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The Second Life Relay For Life that was held over the weekend, organized by SL resident Jade Lily working with Randy Mars of the American Cancer Society, was apparently a smashing success. From what I hear, it had raised more than $10,000 before it even started. I wouldn’t be surprised if it raised a total of $50,000 or more, considering that a virtual car at auction took in $2,000, and Electric Sheep Jerry Paffendorf cites a figure of $30,000 from Saturday. For my part, I offered a profile in the Second Life Herald to the highest bidder. That coveted prize went to SL resident Chance Takashi for L$11,525 — just under US$40. I love that a profile in a virtual tabloid is worth $40 to someone. One interesting result of the whole event, though, is that it has more people thinking about how SL could be used effectively for other similar causes.

The Herald profile was auctioned off by SecondCast cast member Torrid Midnight and her Pixels in Pink team, which has apparently raised $2,280 in dollar donations already and came top of the list for L$ donations, with L$3,775,834 — more than US$12,000! I think much of that was raised through purchases like the ones listed here on the Linden Lifestyles site.

It’s fairly amazing to see the power of SL to bring communities together for a cause like this. There is of course the question of whether an event held next year, when some of SL’s novelty value will have worn off, will be as successful. Even if it’s not, though, the fact that SL can currently galvanize so much real-world support for a good cause is heartening, and there is much unexplored potential. The Non-Governmental Imagination blog (bigger font, please!) has an interesting post on discovering Second Life and the various social causes people are applying it to. I’m not sure who the blogger is, but they apparently work for or with Interplast, a non-governmental organization that works to repair congential deformities and injuries.

As the blogger puts it, “Our clients (poor children in developing countries) generally don’t have electricity, much less broadband. They’re not on SL spreading the Interplast story. And congenital birth defects and injuries are not as widespread as cancer. Maybe 1 in 700 kids is born with a cleft, and 1 in 200 girls in the global south gets a disabling burn (compared with 1 in 2000 in industrialized countries). That’s not 1 in 4, so it’s less people that have been indirectly affected. Lastly, limited resources. It always comes back to ROI, and its harder to find time to just walking around a virtual world talking to people if you’re in a smaller shop where everyone has a bigger comparative chunk of organizational responsibility.” [Emphasis added.]

Still, the blogger sees hope: “Even with all this in mind, I wonder about the possibilities. Susan Tenby is a driving force behind the Tech Soup / Second Life interaction [TechSoup helps non-profits take advantage of Web and other technologies], and she wants to show everyone how successful this can be. There is clearly a huge potential benefit for NGOs. I guess what I would need to take the plunge is some sort of roadmap for how NGOs, large and small, can find supporters in a big virtual world, with time estimates clearly stated.”

At the Metaverse Roadmap summit, there was a lot of talk on both sides of the fence about whether virtual worlds could really make a difference to some of the more challenging problems faced around the real world — and here we’re talking stuff like genocide and political repression. At the summit, Ethan Zuckerman was one of the most vocal skeptics about whether virtual worlds could be of benefit. (His blog seems to be down at the moment.) But I wonder whether some useful solution might evolve naturally out of events like the Relay For Life. We mere mortals are not normally so good at predicting the paths of new technologies (sorry, Jerry); many of the most productive uses that come out of any new technology are more emergent, and develop simply through use: the right person stumbles on the technology at the right time, and brings the right new idea to it. Voila, a great new use for something that didn’t seem to have an application to Problem X before. The money is great, and my mom, who’s struggling with cancer, will be pleased to hear about the whole thing, and tickled that I’ve auctioned off a Herald profile as part of the event. (”I gave you more work!” she said when I told her about it on the phone just now.) But the money aside, one of the best things that could come of this virtual charity weekend is more work being done on how virtual worlds could be similarly effective in other areas. This will be a great thing to see.