International Spaceflight Museum

In November, the SciLands sent Linden Lab a letter about the negative effects of ending the 50% educational discount for region monthly charges. To our surprise, they responded promptly and courteously.

Troy McLuhan [SL] announced on Nov 12th that “Bob Komin, the COO and CFO of Linden Lab (and acting CEO?) replied to our letter (the Letter from the SciLands Senate). You can find it
here:”

http://bit.ly/d7kuGE

The essence was “While I understand this coming change will have an impact on a portion of our community, we have chosen to not continue to provide a special discount based solely on type of organization because it does not reflect the underlying economics of developing and delivering our service. Instead, we will be moving forward with a single discounting approach that rewards and encourages higher volumes of business for all of those engaged in Second Life, regardless of their organization type. This approach allows us to share the benefits of lower costs from economies of scale with those who help generate them.”

In the half-year since then, a third of the SciLands organizations have reduced or ended renting regions …

Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, on October 4th, 2010, announced an end to their educational and nonprofit region 50% price discount, effective January 1, 2011.

Speaking for myself, not for any of the dozen organizations I volunteer or work for, I replied the following day on my Spindrift region blog.

The SciLands Senate, the governing body of the SciLands STEM continent in Second Life, has sent an open letter to LL early in November expressing our reactions to their ending the educational discount.

Kat LeMieux and I signed as ISM Directors and SciLands cofounders.

Having rebuilt his RL (real-life) music studio after losing his house in the 2010 Nashville Tennessee flood this spring, Cypress Rosewood (Tony Gerber in RL) returns to the International Spaceflight Museum to resume his ambient/electro/space music concerts. Cy plays guitar, native American flute, and keyboard.

The latest performance is 8pm SLT (United States west coast time – PDT) Thursday October 28th.
Next concert is also 8pm SLT on Friday November 19th.
Both shows will be held at our ISS (International Space Station) exhibit high above Spaceport Alpha. Click this Second Life url to go directly to the ISS platform – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/152/127/451.

Here are pictures from a previous docking of Captain Rosewood’s CyRos MusicianShip at the ISS platform at Spaceport Alpha. You can see Tony Gerber’s RL and SL concert dates at his website calendar.

Yes, both Spaceport Alpha & Bravo have one-year funding!  I have no further details, except to say: this will take ISM through September 2011 payments for both regions/sims, both donors are anonymous, one has been funding Spaceport Bravo for one year, and neither one is myself.

The end-of-year LL (Linden Lab) price jumps for non-profit and educational organizations will not affect the Spaceflight Museum because the IRS denied our 501c3 application on the grounds that we had no physical presence.    So both of our regions costs remain at U$195 per month.

We again thank all of our previous donors who have kept the Museum alive from 2006 until now and hope for your contined support and technical help.  We can now start to actively explore an old ISM long-term project: extending our exhibits into OpenSims opensource VWs, a developing frontier in virtual worlds, given enormous new impetus by LL’s removal of the 50% educational discount.  More on this effort in future posts!

For now, try this post by John Lester, formerly Pathfinder Linden.  With a link to Maria Korlolev’s ‘Advice to Educators’ resources post as well, it’s a good introduction to the mindset and techniques of expanding or migrating your educational VW presence to other grids.

-Paradox

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!