21 posts tagged “secondlife”

Imagine rebuilding the real world from the ground up, prim by prim.  What would you change and how would you create public good?

Five finalist projects are realizing their revisions with the Second Life and the Public Good Community Challenge.  Now through June 30th you can vote for your top three of these five amazing endeavors to be awarded a total of almost one million Linden dollars! 

On July 1st at 4PM the University of Southern California's Network Culture Project will award the top three with L$100,000 a month for three months to build their dream of public good from the virtual world.  Avatars can take a minute right now to determine who will win the big awards to be given out at the International Island amphitheater on Monday afternoon.

The projects currently up for awards:

Texas Obesity Research Center
Native Lands Cultural Outreach
Mauerkrankheit/Wallsickness
Interactive Accessible Home
Ability Commons

Any avatar can vote for their top three projects and offer resources to these endeavors; volunteer to help them build out a new community or reach out and partner with these projects to grow real world impact from Second Life.  Voting ends June 30th so send in your feedback today and visit these projects on the web or on International Island to explore new ways to rebuild the real world through virtual efforts.

This community challenge is part of ongoing philanthropic research by the USC Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Communication based in Los Angeles, provided with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, cosponsors of the State of Play conference where awardees will present their new work in October 2008. 

Thank you for participating through your votes and feedback and by helping us build vibrant communities in virtual spaces.

For more information contact Resident Annenberg inworld or email networkculture@gmail.com. 

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Originally uploaded by .inKenzo. evonne@amo

For the last two months I have been testing many different worldbuilding platforms on my Mac, XO laptop and now on my returned PC laptop. A full writeup on the various platforms for kids and adults (from my 7 year old test associate) will be made available soon with a follow-up after September's Virtual Worlds Expo and SLCC. For now, here's a little reading to get you started on thinking about hundreds of worlds within worlds....

Association of Virtual Worlds publishes Blue Book, as Tateru Nino at Massively reports: http://www.massively.com/2008/04/27/association-of-virtual-worlds-publishes-blue-book/

Caleb Booker, aka Onder Skall: http://slgames.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/alternatives-to-second-life/

Sylvie Noel: http://www.sylvienoel.ca/blog/?p=421
Asks a great question: "Where is the customization in work-based virtual worlds?"

Network Culture Challenge

My friend the Gorilla seated behind me (aka Beyers Sellers from Metanomics and Cornell) knows a thing or two about customization...so does Howard Rheingold seated next to me here, author of SmartMobs and all-around brilliant creator. Howard's on our panel to determine which challenge proposals will move on to the community vote and winners will receive grants of L$100,000 a month for three months to build out their SL vision. More to come as we share details on the USC Network Culture Community Challenge for the Second Life avatars making real world change happen. We will be hosting two more community conversations next week: May 12th at 9PM PST (morning of May 13th for my friends in Asia/Australia) and May 15th at noon at the same theatre on International Island in SL.

Network Culture Challenge

Thanks to everyone who came out for our May 6th event on International Island in SL!  Most of all, thanks for playing....we wouldn't have philanthropy in virtual worlds if we didn't have millions of people looking to create somewhere new.

lucent at the do lab, coachella...scorch approved!

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Second Life Justice Skyart

True, present, deeply engaged.  Aware of everyone in collaboration, their roles....strengths.....weaknesses.
Circles of trust built around flexible systems that allow for people to grow and change over time.
Diversity, creativity, user-created worlds with room to build onto "the game" or whatever challenge is set out in a day.

These games are our lives: little interactive diversions are the way we have learned to interact and touch our world.  For some of us this is full immersion in some digital form, while others dabble with cell phone photos and social networks.  The result is similar....over time, new patterns emerge in the game players who have learned to type their thoughts most clearly, as if QWERTY was the universal language.

I still contend that love = energy in every brilliant game.  There's endless ways to design a strategic playspace but no play feels like play without love.  We need that passion in order to enjoy the playful experiences of our lives.

Tools are endless, available from anyone with enough creativity to build a better bridge.

In this world my flights are as long as I want them to be, not dictated by oil poured into a plastic and metal machine.  My mobility is endless too and soaring never gets tiring.

"The Game" is vast, our board the streets and homes within homes.  Perhaps you live on Baltic or St. Charles, or maybe Ventnor?  Pacific?  I've seen the boardwalk homes and they need work too.  What do you most want to see there next?

Find what you love and do it.  Happiness in life really seems to be a constant process loop on this basic love pursuit.  The game then, at any stage, is really about where your heart is at.

Susan Tenby wrote a great blog post today supporting our unique TRANSITIONS team for the Netsquared mashup challenge.

You can read more about Transitions here, but I'd like to ask you one favor as you read.

Please take a moment to register as a Netsquared participant and vote for our team!  Go on right now, sign up (takes just a second) then stop back by and vote for Transitions before Monday!

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Every day I am reminded just how lucky we are to share space on this planet.

Life has been incredibly kind to me lately.  Two weeks ago I started a new position at the USC Network Culture project working on events and experiments in virtual worlds, bringing together my interest in public good, philanthropy and social care with the art of this new landscape.  It is a dream job, working with people I like doing what I love.  I get to create brave new communities, if not whole worlds.  My role is to bring together unique collaborations.

We have tremendous opportunities here to imagine our lives as we choose them to be, as we plan to manifest them.  In the old world of magick there's no shortage of discussion about imagination and manifestation as the keys to creating any new presence, real or somehow collectively imagined.

New media and animation inspires me; this week the happy song has been this track from LemonJelly.  Enjoy, and don't miss 2:40 on this video.

luna, intern of the month

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