Category: Second Life

RootsCampSL is over, long live RootsCampSL

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Day 7_052 So during the week of Novemeber 8 to 14 I blogged my head off about RootsCamp in Second Life. By the end of running the whole thing I was a bit exhausted and have been remiss in writing about what a great success it was, and how the community we developed is not going away!

We had a dozen different sessions and activities attended by easily over 100 people (avatars) at various times over the week. It was very fun and educational. And more importantly, it strengthened the nascent activist culture in SL and built a community that will continue to seek out and develop opportunities for progressive advocacy in-world. And on that note…

I am pleased to announce that the SL Netroots group (which is the RootsCamp community) will be having weekly meetups in Second Life. They are every Wednesday at 4pm eastern time (1pm Linden time) including today. I will be leading today’s meeting so please stop in. You have to join our “SL Netroots” group to get the announcements about meeting locations as we do not yet have a permanent home, but I think today’s meeting will be at the Tech Soup office on Info Island.

The RootsCampSL wiki is the place to go for tons of information and on-going updates. I was especially pleased with how we integrated several collaborative tools to collect and share information on the wiki. For example:

These are free tools that can be used with any event or campaign, so I hope we also did a good job of demonstrating how easy it is to involve a community by opening channels of communication and amplifying each other’s voices. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

In the homestretch

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Today at RootsCampSL was really great and just as interesting as I had expected. I’m really tired and trying to conserve energy so I won’t write much. We had nearly every seat filled for Rik Riel and In Kenzo‘s session about political activism in Second life, and it generated lots of great discussion and ideas about how to support each other in this kind of work.

day 6 screen 3

Tomorrow’s finale is a conversation about how to use Second Life as a campaign tool in 2008, and it will be followed by a party! Someone said they’d bring drinks and someone else is getting a DJ. Should be fun.

This is your last chance to be a part of this groundbreaking online organizing event. Sessions start at 4pm EST. Hope to see you there tomorrow!

Would you rather be the oppressor or the oppressed?

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Ruby mashup As you can see at left, my avatar in Second Life is African American. Once in a while people ask what my race is in real life and why my avatar is black.

Today I had another one of those conversations and I thought I’d post it here as it was pretty interesting. I’m bolding the especially good bits since it’s so long. Pardon all the typos, this is as-it-happened:
Continue reading “Would you rather be the oppressor or the oppressed?” →

RootsCampSL can’t be stopped

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This weekend featured a couple of excellent sessions. Saturday we had a presentation from the founder of the CODE PINK group in Second Life (below left) and Sunday two expert machinima makers (below right) talked about how that emerging art is being used for social justice (links at the end of this post).

Hiro & moo day 4_009

In next two days we will be working up to a fever pitch with at least three sessions each day, including our closing party. Any suggestions for how to make the party festive and social? See the schedule here.
 
Some machinima links from yesterday’s session:

  • a simple tutorial: http://altzoom.buhbuhcuh.com/classroom
  • great example: http://movies.lionhead.com/studio/koulamata
  • how to use the alt-zoom camera: http://moomoney.wordpress.com/2006/09/14/how-to-alt-zoom-camera
  • In Kenzo’s videoblog, including Camp Darfur mashup and Manor Meta shorts: http://inkenzo.blip.tv
  • Hiro/Paul’s blog: http://blog.machinima.org
  • moo’s blog: http://moomoney.wordpress.com

I can’t wait to check these out!

Fun stuff at RootsCampSL this weekend

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RootsCampSL Day Three update, and weekend preview…

Day3_002 Yesterday I led a session on basic building in Second Life which also included a great discussion about what kinds of activities and “builds” in SL are effective politically. One my favorite RootsCamp moments so far happened, when I told everyone how to manipulate objects and invited them to try to move the stools we were sitting on. Suddenly seemingly fixed objects started flying around with no respect for the laws of physics.

We also had an interesting presentation from Aldon Hynes, Technology Director of the Ned Lamont for Senate campaign. It was interesting to learn about the internal needs of a campaign and what worked well for them. I was surprised to hear that they considered whether to even have a campaign blog or just reply on the supportive community of progressive bloggers in Connecticut.

This weekend we have some very fun sessions: today at 4pm EST I will do an open thread/open house, which will be about anything we want. I may continue the SL building lessons if folks are interested. Then at 5pm the founder of the CODE PINK community in SL will lead a discussion on “Pink Jesters, Lingerie & Cyber Disobedience.” Tomorrow at 6pm there will be a session on “Using Machinima for Social Change / Political Action” with Paul Marino, Moo Money, and Beth Kanter. That should be pretty awesome.

The rest of the schedule is already packed with goodness (see below), but you can still propose sessions any time until Tuesday afternoon.

Continue reading “Fun stuff at RootsCampSL this weekend” →

Second Life newbie? It’s OK at RootsCampSL.

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Ruby mashup Day two of RootsCampSL was very interesting. We discussed some specific cliffhanger races like the Virginia Senate battle and some very competitive congressional seats in North Carolina (even touching on the Durham DA race which was the political fallout of the Duke rape case prosecution). We also talked about whether the Democratic Party is or should be a “big tent” encompassing a wide range of issues and positions. Today’s RootsCampers came from CA, MN, WA, IN, NC, NY, CT, AZ, CO, VA, and Trinidad & Tobago!

We now have our own Flickr group for RootsCampSL, I am also collecting related links in del.icio.us, and there’s always Technorati.

Tomorrow’s topics will be a general Q & A for those new to Second Life, and then a review of Ned Lamont’s campaign in Connecticut from Ned’s tech coordinator and maye other campaigns staff. If you’ve never tried Second Life, tomorrow afternoon’s session for newbies at 4pm EST is a great time to start. I hope to see you there.

The picture above of me and my avatar was inspired by these images of Susan Tenby and her Second life avatar.

RootsCampSL – off to a great start

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Photo by Beth Kavka The first day of RootsCampSL was awesome! We had about 15 people (with very little notice, this is a lot) including prominent SL blogger Rik Riel, prominent nonprofit blogger Beth Kanter, and Aldon Hynes who worked on the Howard Dean and Ned Lamont Campaigns. (I can’t decide if I should share their Second Life names or real life.) We also had people from Georgia, California, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina (not including me!), Massachusetts, and New York, as well as Canada, Italy, and Spain!

RootsCampSL day one The schedule wiki is shaping up nicely with a lot of good idea from today’s participants.

On tap for tomorrow’s meeting: 2006 Debrief & Discuss. We started to do this today but didn’t have time, so tomorrow we’ll take an hour or two and hear from eachother about the elections in our own states and any other races that we were paying special attention to. This will be an opportunity to share our personal experiences and any lessons learned. Its starts tomorrow (Thursday) at 4pm EST on Better World Island.

Continue reading “RootsCampSL – off to a great start” →

RootscampSL update

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The first Rootscamp in a series of fabulous events starts in less than 5 hours. We’ve got a schedule up on the wiki now where you can propose topics and speakers. Please add yourselves and any other folks you’d like to hear from. Events run from today until Tuesday.

Here’s a picture of my avatar (Ruby Glitter) wearing a RootsCamp t-shirt:
Ruby Glitter wearing RootsCamp t-shirt

You can get your own t-shirt by visiting RootsCamp in Second Life. Click here to go directly to Better World Island, then select the RootsCamp teleport orb.

Please come to the kick-off meeting at 4pm EST today or let us know (by e-mail or wiki) if you’d like to lead a discussion. Also, let me know if you haven’t used Second Life before, I’m thinking of organizing a “newbie” session at RootsCampSL.

Finally, please please please write about this and link to http://RootsCampSL.org if you have a blog. We were very ambitious when we decided on Friday to hold this event the day after the election, so we have very little time to get the word out. I’ll buy a drink (in real life or Second Life) for anyone who blogs about it this week. Thanks!

Calling all geeky politicos…

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I know I can’t be the only one. Following on the success of BarCamps around the world, where geeks get together to share information and build community in a collaborative “unconference” format, folks are organizing RootsCamps for progressive organizers to debrief the 2006 election and talk about next steps. My colleague Andrew Hoppin and I are taking it one step further, to the new(ish) frontier of Second Life!

We are organizing RootsCampSL which will be a series of daily meetings with different discussion topics and speakers that will also address the brand new field of virtual campaigning in Second Life. i will post more details as they become available. For now, here’s how you can get involved:

  1. Join our in-world meeting today at 5pm eastern, at the Tech Soup office on Information Island.
  2. Visit the wiki page for RootsCampSL, where you can make suggestions and add yourself to the attendee list
  3. Join our Google Group and help us organize the event(s).
  4. If you are already a member of SecondLife, join our group “SL Netroots”.
  5. Spread the word by sending this link to your friends: http://rootscamp.org/RootsCampSL