Ishtar Roux on air on'Two Martini Lunch'

So there I was, sipping my martini 'shaken not stirred', at the Sunset Jazz Club, listening to the 'Two Martini Lunch' radio show on 'Martini in the Morning'.

My reason for being there? Cancer survivor and Relay for Life of Second Life team captain Ishtar Roux was being interviewed on the show by Brad 'Martini' Chambers.

Ishtar Roux and Whenever Timeless in purple dancing at the Sunset Jazz Club

'Ish' talked about the history of Relay for Life, not forgetting to mention that it is 'International', and explained how RFL of SL is very similar to RFL in real life. She also gave simple and easy-to-follow advice about how to find out more and take part. And all this while she was dancing ... WTG Ish!

Belle Loll and Poppy Zabelin watching the dancing as they listen to the radio program

If only someone had told me that I needed to throw on something more respectable than t-shirt and jeans!

I painted my house purple ...

After brainstorming with some Relay For Life volunteers, RFL of SL event chair Fayandria Foley came up with the idea of showing our hope by turning our land, our clothes, everything we could think of, purple on a chosen day. So, Monday, June 1 we turned SL purple.



Poppy's Place

I painted my house and died my hair in the cause.

For more images see the Daily SL News blog:

http://15timez.blogspot.com/2009/06/well-sl-showed-us-all-their-hope.html

Mixed reality conference on impact of virtual worlds in public health

I was honored to be one of the speakers recently at a mixed reality all-day Health Expo to celebrate the launch of the Health Commons. It was organized by the Non-Profit Commons, an online community initiative of Techsoup Global, and part of the NetSquared Conference in San Jose, CA.

The expo consisted of a number of panels, with the aim according to the organizers of 'bringing together healthcare leaders and practitioners to share best practices and develop new strategies for incorporating technology to address the need to organize and disseminate health-related information and to connect with other nonprofit health organizations to promote the advancement of innovative projects, cures, research and advocacy'.




Left to right: Poppy, Sting and Fay

Stingray9798 Raymaker, the ACS representative in Second Life; Fayandria Foley, Event Chair of Relay For Life of Second Life; and I were on a panel to discuss the ways in which the cancer support community, the cancer treatment community and the cancer research community can meet together and share ideas and support, through the various inworld support networks in the virtual world of Second Life. We also explored the fundraising success of Relay For Life.

There were five panels in total and the other four panels consisted of: mental health issues (Coughran Mayo), HIV/AIDS awareness (Ricken Flow), healthy lifestyles (Rebecca E. Lee & Sameer Siddiqi, Texas Obesity Research Center), and disabilities (Gentle Heron of Virtual Ability).