By Randall Munroe of xkcd.com

One of the things I try to get clients to understand is: Your website is not for you. It’s for your audiences.

I’ve also been invited by the National Science Foundation to be participate in a panel to choose the winning proposal for a major online resource in Ethics in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. It’s an honor to be invited, and it’s fascinating to read these proposals for such a ambitious and worthy project. However, the proposals are long, dense, and detailed, and reading them with the closeness required to make an informed comparison is time-consuming . . . but more about that later. For this post I wanted to write about our current website projects:

OTREC, the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, is one of the national UTCs (I didn’t know what that meant before this either). As such they disburse federal dollars to research projects in transportation at four Oregon Universities. OTREC’s themes (each UTC is different) are 1. Innovations in Sustainable Transportation through Advanced Technology, 2. Integration of Land Use and Transportation, and 3. Healthy Communities. What’s not to love?

The new Blue Mouse Monkey OTREC website will be launched in early September.

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The Spirit Mountain Community Fund is the philanthropic arm of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde. The fund gives millions from the Tribe’s casino to Oregon non-profits. They also operate a fellowship program to send Native American youth to serve with Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C., and a tribal grant program to benefit development projects in other Oregon tribes.

Here’s something I didn’t know till I met the good folks at SMCF: “The Tribe” as it’s known is made up of the descendants of the many Oregon tribes that lived in the Willamette Valley and the Columbia Gorge until they were evicted by the US government in the winter of 1857. They were forcibly marched to a reservation in a move dubbed Oregon’s Trail of Tears. Adding insult to injury, the tribe lost its Federal recognition in 1954 and the reservation was reduced to 7½ acres. The tribe’s status was restored in 1983. Since then the Tribe has gotten back on its feet through an ambitious economic development program to achieve self-sufficiency.

“The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde through the Spirit Mountain Community Fund fulfills their Native tradition of potlatch, a ceremony at which good fortune is distributed. The Spirit Mountain Community Fund’s focus is to improve the quality of life in Northwest Oregon through community investments that provide lasting benefits consistent with the Tribe’s culture and values.”

Coming from New Zealand where post-colonial issues are more top-of-mind with the general population than here, it’s been really interesting for me to meet folks from the Tribe and come to understand something about the journey they have taken as a people and a culture in order to adapt to circumstances that were forced upon them.

The new Blue Mouse Monkey Spirit Mountain Community Fund website will be launched in late September.

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PlayWrite, Inc, is a Portland organization that uses “the power of performance in art to transform the lives of youth at the edge” They go into schools, particularly under-served schools, and do a two-week residency that brings young people together with coaches from the Portland performing arts community. Students work one-on-one with coaches, learning and honing the tools for creating a play.

“Each play in its entirety springs solely from the mind, feelings and heart of the young writer. At the end of the workshop, professional actors perform a staged reading of the plays before a live audience. This performance – the culmination of three weeks’ work – is a collaborative event involving author, actors and audience. The young writers glow with well-deserved pride as they witness their work being brought to life.”

The new Blue Mouse Monkey PlayWrite website, in all it’s dramatic, swirling, plum-colored glory, will roll out in late August.

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TOFCO is the Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon, a not for profit organization that includes a coalition of businesses, organizations and individuals who advocate for programs and policies to decrease the toll of tobacco-use in Oregon. The new Blue Mouse Monkey version of their website, launching in October, will be a one-stop shop for anyone looking for information about tobacco use in Oregon, including science, policy, and community information, as well as an examination of the ironies inherent in linking tobacco use with being cool.

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We’re excited to be working with these diverse organizations to help them frame their issues, disseminate their value, and strengthen their voice in the community!

Detail of 'Control Center', by Julia Stoops, 2007. Mixed media on panel.

The Blue Mouse Monkey article Is your 24/7 ambassador an embarrassment? was published in the Non-Profit National Resource Directory in April. You can download it as a PDF, or read it below:

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THE WAY IT OFTEN GOES

Your organization does awesome work. You want to do good and you want to empower others to do good too. But if your website is anything short of excellent, it won’t be connecting with your audiences. And there’s nothing more disheartening than an aspirational organization with a mediocre website.

Many non-profits have tight budgets, so a humdrum website comes as no surprise. Such sites are created under “bare bones” conditions, either internally, if there’s someone on board who knows HTML, or externally, by an unseasoned web designer willing to create a portfolio piece for a low or no fee.

And once the site is launched, the “It’ll do” mentality kicks in. Your organization’s staff and volunteers are glad to have a site at all, even if it means referring to it in apologetic terms:
“…it’s not particularly exciting…”
“…it wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for…”
“…it’s cluttered, but we didn’t know how to fix that…”
“…but it’ll do for now…”

And so the inadequate site becomes the public face of your organization. And your audiences-the donors, volunteers, clients, applicants, members of the media, elected representatives-they visit the inadequate site. And they find your mission statement, and your address, and they download a form they want, but they’re getting just the basic facts. They can’t see the passion in your work. No stories are told. No surprises are offered. Nothing moves them.
What a wasted opportunity. You and your organization are trying to cause fundamental change for the better, and your website does nothing to move your audiences. And this becomes more than a theoretical issue when you consider your volunteers and donors. If you want to persuade people to part with their time or money, they need to be moved to do so. Your organization’s website should play a key role in that persuasion.

THE 24/7 AMBASSADOR

Look at it this way: your organization’s website is not just a glorified extension of your phone book listing. It’s your 24/7 ambassador. If you had a staff member who was “always on” and available to talk to anyone, anywhere, about your organization, wouldn’t you want them to do more than repeat your mission statement in a flat monotone and hand out business cards and forms? You probably wouldn’t risk letting such a staff member out the door, let alone be out in the world for years at a time.

Instead, you’d want that always-on staff member to be telling stories about your good work in the world. And not just the same story over and over, but different stories to each person who approaches. The staff member would tell them the latest news, with pictures, even video. The staff member would give out tips and resources, point out relationships between your organization and current events, and build a picture of the value of your organization and its successes. Visitors would still pick up that business card or form, but they’d come away with so much more. A sense of “Wow, that was awesome. I want to know more. I want to contribute. Participate. Join them on Facebook. Tell others.” This is the kind of response an ambassador should elicit.

At this point you may be asking, “What makes the difference between a mediocre site and an excellent site?” The answer lies in a combination of factors:

1. INVESTMENT

UNDERSTANDING THE TRUE VALUE OF YOUR WEB PRESENCE

Q: “If our site looks fancy, donors will think we’ve wasted money that could have gone into helping the communities we serve. Remaining plain, even awkward and ‘homespun’ demonstrates that we’re economical.”

A. There are two problems with this argument. Firstly, an excellent website doesn’t need bells and whistles to connect with your audiences. But it does need to be planned and designed well, and it needs to be adaptable as you and your circumstances change.

Secondly, keeping your website in the “It’ll do” mode is a false economy. An excellent website that truly expresses your vision and your stories is not merely a pretty bauble. It is an investment in the growth of your organization and its ability to serve your communities. According to a study reported April 2009 in BizReport, that looked at how website visitors were likely to part with their money or time, “highly satisfied” visitors to non-profit websites are 49% more likely to donate money and 38% are more likely to donate their time, when compared to dissatisfied visitors.
Read the full article >

The real question is not, “what does an excellent website cost?” but rather, “what are the hidden costs and lost opportunities inherent in a mediocre site?”

2. PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION

THE CRUCIAL FIRST STEP

Q. “But what is there to plan? Here’s our mission statement, our contact info, some news articles, and our bios. It just needs to be arranged neatly.”

A. Planning your site should be strategic. It’s about stepping back and looking at your organization and your audiences: where you’ve come from, where you are now, and where you want to go. An audit of your current site, with its strengths and weaknesses, along with the goals learned from the planning process, will inform the information architecture, messaging, and design of the new site. An excellent site is built with adaptability and growth in mind.

3. COPYWRITING/COPYEDITING

TAILORING YOUR MESSAGE TO YOUR AUDIENCES, WHILE KEEPING YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE

Q. “Why do we need a copywriter? We’d rather do the writing in-house. After all, we know our organization better than anyone.”

A. It is true that your staff knows more about your organization than an external writer. However, organizations’ websites are at risk of being verbose, wonky, dull, repetitive, and inconsistent. A good compromise is a copy editor: someone who will work with you to unify your message, remove stylistic stumbling blocks, and refine your writing in alignment with your voice, your goals, and the needs of your audiences.

Keep in mind that Web visitors:
• don’t read, they skim
• absorb information in a non-linear way, not necessarily in the order you intend
• will leave much of your website unread
• need information categorized under familiar terms and according to a mental schematic they understand
• don’t need to be told that this is your website and in it they will find information about you
• should be asked, outright, to sign up for your newsletter, RSS feed, or to donate
• like to look at pictures and be told stories

Above all, your audiences should get the information they need as quickly and easily as possible. Especially audiences who might give you something, such as money, time, or exposure. NEVER think, “If they really want to know ‘X’, they can call.”

4. DESIGN

NOT JUST CHOICES ABOUT COLORS, FONTS, SYMBOLS, IMAGERY, AND LAYOUT, BUT THE OVERALL INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND EXPERIENCE, TOO

Q. “So called ‘good’ design doesn’t make much difference, right? It’s icing on the cake, something most visitors won’t notice-as long as they can access our information, we’re good.”

A. A well-designed website is not only visually pleasing, it anticipates your audience’s needs and questions, and gives them information in a digestible form. An intuitive interface makes fewer demands on the visitor’s brain as they navigate, while a confusing, cluttered website causes frustration and fatigue. The effect may be slight, but cumulatively leads to a less positive experience for the visitor. Thus, they are less likely to make the investment of signing up for your newsletter, volunteering their time, or clicking the Donate button. Design isn’t just about looks, it’s about functionality.

5. TECHNOLOGY

THE SOFTWARE UNDERPINNING THE SITE AND THE ADMIN SYSTEM

Q. “How do we update the website ourselves? Should we go with a web company that will set us up with their own proprietary content management system?”

A. The content management system (CMS), through which your staff edits the website, should be easy for non-techies to use. It should also be browser-based, meaning it’s accessible (with a secure login, of course) from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Ideally, your CMS should be based on a widely available system so that you’re not locked into a contract with one provider. If your website is built on one of the widely available systems, and you want to switch providers, you can do so easily because many technical experts know how to work with those systems. Whereas, if you’re locked into a proprietary system, only people from that one company can understand the inner workings of your website. And if you want to move away from that company, your website will probably have to be rebuilt.

6. INTERACTIVITY AND ANALYTICS

ENGAGING VISITORS AND GATHERING DATA

Q. “It’s all very well to describe our website as an ambassador, but besides being our “always on” public face, what else can this ambassador do? After all, we’re short staffed here and everybody has to wear multiple hats to get the work done.”

A. An excellent website is more than just a passive brochure. It can interact with your audiences, let them interact with each other, and gather data. Visitors can “talk back” on pages that allow commenting. They can talk to each other if you have a forum. You can poll visitors, and use the data in your work. You can showcase your clients, and grow your and their community. An excellent website also facilitates adding visitors to your database and social media outreach.

Behind the scenes your “ambassador” does analytics, noting which sites and search words bring in visitors, which pages they looked at, how long they stayed, and even the age of their browser. You can learn what’s driving traffic to your site, and watch for clues such as pages that visitors consistently leave early: a sure sign that something is confusing them. Analytics helps you refine your messaging and adapt to changing conditions in the client, donor, political, and social landscapes.

SUMMARY

A well-planned, well-designed, powerful web presence will nourish your organization in multiple ways. Your “ambassador” should get you donors, build your database, frame your issues, tell your stories, and spread the word. In short, your website should be connecting you with your audiences, authentically and powerfully.

As the BizReport article says,

…nonprofit websites have long been underestimated and misunderstood, and actually have tremendous power and influence over donor and volunteer behavior.

Your organization is extraordinary. Your website should be, too.

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© Julia Stoops, 2010

To create this site a custom “skin” was wrapped around a WordPress content management system, which for Jackie makes updating her site as easy as keeping a blog.

But I had to face facts: when I work with a client, I create or refine their brand. Whether they’re organizations, artists, or businesses, my clients don’t just get a website. They get a coherent, unified web presence that aligns with their core values and goals, and articulates these values and goals to their target audiences.

So it’s time to come clean: Blue Mouse Monkey creates brands and websites for changemakers and cultural innovators.

After all, our clients are extraordinary. They do important work. It’s the best job in the world helping them succeed.

So lift yer shirt and don’t flinch.

Audit sketch of an existing website

All websites require planning—that’s so true it’s almost a tautology. But some websites require more planning than others. Blue Mouse Monkey is enjoying an influx of opportunities to overhaul large complex websites, and I’ve been in super-planning mode the last couple of weeks.

As Steve Jobs says, design is often mistakenly ascribed to how something looks, but it’s really about how it works. It’s my job as a web designer to integrate the “how it looks” and the “how it works” according to many factors. There are several useful terms to describe this type of thinking, such as information architecture, interaction design, user experience design, and website architecture.

Historically the term “information architect” is attributed to Richard Saul Wurman, who saw it as the “creating of systemic, structural, and orderly principles to make something work”.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE is the categorization of information into a coherent structure, preferably one that the most people can understand quickly, if not inherently.

Understanding how a typical user will experience a decision a website asks them to make (e.g. click on link ‘X’ to access information ‘Y’) takes empathy. It’s the ability to put oneself in the user’s shoes — the user being someone who isn’t nearly as familiar with the website’s content or purpose as my client or I are.

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INTERACTION DESIGN attempts to improve the usability and experience of the product, by first researching and understanding certain users’ needs and then designing to meet and exceed them.

The first conversation I have with clients is always begins with, “Who are your audiences, and what do you ideally want them to do on your site?”

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USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN most frequently defines a sequence of interactions between a user (individual person) and a system, virtual or physical, designed to meet or support user needs and goals, primarily, while also satisfying systems requirements and organizational objectives.
Typical outputs include:

• Site Audit (usability study of existing assets)
• Flows and Navigation Maps
• User stories or Scenarios
• Persona (Fictitious users to act out the scenarios)
• Site Maps and Content Inventory
• Wireframes (screen blueprints or storyboards)
• Prototypes (For interactive or in-the-mind simulation)
• Written specifications (describing the behavior or design)
• Graphic mockups (Precise visual of the expected end result)

When I plan a website I do all these things, except the Persona one, because that’s more applicable to game design. However, we bring in a focus group to give feedback on nearly-completed websites, so in a sense we have real users acting out the experience of the site.

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WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE is an approach to the design and planning of websites which, like architecture itself, involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria. As in traditional architecture, the focus is properly on the user and on user requirements. This requires particular attention to web content, a business plan, usability, interaction design, information architecture and web design. For effective search engine optimization it is necessary to have an appreciation of how a single website relates to the World Wide Web.

Since web content planning, design and management come within the scope of design methods, the traditional vitruvian aims of commodity, firmness and delight can guide the architecture of websites, as they do physical architecture and other design disciplines. Website architecture is coming within the scope of aesthetics and critical theory and this trend may accelerate with the advent of the semantic web and web 2.0. Both ideas emphasise the structural aspects of information. Structuralism is an approach to knowledge which has influenced a number of academic disciplines including aesthetics, critical theory and postmodernism. Web 2.0, because it involves user-generated content, directs the website architect’s attention to the structural aspects of information.

Then there’s the issue of users with different levels of familiarity with the Web. Unlike printed forms of communication such as books, newspapers, magazines and brochures, the Web is not something the majority of the population grew up with. Kids today are “digital natives“, but there are plenty of us still around who are “digital immigrants”.

An analogy is our knowledge of The Book. We all know how to read a book, so much so we barely register it as a type of knowledge. We understand the heirarchy of cover, title, table of contents, parts, chapters, appendices, index. We don’t have to consciously remember where to begin, or in what order to experience the content, because we learned that stuff on our mother’s knee. Well, maybe not appendices and indices, but by the time we’re reading those kinds of books, we have a solid framework to slot those categories into. But the Web? We’ve had to learn that as adults. And it’s so new it’s barely been standardized. No wonder many people find websites (and computers in general) frustrating. Humankind has been tossed into a new way of organizing and accessing information, and our brains, accustomed to one method, have had to adapt to another. Not unlike like the Mediaeval monk who has to be taught how to transition from scrolls to a bound book in this comedy sketch.

Not that I’m complaining. Much like how the invention of the printing press led to the spread of liberalism, the Internet communications revolution challenges many traditional structures of knowledge and information by removing gatekeepers to access and expression.

Time for me to get back planning more website architecture. There’s information to organize!

Now I’ve worked with subcontractors for years, and I even share an office with developer Jimmy Thomas of Acts of Good, for we do most of our projects together. But it became clear during 2009 that if I didn’t make changes, I was looking at a lifetime of switching gears between strategizing for clients, creating brands, taking care of all aspects of design, updating legacy client sites (the ones built before I was using content management systems), handling inquiries, facilitating team meetings, managing projects from soup to nuts, networking, and keeping on top of administrative tasks like scheduling, planning, bookkeeping, budgeting, invoicing, updating the business plan, talking with lawyers, CPAs, and so on.

So I should hire some help, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. For starters, help with what? I do a million different things—which several hundred thousand would the help help with? “Get a junior designer” was the frequently offered advice. But it’s my design sensibilities that make Blue Mouse Monkey’s work unique. And besides, the design is the funnest part. How sad would that be to give it up.

What I needed help with was the administrative tasks. So it became a matter of figuring out which parts of my workload I could “peel off” and give to someone else. Preferably someone who is better at them than I. Then designing a job description around that, then designing a want-ad around that, then designing interview questions, then posting the ad…
…Craigslist. Part-time. No benefits. The only draw was a non-standard workplace, seeing as we’re creative types and all…
…165 applications. I read every single one. I filled out a matrix that assigned scores of 1-5 to several criteria for each applicant, plus I wrote notes. Then I averaged out the scores, telling myself I’d revisit all the ‘4’s and ‘5’s. There were a dozen or so complete duds, but there were also so many ‘5’s I had to cut some of those out in the first round. Then I interviewed the remaining ‘5’s. Seventeen in all. Jimmy participated, even though this wasn’t his hire, he’d be sharing space and projects with whomever I chose. Plus, it was good to have his company while a parade of talent passed through our office.

Part of me was thrilled that so many over-qualified people were interested. But another part of me was heartbroken to see so much smarts and creativity and talent so dreadfully unemployed. Brilliant resumes that ended in 2008 or 2009. One woman who wrote me an apologetic email after firing off an angry one (I had rejected her in the first round) had me in tears. There is no reason why good people who have done all the “right” things should be set adrift so cruelly by an economic system that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them and considers them nothing but a “human resource.” It’s unfair, and undignified. This is not the way it should be, I kept thinking. This is not the way it should be.

But, it’s the way it is, and I had to keep going through the process. And it’s true I was grateful that “too many to choose from” was my biggest problem.

For the second round of interviews I got it down to five applicants. The “final five” I called them. Every one of them was excellent. As I said to Jimmy, “I’ll hire them all, and we’ll take over the world!” But the budget was for one, and part-time at that. So after the second round of interviews I spent a weekend in agony, going back and forth, considering every variable I could.

Funnily enough, after considering all the variables, I offered the job to the person who I had instinctively thought “This is the one” right after her interview. I kept trying to ignore that instinctive response, telling myself that I should take all the variables into consideration. But after that weekend of agonizing, Shelise Gieseke really was the one, and I offered her the job the following week. She is settling in to her role as Studio Manager and I remain thrilled to have her at Blue Mouse Monkey.

Oddly, Shelise doesn’t come from a design background. I say oddly, because many design industry folks applied. Shelise’s background includes communications and being a legal assistant, so I knew she’d be great at client care and staying on top of detailed tasks. But what distinguished her in the end was a combination of good humor, critical thinking skills, and an interest in social justice issues. Shelise splits her time with Adoption Mosaic, a local non-profit that provides information and resources to address the unique needs of the adoption community, particularly around international adoptions. Shelise is a Korean adoptee and she is interested in the way society shapes the adoptee experience through language. I didn’t know much about international adoption until I met Shelise, but apparently the complexities and risks are numerous.

I’m not adopted, international or otherwise, but I am an ex-pat who didn’t live in her native country till the age of 10, then spent a total of only 13 years there. Perhaps it’s the “outsider’s edge” that I can relate to, the faint background hum of being “not from here”. And the knowledge that there is nowhere in the world where that hum would fall completely silent.

But this isn’t a problem, because it’s the edge that give us outsiders a inbuilt appreciation of cultural relativity, great observation skills, awareness of the shaping powers of culture, and makes us take extra care with communications. All excellent skills for brand creators and web designers!

It keeps us nimble and resourceful, too, for navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

My name is Julia, and I’m a recovering solopreneuraholic.

But it wasn’t just busyness that caused the newsletter’s downfall. Last spring my database got big enough that it was time to move to an actual newsletter system. I tried one that was opt-in only. It sounded fine at the time, but it turned out to be really easy for people to miss the crucial step of clicking on the ‘opt-in’ link inside the invitation email. I got a lot of “Yes, sign me up!” replies instead. Seeing as it was an opt-in only system, I wasn’t able to oblige. Plus there were the messages that straggled into my inbox about finding the invitation in trash folders. Then there were the folks who clicked on the ‘opt-in’ link only to find it didn’t work.

All up, it was a fiasco. And I was too busy to figure out a solution.

Compounding the confusion was a disassociation between my mailing list and my address book. As in, they barely matched. Then there was the new list of people who HAD successfully subscribed to the opt-in system. So I had folks in my address book who hadn’t been invited to opt-in, the folks on my mailing list who had chosen to opt in, the folks who did not choose to opt in (a pox on them, but, whatever), and the folks on that same mailing list who would have chosen to opt-in if 1. they’d known about it, and/or 2. they followed the right steps, and/or 3. it worked when they did.

What’s a busy business owner to do?

Okay, it’s my fault for not starting with a clean database. I lack the ruthless tracking gene. It used to be if I obtained an address it would go into my mailing list. Or address book. Or both. Or neither. Database? More like datamess.

So I’ve learned my lesson and I now consistently hoard those little ‘@’ symbols like potatoes. No, I don’t really hoard potatoes, but they are round and storable and provide nourishment over the long term.

Anyhow, my point is it’s a whole year later and I’m starting a new mailing list! It will even have pictures!. But don’t worry, it will still come out about 3 times a year. I loathe being bombarded with e-newsletters, and I think I am not alone in that sentiment. But Blue Mouse Monkey makes extraordinary websites for extraordinary people, and it would be a shame not to showcase our clients and let others know the wonderful work they’re doing in the world.

   

With apologies to Thomas Cole

It probably doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s been a turbulent few months at Blue Mouse Monkey. So much has happened that my processing power got all taken up, and regular activities such as blogging got neglected. But now I’m able to stand back and review the changes from a little distance. This is the first in a series of entries about Blue Mouse Monkey’s recent evolution!

But first, some history: Since 2001 Blue Mouse Monkey grew successful making portfolio websites for creative professionals, such as musicians, visual artists, architects, jewelers, writers, and others. Those who know me know I’m not one to boast, but I must acknowledge that my educational, creative, and academic backgrounds enable a particular level of interpretation and sensitivity when it comes to presenting a fellow-creative’s work in the interactive space of the Web.

You see I didn’t come out of design school. Sure, I took plenty of digital multimedia courses to learn the technical side of web design, but what I bring to bear on every project is something no design course will teach you: A lifetime commitment to art, which includes a BFA, MFA, a career in galleries, and 15 years experience teaching in colleges in Auckland and Portland. Then there’s the BA in philosophy and linguistics, which gave me a grounding in the history of ideas, and was a unique enough combination with the art qualifications that it led me to design and teach a great deal of hybrid studio/liberal arts curriculum during my teaching career. It also means there’s a rich set of connections underpinning everything I do, along with a strong right-brain/left-brain integration.

But, as those who know me know, I’ve also had a long-standing interest in social justice. There are so many people doing such great work in non-profits, NGOs, and in the public sector, and I’ve been looking for ways for Blue Mouse Monkey to partner with them in their efforts.

In 2008 we were fortunate to be asked to create the Community Health Priorities website, whose mission is to engage Oregonians to weigh in on what it means to live in a healthy (or unhealthy) community. With an eye to the social determinants of public health, the site encourages Oregonians to participate in surveys, share feedback, read news, peruse resources, take action, and apply for grants. The opinions and other data that the site gathers helps the Northwest Health Foundation fund “upstream” solutions, develop policies, and do advocacy work.

As David Rebanal, Program Officer at the Northwest Health Foundation said, “Blue Mouse Monkey was instrumental in helping us achieve our goal of engaging Oregonians to articulate a vision of a healthier life for everyone. The CHP site has become a forum for intelligent discussion, and a trusted resource for the public and policy makers alike. Plus the data we get from the site helps us communicate public health priorities to policy makers.”

Then in 2009 we were asked to completely overhaul the Northwest Health Foundation’s main website, and it’s been an honor to continue working with those fine folks and help them do their good work even more effectively.

After these inspiring experiences I wanted to expand Blue Mouse Monkey’s range to include more organizations and groups working to create positive change in the world. At the same time, it was clear that we should continue working with creative professionals, for they do positive work, too. So after thinking about it for an hour or two or three hundred, I rewrote the Blue Mouse Monkey tagline: Ingenious websites for changemakers and cultural innovators. Ingenious because our websites are “characterized by…originality of invention or construction”, and are “cleverly inventive or resourceful”. And changemakers and cultural innovators because that’s where it all goes down.

I’ve also been getting more involved in the non-profit and civic sectors, both in the arts and social justice, by participating in Mackenzie River Gathering Foundation, City Club of Portland, and the Sustainable Business Network, and by sponsoring the Creative Advocacy Network, Illahee Lecture Series, and Orlo — just to name a few.

It’s been a great journey so far, and Blue Mouse Monkey is now partnering with some wonderful non-profits in 2010. Watch this space for a gaggle (Flock? Clutch? Slew?) of new websites to roll out during the year!

Yes, it’s gorgeous. A technical and aesthetic marvel. The plants, the blue indigenous people, the textures, the colors, the light, the planet hanging in the sky of the moon Pandora. Sumptuous. Seamless. No pixel left unedited.

It’s been called “revolutionary.” I assume this adjective refers solely to the digital effects, because if we’re talking plot, memes, politics, or history, it’s not even close.

Ostensibly, the film’s message is anti-imperialist and anti-corporate. The army boss is the epitome of the ugly American invader, and the corporate boss is the epitome of the ugly American capitalist. They are clearly “baddies”: uninformed, insensitive, greedy to win. Their attitude evokes the Bush administration, even down to their use of phrases like “preemptive strike”. One dimensional characters, to be sure, but I get it that they stand for something bigger.

Ostensibly there is a “conversion”. The jarhead (Jake Sully) who is sent to infiltrate the indigenous people, comes to love and respect them. (He also happens to be a “wounded healer” - a new age cliché if ever there was one). Okay. Love and respect are good things.

Ostensibly the indigenous folks drive out the invaders. Now that’s a message I can get behind.

Except that it is undermined in so many ways.

That evening when my friends and I picked Avatar apart, I kept thinking about how it could have been soooo much better. For instance, imagine an Avatar in which it’s not a foreigner jarhead who unites the indigenous people and saves the day, because the indigenous people have the wherewithal to save themselves! Or, to be even more revolutionary, they save the stupid invaders and ALL of them “go native”. And imagine if they solved the problem of their invaders not through Massive Violence, but through cunning. Or playful trickery. Or even diplomacy!

And imagine an Avatar in which the hero doesn’t automatically get the girl. She was, after all, betrothed before her tribe and her god to another, and when she and jarhead hook up it’s really a massive violation when you think about it. Which sorta matters, because folks get mad for a bit, but they don’t have time to be permanently mad or banish her or anything, because they need the violator to save them from ones like himself. Even her formerly-betrothed conveniently comes around after about three minutes of speechifying by the jarhead, and the formerly-betrothed even obediently agrees to translate the jarhead’s further speechifying for the masses. Which struck me as odd because the jarhead by then had managed to pick up the language quite well, I thought.

The formerly-betrothed conveniently dies during the Massive Violence, as does his father, the chief. This leaves a power vacuum into which the jarhead will naturally step. And the indigenous people are down with that because they are in awe of him because he rode the red dragon. And up till then nobody had ridden the red dragon. So he is automatically awesomer than any of them. Even though he had to learn dragon-riding from them. And even tho’ he boinked the chief’s daughter. (Or maybe because — ?)

Which brings me to the dragon-riding. Which starts out with dragon-subduing, because those beasties do NOT want to be subdued and ridden, thank you very much. Like my friend said, it looked a lot like rape. This is how it works:

1. to prove your manhood, you have to subdue and ride a dragon.
2. you and the guys approach the dragon hangout.
3. the guys tell you to go in among the dragons and find the one that will become “yours”. As in “you choose it and it chooses you”. Mutual choosing. Very nice, okay. So you ask how you’ll know when one chooses you? “It will try to kill you,” you’re told. Not so nice after all, but here goes…
4. You go into the dragon hangout. The dragons are pissed. Some leave. One stays and tries to kill you. In a violent struggle you mount it and connect your hair filigree stuff to its hair filigree stuff. A jolt runs through you both, and there’s a glazed look, a grunt. The dragon falls quiet. You feel triumphant and you whisper, “You’re mine now.” to the dragon.
5. The guys, who have been watching, are proud of you. Even the one who is betrothed to the woman you’ll eventually steal from him is grudgingly proud. (Funny how he was right to be suspicious of you all along.) The guys tell you to fly the dragon. “The first flight seals the bond.”
6. You take flight. Awkwardly at first until you realize the dragon is relying on you to control it with your thoughts.
7. Then you and the dragon are flying around gloriously. Awesome. Who doesn’t want to fly a dragon by controlling it with their thoughts? (Well, maybe me, but I’m just generally scared of big animals.)

Now this dragon will be there for you whenever you need it. It’s yours. (Except when you ride the other dragon, the big red dragon - which makes me wonder, did the jarhead’s chosen dragon feel hurt when he abandoned it for the bigger, nastier one? So much for the lifetime bond…)

Anyhow, my point is that considering how beautifully connected the indigenous people are with every living thing around them, couldn’t James Cameron have come up with a way to get them flying dragons without all the struggle, dominance and subjection? Me, I’m tired of that shit. It is so time we moved on.

So why have a jarhead infiltrate a tribe, go native, then save them, anyhow? Avatar is a textbook example of what Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence call the American Monomyth, a variation on the classical monomyth as proposed by Joseph Campbell.
Jewett and Lawrence define the American monomyth as:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity.

Except jarhead hardly renounced temptations: he bagged the betrothed girl. But enough about that. Oh wait, I did want to say something more about that. About the indigenous bodies in general. The indigenous people were quite animal-like in some ways. They’d drop to all fours, hiss and spit, leap from branch to branch. But interestingly, they weren’t animal-like in any ways that might make the audience feel uncomfortable.

For instance, they had prehensile tails. Did they ever use them? No. That would make them too monkey-like. But if you watch animals with prehensile tails, they use them all the time, like a fifth limb. And the sex. When jarhead and betrothed-girl hook up it’s all tender and slow and gentle. Very human, actually. But I wish they did it more like bonobos - that would have been funny. Oh and what’s with the bits of necklace artfully stuck to betrothed-girl’s boobs no matter how much she moved? A la Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon, thanks to wardrobe tape there was glorious natural wild nakedness, but not really. Those noble savages have to seem decent, after all. No bouncy bits, please.

And as for the ending. Nice! The bad invaders slink away with their tails between their legs! (Wait, no, they’re not the ones with the tails.) But anyway, all chagrined, the human survivors of the Massive Violence get back on their space ship under the watchful eye of the indigenous people and the few humans who went native and gave up their human bodies for the tall blue bodies. They happen to be brandishing machine guns to make sure the bad humans don’t retaliate again. Peaceful living-in-harmony-with-nature beings still gotta have machine guns, JIC.

But there’s a 500 pound gorilla in this ending. The unobtanium. It’s still there. Under the destroyed home tree. As if the humans won’t be back for it, this time with massive firepower and reinforcements and the taste of vengeance in their throats. Because during the whole course of this movie, NOTHING REALLY CHANGED. NO ONE LEARNED A THING. HISTORY WILL REPEAT ITSELF, and the blue people will be toast when the humans get back. A few leftover machineguns and some fast obedient dragons will be no match for whatever weaponry the humans will unleash.

James Cameron, if you’re such a genius, surely you’re smarter than this?

How much more spectacular it would have been to take us to the fabulous moon Pandora, let us dwell among the fantastic flora and fauna till we fell in love with it, have our expectations of the inhabitants delightfully, inspiringly raised above the level of humdrum response of violent revenge, and watch them solve a massive problem, with multiple stakeholders with conflicting desires, in an ingeniously non-violent way. You could still do it with tension, danger, and excitement. It needn’t be Pollyannaish or preachy. It could be thrilling, with plot twists, shifting alliances, and surprises. It could still be truly entertaining. But, you fell back on the American Monomyth.

Is there software for that? Like you open up a template and do a find-and-replace so all the ‘hero’s become ‘Jake Sully’? And where it says ‘Rise Up In Revenge Speech’ it gives you ten lines to write it because there’s a time limit to what audiences will tolerate?

Making that film must have been enormously challenging. Hard, you could say. It must have been a hard film to make. But how hard would it have been to make it conceptually so much better? You already solved all the technical and aesthetic problems: a better plot should have been relatively easy. All you need for that is a pencil, some paper, and the will to be truly revolutionary.

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What others say:

New Zealand blogger Tom Goulter’s series called The Week Of Trying To Say Anything In The Least Bit Interesting About Avatar.

Avatar…spends two hours talking about how beautiful it is to be peaceful and in tune with nature and what-all and then has a final hour in which the killing of people is fetishistically rendered up for our delectation even as elegiac choral music plays to provide the token suggestion that said killing might be a bad thing.

NYT Columnist David Brooks’ piece, The Messiah Complex,

[Avatar] rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

From British blogger Jon Brown’s 1000 Tiny Things I Hate

If there’s one thing we can be absolutely sure of the day we finally “make contact” it’s that the extraterrestrial civilisation we encounter will have developed its own uniquely shitty brand of world music.