The Adventures of MagazineLiteracy.org

How exciting it was to receive our first $500 donation today at our Paper Clip kiosk in our office in the G&M Shopping Center!

Had a nice visit and chat today with Gregory Siamendes and Miss Cham at our MagazineLiteracy.org office located in his G&M Shopping Center. We are planning to have regular planning meetings in our office to lay the groundwork for our work in Second Life.

There is a basic question for organizations engaged in Second Life about whether the time spent is worth the effort and investment, when compared to other priorities. An argument can be made for tapping a new vein of possibilities in relatively uncharted space. However, succeeding here certainly depends on a commitment of time to learn how to navigate, how to communicate and socialize - without becoming a stalker ;), and how to build and organize useful objects. A certain amount of patience is also necessary to see beyond what seems to be persistent growing pains for the SL infrastructure - AKA lag.

We've been here a few weeks and have attended a number of informative Nonprofit Commons meetings and events and have met many good people. We are also learning quite a bit from the Rabble.ca Who's on Second podcast - interviews of active citizens and SL thought leaders.

As we contemplate our future, two questions arise:

1. What sets SL apart from other communication and collaboration tools.

2. What are the relevant ways we can be a productive SL citizen - creating value for our literacy work and for visitors and neighbors here in SL.

In terms of communication, SL permits visible access to and dialogue with stakeholders who might not otherwise be readily available. There is a certain amount of "permission" to interact with other subject matter experts and with groups on a broad range of educational and community service topics. The medium gives us an obvious, branded, physical presence and relevance within the context of gatherings and topics under discussion, while organizing and making accessible key data about individual interests and expertise. This facilitates real-time outreach in ways that are not possible by "picking up the phone." These dialogues are fostered by a common bond formed by having made a commitment to the Second Life medium to begin with.

We are still exploring the ways to create value here for MagazineLiteracy.org and for those we serve. Certainly, we are raising awareness about MagazineLiteracy.org to a new audience SL stalwarts, as well as to a well-developed audience that is already heavily involved in education, literacy, and community service. We still need to figure out what special ways we can leverage the SL medium to create interesting and useful knowledge sharing and experiences for those who visit our office locations. We will leverage our presence in SL to meet and to engage others to help us address this challenge.

In the future, we will also need to address if and how to provide relevant information and services to young people in SL.

Onward!

What a day! I was invited to a great live music event at The Unwinding Hour today (my first) where ab Vanmoer helped me to work on the fundraising script for the MagazineLiteracy.org information and fundraising kiosk.

Then I ran into Gregory Siamendes, who I had met a few days ago in the Little Blue Sandbox. Greg is a great builder of wonderful houses and other things who just opened a new shopping center. He gave me and a couple of friends a tour of a house he is raffling, where we exited by jumping off the third floor balcony into his pool!

Greg has allowed us to set up our SL office in his shopping center until we otherwise get settled. This is enormously important because it creates a place where SL citizens can visit to learn more about our literacy work.

ab stopped by the new office to help finish a working donation box and then made our first contribution - so Greg put MagazineLiteracy.org on the map and ab put us up on the board today!

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings... Oh, tomorrow is already here.

These are the principles that guide our citizenship in SL:

• follow the rules
• be respectful
• collaborate and share
• no begging
• no spamming

We've added our Linden Dollar Balance information to the right panel of our blog to prominently display our campaign progress and to bring accountability and and transparency to our fundraising here.

Thank you for supporting our mission to change the world - one magazine at at time!

We are ready to move forward with an initial version of our MagazineLiteracy.org donation boxes, but want to take a couple of steps back to make sure we are understand commerce here and are following best practices. Hopefully, we'll learn some lessons that will be of value to others community service organizations.

For example, payment scripts are set by default to pay the "owner" rather than the "creator" of a donation box. So, if not properly scripted, the onus would be on those who volunteer to place boxes on your behalf to collect and send in funds. That can work in some situations, but can quickly work against transparency and accountability when deployed on a large-scale.

There are numerous other object and script settings to consider, as well as extra features that are beneficial, such as notecards with additional information and links. The final product needs to be carefully tested, not just by the creator, but using test scenarios that involve new owners.

So, that is the next step for us. We have already been offered assistance by supportive SL citizens, which we greatly appreciate.

For now, we'll distribute vendor objects that offer information notecards and perhaps other "freebies," such as tee shirts to promote our literacy cause. Stay tuned.

We've completed our first building project... a Paper Clip sculpture that accepts donations in Second Life for MagazineLiteracy.org. Citizens who want to donate Linden Dollars to our fundraising campaign simply touch the sculpture, thanks to a script developed by Tootsie Nootan. Initially inspired by a gentleman who traded up from a paper clip to owning a home, I've selected the paper clip because it is the most basic and well known office technology - so fitting to lead the way for our own step-by-step technology adventures in SL. We are still learning how to use SL building tools, but our first Paper Clip sculpture is not a bad rendition. It will do the trick, while our skills and support grow among SL citizens. Our goal is to raise L$ 6.5 million ($25,000 USD) to fund our literacy portal between RL and SL. This will enable us to raise awareness about MagazineLiteracy.org and to collaborate with other community service leaders in Second Life.

We are at the initial stages of a massive undertaking in Second Life to build out our global literacy project starting with 0 L$ with all necessary "funding" growing in-world from there. It feels like the guy who traded up from the paper clip to owning a home, except we don't have a paperclip yet! Even our most basic needs cost Linden Dollars (L$) - uploading images to create vendor and ad objects (10 L$)... starting the "Friends of MagazineLiteracy.org" group ($100 L$), etc.

We are making great progress though. We have already had adspace, vendor permissions, objects, and scripts donated to us by SL media moguls and others - expansion of this will be a key part of our strategy. We will continue to develop this Cause Related Marketing approach - trading our SL and RL spotlight with merchants for the goods and services we need to thrive.

SL can be a bit like the wild west, so we are respectfully navigating the landscape with care - we don't want to offend sensibilities in either world.