Interesting to read, via the incom mailing list, about employee protests against IBM in Second Life.

Before passing this off as a complaint to a tiny audience and unlikely to have much power or effect, consider this: IBM is estimated to be investing $10 million on building its presence in virtual worlds including Second Life.

In Italy, IBM employees are unionized, and there has been some unhappy back and forth with management – protesting over pay, pension and health rights on one side, IBM withdrawing a ‘productive work benefit’ in response. According to the article, an international affiliation of workers unions (Union Network International) launched ‘unions 2.0′ – they trained protesters in how to use Second Life and gave protest kits to their avatars. Avatars then went to IBM locations, put up banners and slogans, and encouraged anyone to sign a petition. Some of them found their way to an online IBM meeting that was taking place in Second Life – they asked to speak to management (the meeting was about website functionality, so I don’t think that would have got them too far), and they were asked to take their protest out of the virtual meeting room. From a union negotiation perspective the initiative may not have gained them much, but what it did do is give media outlets a ‘hook’ to hang a union story on. It made national TV news in Italy. As a PR strategy, that’s pretty smart.

As real-world protests enter virtual worlds, so virtual worlds are jumping over to traditional, ‘real-world’ media.

I wrote earlier about Canada’s National Film Board putting some money into exploring virtual-world filmmaking.

According to a recent article in a Vancouver paper, HBO not long ago won a bidding war (against MTV and Sundance Channel) to broadcast My Second Life - content created in the land of avatars. San Francisco filmmaker Douglas Gayeton assumed (borrowed? stole? impersonated?) a character called Molotov, and filmed the avatar’s online adventures. Some of it showed up on YouTube, and within 72 hours it was the most-watched video there.

The series will be on HBO in the spring, and it is already being screened in L.A. to try to qualify it for Academy Award consideration.

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Related links:

an interview  Nedra Weinrich did a while ago about some innovative health education initiatives being undertaken by Center for Disease Control in Second Life.

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Fascinating story from Nedra Weinreich – that the US org. Center for Disease Control has an ‘office’ in the social media world known as Second Life.

In this really interesting interview, she interviews CDC’s John Anderton, whose job includes advancing public health by using new media.

This is also a great example, I think, of blogging as journalism:  the author is a regular columnist, she came across an interesting story lead, pursued it, interviewed her subject, and published a well-written story to a regular readership.

I had an email from one of the team developing beyondorders.com – a site expected to launch in November.

Their goal is to scale up reconstruction efforts in Iraq, by linking potential donors (the people who want to send goods needed by local people in Iraq but who don’t know what the specific needs are), to soldiers who know what some specific local needs are (eg. water filters), but lack the people to connect with in order to relay those community needs.

They have some specific needs for geek volunteers, and were asking for suggestions. I thought they could try posting on ictlogy.net, seeing if students in need of thesis subjects in this UK ICT4D program might be interested, and asking the initial Geek Corps founder Ethan Zuckerman for some ideas.

I also thought, in addition to their goal of seeking a geek volunteer to accompany them in Iraq, that it could be worth their while to increase their capacity by involving online volunteers.

They wanted some ideas for where to begin on this, and I sent along a few suggestions.

I realized that this info could be useful to others also, so I’m including it here.

I think a lot of nonprofits aren’t aware of this resource available to them – online volunteers, from anywhere in the world, willing to help with specific tasks.

Whether you’re a small community-based organization in a country with dial-up access and frequent power outages in need of high-speed research to help you with grant applications, a nonprofit looking to translate your resources into multiple languages, or perhaps a grassroots group in need of a website or application, online volunteers could be a way for you to scale up your efforts and increase your organization’s capacity.

Here are some places to get started:

http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/

http://www.serviceleader.org/old/vv/

http://www.energizeinc.com/prof/volop.html

http://www.idealist.org/volunteer/vol_sites.html

http://www.unites.org/

Also useful

http://www.coyotecom.com/outreach/netsquared.html

http://www.nabuur.com/

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/FunMoney/story?id=2357194&page=1

http://www.geekcorps.com/about/

http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org/fileadmin/docdb/pdf/2006/Acevedo_Volunteering_in_the_Information_Society_2005.pdf

http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org/browse/volunteering-issues/online-volunteering/doc/social-networking-site-launches-contest.htmlb

I wrote earlier about one way of connecting to donors to fundraise for media production tools for your community-based organization, or your social cause.

I came across a useful post on Net2, that lists tools for vlogging.   This offers one more way of getting your grassroots media out to viewers – on a video blog. 

The tools listed on Net2: 

• Freevlog.org and Node101 for tools, tutorials and training.
• Blip.tv for free hosting.
• WordPress for a free blog.
• Feedburner to set up a feed.
• FireAnt to list your vlog and attract viewers.