TechSoup in Second Life

What is Second Life?

Second Life (or SL) is an online, 3-D, virtual world, launched in 2003 by Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based software firm. You can access Second Life at www.secondlife.com. The world has over 1,110,000 "residents," or registered users. An average of 7,500 are online at any given time.

The community is organized by land allotments and is searchable by locale, individuals, and groups. As in the real world, Second Life users — or rather, their character "avatars" — can purchase their own property on these allotments, interact with other people, and buy and sell products and services. But unlike reality, Second Life avatars can also fly, take on completely different forms, and even make copies of certain products (say, a t-shirt) without needing any new materials.

Because the Second Life platform is highly modifiable and customizable in this way, the Second Life world tends to be limited only by the creativity and imagination of the people within it. This makes it an incredibly powerful tool for collaboration and learning. 

For more information on this virtual world, see the Second Life entry in Wikipedia.

Why does TechSoup have a presence in Second Life?

We at TechSoup believe Second Life provides a rich environment in which to collaborate and explore new territory, making it a valuable, creative community-building tool. This is because:

• It costs virtually nothing to build a location in Second Life.
• Nonprofits can use the tool to raise funds (for example, the American Cancer Society's virtual Relay 4 Life just raised $40,000 auctioning off virtual goods).
• Second Life offers a safe and anonymous means of self-expression.
• Second Life provides a space for the impossible to happen (for example, a group of adults with severe disabilities recently used the tool to interact in an environment without the physical constraints they experience in the real world).

To this end, we would like to help introduce nonprofits to this new platform and to the possibilities it offers, and to help connect them with other nonprofits who are benefiting from the platform.

We hope that by providing a collaboration network for the nonprofits that are beginning to explore Second Life, we can help those organizations learn from each others' experiences and ultimately enable them to more successfully raise funds and reach out to an entirely new base of tech-savvy constituents and volunteers.

To date, we have created a virtual TechSoup office in Second Life, where nonprofits can meet and share ideas. We have set up a portable virtual directory of nonprofits in Second Life that can be freely shared and distributed to others. We have also held a live event, with guest nonprofit speakers who were currently working in the platform, which took place in both real life and in the world of Second Life.

But isn't Second Life just a game?

Although Second Life is often billed as a form of entertainment and can be used that way, there is no predetermined challenge in Second Life and there is no way to "win." This allows nonprofits (and other organizations) to use Second Life as more of a live chat tool — albeit one with many extended features, like the ability to express visual cues when chatting and the capacity to build applications and screen media.

Furthermore, we believe that Second Life can provide a less daunting introduction to emerging technologies. There is a common conception in the nonprofit sector that introducing an element of fun somehow depletes a project of its significance. We hope we can show that technology can still be powerful even when it's enjoyable.

How are other organizations using Second Life?

Here are some examples of recent nonprofit and educational events in or inspired by Second Life:

• The American Cancer Society raised more than $40,000 through its Second Life Relay for Life event.
• The San Jose Tech Museum, in collaboration with Linden Lab, built a scaled-down version of Second Life as a way to help children explore virtual worlds and expand their creativity in new ways.
• A variety of nonprofits are using Second Life to promote their causes, network, and further their missions. Read what Second Life has done for these organizations in TechSoup's article Change the World by Working in a Virtual One.
• The George Eastman House, said to be the world's oldest photography museum, has set up an exhibit, Seeing Ourselves: American Face, in Second Life. The exhibit corresponds with a real-world tour of the photographs.
• Educators are using Second Life to present seminars and stage performances and storytelling sessions designed to help youth learn about other cultures.
• People with disabilities reportedly have been using Second Life to explore environments where physical constraints are minimized and where they have almost absolute control over their avatars' features and actions.

What does it cost?

Although a basic membership is free, there are premium memberships that allow for more privileges and cost between $7 and $10 a month, depending on the length of your subscription. We created the virtual TechSoup office without any funds and entirely with the help of volunteers.

How do I get started with a Second Life account?

Go to www.secondlife.com and install the Second Life client software on your computer. Select your name (be thoughtful with this — it's not changeable). Registration is free, but you will need to provide your mobile phone number or credit card information. Linden Lab requires this information to reduce spamming and to discourage users from creating multiple unused accounts.

Once you've created your account, you may want to go directly to the TechSoup space or you may want to find the area for Second Life newbies and take a few minutes to get acquainted with your avatar. Learn how to move around and go shopping for clothes.

Whether you want to jump in and start discovering places and people serendipitously or you prefer a more controlled mode of introduction into this world, it's really up to you. The community tends to be very welcoming, and if you inform people that you are a newbie they will often be happy to give you advice and answer your questions. The platform is only three years old and everyone started somewhere.

How do I find the TechSoup locale in Second Life?

To find the virtual TechSoup space, log on to Second Life, select the blue map button at the bottom of the screen and then select the blue search button. In the Find Region field, type "TechSoup.org" (without quotations) and select the option to include mature regions. Finally, select Show Location and then Teleport.

Alternatively, the SLurl, or the Second Life URL for direct transport is http://tinyurl.com/ogbpd.

What can I do there?

We encourage you to join the TechSoup group and invite you to attend our weekly meetings, which take place every Friday from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. PST. In these meetings, you can help us plan events for the nonprofit community, brush up your scripting or video production skills in advance of a Second Life event, or help us develop new tools for the nonprofit community.
 
Also, when you are in the TechSoup space, drop your notecard in the directory. There are billboards around the space that will explain how you can do this. Once you do so, other nonprofits in Second Life will be able to contact you.

If you work with libraries, you could also join the library alliance group on Information Island. Or head to Better World Island — where TechSoup is located — which is currently offering space to nonprofits at no cost. (For more information, see this post.)

Additionally, we offer the TechSoup space to other nonprofits that would like to hold their own meetings. Or, you could set up your own space and run your own project "in-world." The options are wide open!

What are TechSoup's plans for the Second Life project?

Going forward, we will continue to help nonprofits build a presence in Second Life and explore ways that the community can use the tool to enable social change. We hope that our work brings nonprofits closer to looking seriously at emerging technologies as opportunities to further their missions and reach new audiences, and we hope to help introduce organizations to new communication tools that narrow the distances between us all.

Specifically, that means we will continue to build, populate, and promote the nonprofit directory in Second Life. We will launch an events calendar that helps people learn about upcoming nonprofit activities in Second Life, and we will help represent nonprofits and to talk with others about the potential for social change in Second Life at the 2006 Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco.

In the future, we plan to hold a digital storytelling movie night where nonprofits that have produced short films or digital stories can feature their works to a worldwide audience, all in the Second Life environment. We also hope to organize a competition where skilled Second Life developers would build virtual environments, avatars, and objects to represent and promote the mission of a nonprofit organization.