Yeah, it's a mouthful ;^)

I'm going to ask Anne Marie's forgiveness on this one, because I think she's already written about a recent experience she had via a U2 concert in Boston. I suspect she'll connect with what I'm about to write about here, because there's a good chance she's already hit on this.

At the end of September my husband and I spent a weekend without the kids in Chicago. We needed it. Things had been turned upside down in our lives, and sometimes you just have to get away. The trip was planned around the U2 concert, and I have to admit that while I really did want to see them, I was largely indifferent until I got there. Something happened about the 3rd song in. I forgot that I was locked out by CBC and that we believed my husband was about to be locked out by his employer for several months too. I forgot that on that morning I had cried for several hours because I'd just gotten off the phone with my friend Rose who was about to flee a hurricane's wrath for the second time, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I forgot these things because a man -- who has spent some 30 years of his life using his music to champion social justice -- took hold of a microphone and stopped singing to just talk to us. While the multimedia images on the glass bead wall behind him were enough to shock you out of any kind of better world coma you might have been in (the Declaration of Human Rights scrolling past as a young woman vocalized each right in a powerful way), it was the way he told you very plainly why you should start giving a damn again, or maybe for the first time.

Half way through the concert, he stopped again. The audience grew almost silent as he said "You know, when I was in Africa, I learned of this beautiful, powerful word ..."

That was all it took. My husband practically had to wrestle me to the ground to keep me from shouting "Ubuntu!" out at the top of my lungs ;^)

It wasn't so much that Bono gets it, but that he cared enough to take a performance venue that earns him an obscene amount of cash, and used it to reach out to people in a way that made it almost impossible not to connect. The entire performance was a tapestry of lyrics, and images, and powerful invitations to wake up and engage. You left that concert feeling with every fibre of your being that you had to get out there and "do something!"

Text messaging your name to the ONE Campaign wasn't enough. Writing senators wasn't enough. And while it shouldn't matter to us that we've listened because a celebrity told us to, the fact remains that over 2 million people have signed up because of it.

Think about that for a moment.

In the few short months that the ONE Campaign has been alive, over 2 million people -- double the goal -- have publicly declared that they care, and are engaged, and ready to "do something".

Unlike LiveAid, Bono's intentions aren't just grand. They actually mobilize people in a very concrete way.

My husband and I were so transformed by the experience in Chicago, that we went back to see U2 again in Detroit 2 nights ago. It was right after the launch of Better World Island, and got me thinking about a particular question:

How do we take this new shared space that we've got in Second Life, partnered with this concrete and functioning space that we are collaborating in here at omidyar.net, and use them to plug-in to the great ripeness of this momentum?

Bono's got 2 million people all fired up to "do something". What kind of "do-somethings" can we provide using our tools? How do we create that do-something router that allows people to leave something like one of those concerts, go home, and immediately find very concrete ways to plug in. What can they do in their own community to contribute to what's working in the effort to end global poverty? AIDS? child trafficing? genocide?

How can we take the essence of what we do here, and synthesize it in a way that doesn't overwhelm people when they are new?

This was largely what I was attempting to conjure up through the island at SL: a visual catalogue or menu of do-somethings. People can walk up to the Peace Tiles center and see how and why that project is vital. They can watch "Hotel Rwanda" together, even if they are in 10 different countries -- and explore the lessons learned 10 years ago, and what's working since then that can be applied to Darfur. People should be able to walk into Kijiweni and see bold challenge statements and pictures on the walls, inviting them to recognize opportunities to engage and collaborate. They should be able to walk into a pavilion and recognize Jonas Salk, and hear his words about the value of creating "epidemics of health".

How do we take this raw plumbing that is there now at Better World Island and turn it into a living, breathing Do-Something! router?

That's what I was thinking when I left the second concert, and what I'm hoping lots of people will want to collaborate on now ...

http://www.omidyar.net/group/bwi/