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We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about how Second Life can help organizations, events, and conferences continue to safely and efficiently operate during the coronavirus outbreak.
Many individuals and organizations are being affected by this unprecedented public health crisis, and we recognize that Second Life can provide an important and valuable way for people to stay in touch with their friends and co-workers amidst new social distancing protocols, mandated remote work requirements, and other precautionary measures.
– from Second Life to Expand Support & Reduce Prices for Education & Nonprofits
Questions have been asked of late how Linden Lab can assist in the growing crisis surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic that is affecting the world. When asked about promoting Second Life as a platform for meetings, etc., Brett Linden, speaking during the Lab Gab #16 session featuring the Marketing Team noted that the company was aware of SL’s unique capabilities, but also of the need to respond to the growing crisis responsibly and in a manner that is not seen to be a crude attempt to simply leverage the situation for their own advantage.
On Friday, March 13th, the company issued a blog post announcing a new imitative that is aimed at helping promote the platform as a platform for remote working, and to announce the reduction in region fees for registered educationals and non-profits.
In the latter regard, the blog post announces a reduction in tier fees:
One of the first things we’ve implemented to help is a reduction in pricing to a flat $99/month per region to qualified accredited non-profit or educational institutions. Effective immediately, this limited-time price reduction is applicable to any new or added regions including renewals of existing regions. See our Terms & Conditions for more information.
No time frame for the fee reduction (or applications for receiving the fee reduction, if this is what is meant) is provided, and I’ve asked the Lab for general clarification on this; if I receive a reply, I will update this post.
The post goes on to note practical steps those wishing to use the platform for remote solutions for conferences, events or classes can go about getting started, which also introduces the Lab’s new micro-website connect.secondlife.com, and an accompanying updated FAQ on working in Second Life.
Please refer to the blog post for full details.
Updates:
- Patch Linden has confirmed that it is the period of the reduced fee offer on educational / non-profit regions that is limited. He added that the US $99 / month fee “will remain in place as long as their [the organisation’s / individual’s] invoicing is current.” My thanks to Brett Linden for co-ordinating the clarification.
- I noted to Linden Lab that the links within the knowledge base FAQ are (at the time of writing), not working. These are in the process of being fixed, in the meantime, Brett has asked me to refer people to the wiki version of the information.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Hello Inara,
About a year ago I did a proof of concept to show how virtual environments can be used for collaboration for teams split across regions. I did it as part of a Hackathon and my team did well. Within 5 days I was able to teach basic building skills and over the two days we were able to build a operational center with access into corporate applications and it worked well.
I did contact Linden Labs a few days before the event and explained what I did. I have to say that their turn around time on the request was not great and there did not seem like interest in what I was doing. It was made worse as I contacted them from my company contact detail and not my resident details as I wanted them to see this is a real request. I really hope Linden Labs is serious about this as the potential is significant and I don’t mean from an educational or product show case perspective.
Our proof of concept show how teams can do SCRUM stand ups and work on corporate applications. We even did basic integration into RL world devices with very little scripting experience.
I also think Linden Labs needs to consider how they deal with corporate entities. There should be some path to follow to do a proof of value back to a business and show tangible immediate benefits.
K
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