SL Relay for Life event banks over L$11,932,910 for cancer research

SL Relay for Life event spanned 12 sims (double the number of sims over last year), via MTV:

By the end of the walk, an hour had passed and the results were in. Distance traveled, including a little bit of wandering: 6,039.7 meters. The whole affair is one of the largest projects constructed in “Second Life” — bigger than the replica of Peter Pan’s Neverland, bigger than the baseball stadium built to depict this year’s All-Star home-run derby. It’s also the biggest charity event concocted in a world that saw significant building and giving following Hurricane Katrina.

I missed taking part in this event but this press release indicates that all donation efforts combined raised more than $40,000 USD for cancer research. That’s awesome. Linden Labs is wasting no time championing SL as a viable platform for augmenting fundraising activities:

This event proves that Second Life can be a powerful tool for non-profits to both extend outreach and augment fundraising activities,”said David Fleck, Vice President of Marketing for Linden Lab. “By extending their real world communities into the virtual environment, philanthropic organizations can energize their base while challenging new and existing supporters to reach greater goals through this creative and interactive platform.”

$40,000+ is a job well done. Just imagine if they had used L$ to identify the amount donated. L$40,000 at current exchange rates works out to just under L$12 million. Listening to Torrid Midnight on Secondcast #28, she indicated that during the event there were several sim server crashes followed by the complete grid shutdown over an exploit. Cristiano Midnight of Snapzilla was suspended for three days by the Lindens for letting people know on the forums to be aware of the exploit, but not publishing how to use the exploit. On the SecondCast, Cristiano explains his side of the story. On appeal the Lindens reduced to suspension from in world to forums only.

VTOR group member JohnnyRS wrote a little about Snail Race for SL Relay for Life.