about the close of the Mentor Volunteer Program, please take a look at our FAQ.

We're sad to see the Mentor Volunteer Program go, but we're also excited about new opportunities! Now is the time participate in new offered programs, create your own programs or groups, or simply volunteer on an individual level. On our end, Linden Lab will work even harder to create the framework that highlights your efforts and supports the efforts of even more volunteers—heralding in a more sustainable and more creative phase of volunteerism. Rest assured that we will always want and appreciate volunteers in Second Life!

Announcing two new programs!
Linden Lab is focused on building robust volunteer programs in collaboration with the Residents of Second Life. Not only do we plan to help support their amazing work, but we also want to increase the visibility of their contributions for other Residents to enjoy.

If you're looking to volunteer, here are two Linden-supported programs that might interest you:

1. Second Life Answers. Residents submit questions and other Residents answer them—it's both simple and awesome at the same time. With over 200,000 page views, the Second Life Answers Beta has been a huge success, thanks to our Residents who participated by sharing knowledge, guidance, and friendly support on a wide range of topics in multiple languages. As Second Life Answers continues to grow, it will become even more effective as it attracts even more questions from Residents and more knowledge from our volunteers.

2. Coming Soon: The Resident Help Network (RHN) Beta! This program, which is expected to launch in about a week, will highlight the “best of the best” Resident-run help groups. There's a lot of great information out there among different help groups, and this network is designed to help our Residents find what they need. To apply to be part of the network, help groups must meet a high standard for helping new Residents, maintain over 50 active members, have an established history, produce documentation on how they help, and submit three Resident testimonials. There are more criteria for applicants, which you will be able to read when the blog and wiki information is available at launch. The accepted RHN groups will be listed on the website, featured inworld, and help shape future new Resident experience. We also hope to have an inworld Resident Help Network Fair early next year, so you and other Residents can learn more about the first groups accepted into the network.

Read more in the complete blog post by Lexie Linden Here.

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