University of Southern California

Project lead, Doug Thomas, shared a few of the 71 responses to a question posed to voters, “What is the public good?” Many of the responses revolved around themes of helping a wide audience, doing no harm, making individual lives better and building community. In his research, Thomas has identified four primary ways virtual world communities can be used to support such public good agendas to transition from the virtual world into the physical world, including: awareness, dissemination, organization and action, and intercultural dialogue and exchange.

Thomas continued by sharing some of the ways the challenge has already proved to be successful by citing examples where individuals have spontaneously volunteered to help projects, groups have united to work and collaborate on projects together, and unexpected resources have become available to a number of the projects.

Concluding, Thomas said, “We know that all of this is the beginning and not the end for these projects.” When accepting his award for Native Lands Cultural Outreach, Boondoggle Gruppman said, “All the proposals were wonderful and worthwhile and we are very excited and honored to have been in the company of such terrific finalists.”