The Lindens are announcing their annual prize again.
It's a good thing for a company whose mission is "to connect us all to a virtual world for the bettering of humankind" to have an annual prize -- I'm all for it.
This particular Linden prize effort is fair -- it does not have fake crowdsourcing as its sole imperative and it has clear criteria in advance and Linden judges.
The critera is very strict and it's a steep climb to comply with them, but that's acceptable for a price that will provide US $10,000, not a trivial amount of money.
* Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life.
* Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication.
* Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life.
Lots of us do any one of these three things -- doing all three is special and hard. But that's what prizes are about.
In one larger sense, you could say all of Second Life brings compelling results outside of Second Life because even if someone as a "casual consumer" uses SL only to find a date, it's still something that feeds their heart and soul in real life.
If they use Second Life to achieve more meaningful results, like rehabilitation after stroke, or loss of a loved one, or trauma from serving in the armed forces overseas and being injured in combat, so much the more so.
I'd like to see the better worlding be less politically-correct than it has in past years, but I realize this is the *Linden* prize, not the Prokofy Prize which would avoid political correctness.
Some people think the bars are set too high. But I can think right off the top of my head a perfectly well-qualifying group: Beta Technologies. Gwyn has forsaken her "socialism-on-one-sim" experiment in Neualtenberg and now frankly gone into business. That's what you need to do to get paid, and then, having become paid, you are free to pursue your socialist utopias as you wish.
This year, Beta Technologies is making a gateway sim for people to join the "work in SL" thing that Amanda Linden is pumping. I have a story to tell about that concept in another post, but, let's just say it is a tangible good to help people don their work avatars and get busy being business bodies in virtual worlds without having to pay the $55,000 fee for the SL Enterprise.
But what Beta Technologies is doing that is more relevant to this prize is creating a way to become involved in the Copenhagen talks on climate change. HOPENHAGEN are the signs they've put up around the UN. This seems like it fits then all three of this criteria for the prize, so Beta could be applying easily.
Should you have to be a non-profit to win a Better World prize? It doesn't seem to say so. And I don't think you should. Companies should be encourged to make a profit and better the world, too.
But...read the fine print on the FAQs:
"Individuals or Groups that have an employment history or contractual relationship with Linden Lab will be ineligible."
At long last, an anti-FIC, anti-favouritism clause in a Linden Prize! I almost fell out of my chair. As a Gold Service Provider that signed an NDA with the lab and paid them a fee to participate in this program to be listed, they'd be considered to be in a contractual relationship...right?
This is a good thing, if the Lindens keep out of this prize their already-feted GSPs and other "specials". They may not think of signing an NDA as "signing a contract". They may also not think of paying a fee to be listed as "signing a contract" -- and I suppose then, that Beta could enter.
In one sense, we all understand the Lindens are going to pick the FIC. I've always said that if they are going to do that, just pick *good* FIC that has demonstrable merit.
BTW, Gwyn's operation even has a New York office now! complete with a guy's picture of how he looked like a hippie in 1972. This site does not disappoint.
Thinking of my own projects to better SL and even RL in the long run, I realize they just aren't ready yet to apply for this prize. They don't reach the mark yet. That's ok, I can be inspired for another year.
Thinking of other projects that could apply that you'd not necessarily think of, I'd think of Peter Strinberg who runs the translation agency. Probably no one else has facilitated language capacity in SL as much as he has, and this has tangible results in SL and RL. It's a big sprawling a concept to think of as "a project" as it has no "build" -- but I'd encourage the Lindens not to have "a build" for everything that they'll be willing to look at as bettering the world. Some of the best world-betterers may not have land or builds, but just have a good networking idea for a function to fulfill, or have a group, or meet in a sandbox or infohub.
I could ask the people in the Resident Infohubs to apply -- but not enough valid "RL benefit" to make the cut.
I know some small projects among my tenants that are SL presences with a RL application - I won't mention them so as not to overwhelm them and because they haven't asked to be publicized. Any one of these little projects helping just some segment of a RL community to gain help on line and create social networks and get educated in fact could be eligible for this prize -- and they'd get a lot more use out of the $10,000 than a company would.
I'm not thinking now of any nonprofits in SL with a presence on Non-Profit Island that impress. Mainly they do NOT impress me.
For example, let's take Kiva.org which is now being heavily flogged by Pink Linden in her bid to try to manage her reputation damage and the damage to her program resulting from the outrageous assault on the merchant class.
I'm all for Kiva.org. It's a great concept. And maybe that's just the ticket for them to apply to the Linden prize -- their being flogged on the splash screen now in the Winterfest thing isn't going to disqualify them as they didn't "sign a contract".
I do wonder, however, about the obvious: I can't pay Linden dollars to them to have them fund a project in another country that needs help. As far as I know. They are not using that route because there are too many complexities, I guess (although I don't see that there are, really). I can put a tip in their tipjar that goes to...their operating costs, I guess. Their tip jar had about $21,000 when I visited -- that's...US $78. See, that gets lost quickly on a U.S. operating cost. But small amounts that funded those third-world projects if they were visible and you could fund them directly with the SL interface would be amazing.
I also don't see that their presence contains mirror builds or connected real-time manifestations of the things they fund --and that's what I was hoping it would do.
Kiva.org then merely becomes another web page in SL -- a kiosk, a stand. It's just a small build with a few signs and traffic of 33 as a result. And I think it has to do more than that especially to get this prize.
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