Who Should Have Won the Linden Prize? New World Notes Readers Chose Open University and Nonprofit Commons (Home of Kiva.Org in Second Life)

Some Kiva participants given Linden Dollar-to-US$ loans through Second Life

The Lindens have awarded the company's $10,000 Linden Prize to The Tech Virtual Museum Workshop, part of San Jose's famed Tech Museum, for using Second Life to prototype real life museum exhibits in Second Life. (I wrote about one of those installations in 2008.) "These are results that those in both the virtual and real worlds can experience and appreciate, as Blondin Linden writes in the announcement, "a core requirement for the Linden Prize." I ran a survey of New World Notes readers, and in a tie, they chose Open University, an SL space for teachers and students, and Nonprofit Commons, a virtual community space for a number of real world non-profits.

My personal preference? Nonprofit Commons, solely because it's the Second Life home to Kiva, the micro-loan service. There, Linden Dollar donations are converted to US dollars, which are then loaned to entrepreneurs in the developing world. According to Kiva's Second Life page, 258 of these have been given out, to folks in Cambodia to Kenya to Tajikistan, and many more nations. In my opinion, it's an ideal marriage of virtual currency and micro-lending -- small Linden Dollar donations converted into small investments which then have a massive direct impact on the entrepreneurs' lives, their families, and their extended community. In that calculation, we're talking Second Life benefiting 258 people multiplied by thousands, in places where the human need is so great.

Comments

[Troy McConaghy]

Kiva is wonderful, but they don't need Second Life to exist. They're on the web. Heck, they've been on Oprah. Take Kiva out of SL and they'd continue to exist.

The Tech Virtual (which won) uses Second Life as a core component of their program. (They use SL to collaboratively prototype exhibits and exhibitions for science centers and museums.) I suppose they could replace SL with another virtual world, but the point is, they *need* a virtual world to do what they do.

In other words, The Tech Virtual is a much better story from Linden Lab's point of view: a clear case of SL being used in a mission-critical way for real-world purposes.

[archie lukas]

Loans or Grants?

History is littered with americans giving 3rd World loans and so far - very few ever pay back.

[Juko]

Sorry Hamlet but this is a mean spirited article - you could at least have acknowledged the quality of Tech Virtual Museum in SL and congratulated them on their win, without leaning on your own bias so clearly. I'm not really in favour of contests like this, but they do help to highlight some great efforts to create engaging virtual world content, and it's a shame not to acknowledge that fairly.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

archie lukas:
History is littered with americans giving 3rd World loans and so far - very few ever pay back.

Kindly take your assertion back. It is insulting to millions of 3rd world citizens who take out such microloans and virtually never default on repayments.

Microloan borrowers who fail to make repayment face both sanction from future borrowing (except due to valid reasons) as well as their compatriots knowing "this guy is a loan tard".

This dual-pronged approach has proven to be very effective. In fact, it has been shown that microloans made to the 3rd world on a grassroots basis through local facilitators backed by funds from microfinance specialists like Kiva is doing have a significantly higher rate of repayment than those made to supposedly more civilised and/or financially empowered groupings...

to cite another microfinance provider, Accion:

"However, since the first microloan was dispersed in 1973 in Recife, Brazil, by an ACCION-led nonprofit, the working poor around the world have proven to be excellent credit risks and prudent users of “micro” financial services – today, microloan repayment rates for ACCION’s partners worldwide average 97 percent."

This gels with reports by many other microfinance providers of repayment rates of 95% to 98%.

So as it turns out, if you really want your money safe yet invested, you could do worse than giving it to a company that facilitates microloans to the 3rd world man in the street/fields. (Complex loan-backed deriviatives from Lehmann Bros, anyone? >:D )

[Tateru Nino]

Traditionally, massive loans are made to third-world nations, and then interest rates manipulated so that the loans can *never* actually be repaid. This provides a permanent revenue stream for helping to finance a first-world budget. Eternal repayments.

It's a practice that stinks, rather. The whole microfinance system is considerably more ethical.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

It's like loansharking, except that the loanshark moves into your home and then permanently scowls and occupies the sofa in front of your half-rate telly :(

[Adric Antfarm]

Of the many things Hamlet is guilty of, being mean spirited is not one of them.

Besides, I went there and found nothing of quality. See, that is mean spirited (yet true).

Folks, I think it's great that Linden wants to smooch the tush of eduction or big business or whatever, but it's not what the grid is about.

How about we base an award on how it impacts residents (and is not fowl).

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Adric:

If Hamlet wanted to be really mean spirited, he'd whip out the Hunter S Thompson avatar, imbibe seriously illegal amounts of intoxication, and start screaming about how we can't stop in SL because it's Tateru Country.

[Nexus Burbclave]

I was not originally planning on weighing in, because I feel that many of the finalists including the winners were excellent choices. At the end of the day, this is an award given out by Linden Lab.

However, I am weighing in because there is something common to each of these finalists that we seem to be forgetting, the fact that as members of the community we can have an impact and a say. The only thing stopping us from raising some Linden Dollars and creating our own community choice prize is inertia. OK, inertia and somebody(ies) trustworthy in charge. It probably wouldn't amount to a USD 10K prize, but it would be a winner that we choose instead of complaining about who Linden Lab chooses.