International Spaceflight Museum

Thanks to ISM visitor KikoHunniton, a new video of the ISM has been posted to CNN’s iReport site. Click on that link to read the article, and enjoy the video here:

A week after the ISM Board of Directors’ decision to sell Spaceport Bravo, leaving the region behind when the SciLands moved, a generous donor committed to paying the entire monthly tier/rent cost of our second island/region for the indefinite future.  Spaceport Bravo joined the rest of the SciLands four days after their move

To this person, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, we offer the heartfelt thanks of the Board, all the volunteer staffers, and the 3000-4000 monthly visitors to the International Spaceflight Museum!  A rescuer of ISM, encouraging likewise efforts by others someday, and giving hope.

-Paradox Olbers,

ISM President & head of operations

The International Spaceflight Museum [ISM] is leaving Spaceport Bravo behind in the SciLands move, and announced that it is for sale by auction.  “Kirra Ball donated the isle and 2 years rent/tier, but after that wonderful donation ran out in the spring of 2009, visitor and volunteer  staff donations were never   enough to pay for Spaceport Bravo.  It is with the greatest reluctance that the ISM Board of Directors voted this weekend to put the isle up for sale,” is my  comment as ISM Director and President.

The Board’s resolution: 

“Move the Board approve the sale of Bravo as quickly as possible in order to fund Alpha long enough to find a sponsoring organization and/or complete the 501c3 application process.”

Gus Plissken /SL name is handling the transaction, with an ISM BoDirectors  waiver: “Resolved, that Fred Fuchs and/or Firesabre Consulting be authorized to act as agent for the ISM Corporation in marketing and selling the sim, Spaceport Bravo, and should be indemnified against any claims of conflict of interest for the purposes of performing this service for the Board.”

-Paradox Olbers

ISM President

ISM Board of Directors

I reported at the weekly Wednesday 4 pm PDT/SLT meeting that we had a matching donor for the next month – if a person makes a donation, he’ll match it.  But I wasn’t telling the truth; the donor is me, and the staff can’t keep supporting Bravo by ourselves. 

Here’s our true situation:  Most of our donations come from the volunteer staff, a few large contributions (U$10 to U$50) each month and we can’t keep it up since we have to cover at least half of Spaceport Alpha’s rent/tier too.  So I’ll match all public [not staff] contributions up to one month’s rent for Bravo – U$195 – made before Sept 20th.  I apologize for trying to drum up contributions by using this tactic and then redefining the offer.

I’ve changed my original offer that didn’t put a cap on the matching because we’ve just got some outstanding publicity in RL  and possibly a big staffer donation too, which could lead to public contributions that would exceed my ability to match.  The new publicity that gave me renewed hope for a large increase?

*On Thursday, Hamlet Au’s New World Notes, one of the largest five sources of SL news, gave us a great post asking people to help.  [Clarification - my original offer was to cover this month's rent/tier, NOT indefinitely until the 501c3 came through.]  http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/08/save-spaceport-bravo.html 

*Earlier today (Friday), Rik Riel also gave us a supportive post as well at Betterverse.org.  http://www.betterverse.org/2009/08/the-second-life-spaceflight-museum-needs-help.html

Thanks to you both for getting our situation out to many avatars who have never heard of the International Spaceflight Museum before!

-Paradox Olbers, President of ISM and head of operations

One of our active members, Mike Goerisch, has just posted a truly excellent article in his blog with a spot-on, entertaining description of the ISM. Do have a look.

Of course, but in particular the US Internal Revenue Service have sent us a letter asking for more information regarding our application for tax-exempt status. This is excellent news, since it means we are getting close to approval of that long-awaited state. While the ISM Corporation has been a non-profit corporation in the eyes of the State of Kansas, where we are incorporated, since 2006, that is not the same as having recognition from the IRS.

So, please help us keep the doors open as we clear this final hurdle! The bills are due again next week, and we are far from being able to pay our monthly debt to Linden Lab. You can follow our progress in that effort on our online balance sheet here, and you can help by visiting our Donation page here.

We’re almost there!

Kimberly Rufer-Bach’s new book, The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication, Collaboration, and Community Engagement, includes prominent mention of the International Spaceflight Museum, according to Dave Taylor (Davee Commerce in Second Life).

Kim knows what she’s talking about. This is her second book about Second Life®, and she has been a member of the ISM Planning Group for several years. Kim’s in-world development consulting group, The Magicians, has done some of the most original and effective builds in the virtual world.

Our congratulations and best wishes to MICA-VW (Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics – Virtual Worlds), the first professional scientific society formed entirely within virtual worlds. This week they were featured in Wired and Tish Shute’s blog.

When MICA’s founder, Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, first came to Second Life in late 2006, the ISM provided meeting space and an introduction to the culture and mechanics of our world to Piet and some of his astrophysicist friends. MICA met in the ISM Clubhouse and ISM Workshop for about a year until they acquired their own island, StellaNova, and joined the SciLands group in SL.

We at the ISM are very proud to be associated with this illustrious and innovative group, and are glad we were able to help them get started.

The ISM Balance Sheet has been replaced by a new Google spreadsheet because of a technical glitch with Google Docs. There is a shortened URL available, xrl.us/ismmoney1.

If you look at the bottom of the new spreadsheet, you’ll see we received a huge donation (L$30,000) from an avatar in the past day, which effectively saves Spaceport Alpha for this month! Many thanks!! (I am not revealing the avatar’s name at this time, since we don’t have permission to do so. If consent to let us acknowledge this generousity is given, we will publish it here.)

Now we just have to raise at least US$152 by the end of next week, and Spaceport Bravo will also be with us for at least one more month.

Thanks again for all your support since we started this museum, in 2005!

Do you Twitter? Even if you don’t, you can see what people are “tweeting” about the ISM by going to http://hashtags.org/tag/sl-ism. If you do have a Twitter account and want to discuss the musuem there, please use “#SL-ISM” somewhere in your message so it will get indexed.

Some examples of tweets using this tag:

This image is from a Twitter client called iTweet.

To find out more about hashtags, see the Twitter Fan Wiki entry. For more ideas on using Twitter and other online social network tools for nonprofits and education, visit Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog.