“Mind mapping solo is a great way to get ideas out of your head and into a visual form that you can organize and use to think with,” said Carola Thompson, senior director of user experience at Mindjet. “Mind mapping in a group is similar in that you get ideas out of heads, but as a group you have more ideas to draw from.  This is particularly powerful in the ideation phase of a project.”

Mind Mapping This Post

During my research into collaborative mind mapping and the Catalyst service, Thompson shared a map with me that she had created based on our conversations and emails. In the map, Thompson provided the highlights of our previous discussions, then added her comments and quotes under relevant topic areas.

“A hint on reading mindmaps,” she told me. “Read them as you would a clock.  Start at 12 noon and work your way around the circle clockwise.”

Catalyst addresses many of the issues I’ve seen crop up with attempts at collaborative mind mapping using other tools:

• Lack of real-time editing capabilities.
• Risk of overwriting someone else’s data if two or more people are in the same map at the same time.
• A danger of the map becoming bloated as everyone chimes in.

“It’s a bit like ‘yellow stickies,’ but electronic,” said Thompson. “You may have collisions or two people attempting to organize the same topic, but the presence tools such as chat and editing indicators help enable users to coordinate their work in a virtual setting much as they would on a wall of stickies.”

Parker H. Trewin, director of global communications at Mindjet, also added his thoughts to the collaborative mapping for this post.

“The map is a living document of the group’s collective thinking, and is always up-to-date,” said Trewin (via the map). “With a shared workspace, all my team members can access a joint map and co-create and co-edit ideas, plans and strategies with dispersed team members at any time, from anywhere. Think of it as corporate crowdsourcing where I leverage the collective thinking of my team in real-time. I can then share the thinking in shared workspace for the team.”

Catalyst integrates with other Mindjet tools. For example, Thomspon used the MindManager desktop client for Windows to create the map about this post and shared it with me and Trewin via the Catalyst server. In turn, I was able to access and edit it from Catalyst entirely on the web, as was Trewin. As shown in the screenshot below, you can identify who created and edited any element of the map:

“The Catalyst Server is the glue that holds all of this together,” explained Thompson. “It manages the co-editing and makes it easy for people to work together without having to worry about checking out files and checking them back in. All edits are live.”

Prices for Catalyst start around $108 per user per year, and you can get a 30-day free trial.

Have you tried collaborative mapping ideas with your team? How is it working for you?

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MindNode is a free download. MindNode Pro, which comes with some useful additional features, such as cross connections and visual file links, costs $24.95, while MindNode touch (for iOS devices) costs $5.99.

What mind mapping software do you use?

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Moving to Pen and Pad

One weekend when all the kids were sick, I sat on my comfy bed with my laptop. Growing tired of my Internet fiddling, I closed the laptop and pulled out the notepad that I keep in a bedside drawer, where I had jotted down a blog post idea before going to sleep the previous night. I also grabbed a ballpoint pen. I added bullet points to expand those thoughts. Since I was already at it, I figured I might as well keep on thinking of blog ideas and captured about four pages of notes.

Getting the Ballpoint Pen Rolling

This put me in the mood for more writing — with paper and pen. Something prompted me to keep exploring more ideas for my blog. During this process, I discovered my big mistake with past mind map attempts: using software. No matter how fast I could whip up a shape, cut, paste, type — the process felt tedious. Pen. Paper. Brain. For me, these work best for mapping out ideas. In 15 or 20 minutes, I had created seven maps. They could lead to at least 25 solid posts!

Creating More Maps

My first map took a high-level approach with “Writer” being the center of the map with four subcategories: “writing,” “marketing,” “business” and “editing.” Expanding all of them filled the page, so I began a new map on subsequent pages making central themes out of the following:

• business
• marketing
• blogs
• supplies
• social media
• the act of writing

All these appeared in one of the earlier maps. When I identified many ideas for a single category, I gave it its own map so that I had lots of room. The maps and branches grew from there. This process helped dig up ideas faster than I ever could sitting in front of a computer. It also sparked more ideas than I could just sitting and contemplating writing topics; there’s something about seeing them written down on paper.

Those circles and branches held magic. They compelled me to add more. I probably could’ve filled 10 more pages, but I had to rip off my writer uniform to reveal the mommy one and fulfill my duties in saving the world, or, at least, comforting my kids and getting them to bed.

So, I’m a geek who loves her apps but prefers mind mapping by hand. It works. If you don’t use mind maps because you find mind mapping software cumbersome, maybe it’s time to try the good old-fashioned pen and paper route.

How do you come up with ideas for blog entries and articles? What process do you use?

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First, let me clarify that I’m looking at the Windows version for the purposes of this post. For more info on the Mac version, check out this post over at TheAppleBlog by Matthew Bookspan.

The first thing I noticed about MindView 3 is the redesigned user interface. Like a lot of software that’s designed to be used alongside Microsoft Office, the new look resembles Office 2007′s UI, right down to the ribbon-style menu, the location of common commands, and the use of the “Start” button to access advanced options. People who don’t like Office 2007, or those still using older versions, might not be comfortable with the new interface, but in my opinion, it’s a great improvement.

Another improvement comes by way of the great collection of built-in templates, which can take a lot of the grunt work out of setting up a mind map. I used a basic web site template for the purposes of this review, since I actually have to set one up anyway for a friend’s new small press publishing venture.

Using MindView is incredibly easy. You can add notes in the bottom frame for any item, and you can switch views in the main pane from Mind Map to Top Down, or select from a number of other choices. Each branch you add to the root can be customized with a picture of your choosing, and you can add a built-in or custom icon to any item in your map. All of these options can be found in the ribbon, pretty much exactly where you’d expect to find it if you’re familiar with Office 2007.

You can also quickly reformat your entire map with pre-set styles, in much the same way that you can in Word and PowerPoint 2007. Files and hyperlinks can be attached to any and all items, and you can even package attachments with your mind map so that they’ll be available to others you may want to share your file with. And if they don’t have MindView, you can export to a variety of formats, including PowerPoint, Word, and HTML.

Any web worker would probably benefit from getting to know mind maps and how to use them, and MindView 3 is a great tool for doing this. It’s easy to learn, especially if you’re already comfortable with using Microsoft Office 2007, and its templates provide great starting points for novice users, while its customizability ensures that experienced mappers won’t feel limited.

However, while it does offer a 20-day free trial to download, the cost of the full version is a fairly hefty $279 for a single user license, so I’d only recommend a purchase if you’re a heavy user of mind maps or if you know you will be able to use this tool for revenue generation.

What tools do you use for mind mapping?

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Before I proceeded testing out an application, I wanted to have a better understanding of what mind mapping was all about so I went to Wikipedia for a definition:

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

The more I read, the more I was excited to try mind mapping in some form because I certainly could use some help with organization, problem solving and decision making in my Web working business.

What I immediately liked about bubbl.us is that the moment I arrived at the site, all I had to do was click a big button that said “Start Brainstorming,” and I was presented with my first bubble ready for me to fill it in.

By hovering my cursor over the bubble, I was given pop up descriptions of each feature such as: click and drag to move the bubble, create a sibling bubble under same parent, create a new child bubble, select bubble color, even connect two bubbles with a directional line. For someone who gets hives from reading the manual, these bite-sized instructions available to me at any time as I built my map was like ambrosia.

The first map I made was for my company, Moonbow Productions, Inc. I wanted to get a sense of what services I offer to clients. This map took less than 10 minutes to produce.

The next map I made was to get a grip on the many “irons in the fire” or projects I have in progress. This map took me 20 minutes to produce.

The last map I made was a list of services I offer with the corresponding clients who are utilizing the various services. This map took me 10 minutes to produce.

In less than 40 minutes, I had three different ways of visualizing the work I do on a daily basis and a much clearer perspective of where I spend my time.

As usual, I’m only scratching the surface of the features of yet another Web app, but with this tiny scratch, I’ve really taken care of a big mind itch.

How Mind Mapping Can Help Web Work

Here are some of the ways might think of using mind mapping:

1. Visualize how your work is distributed. Where are the profit centers, and are you focusing most of your time and energy on those?

2. Identify loss leaders. Where are you spending time during your work day that isn’t having a direct impact on your bottom line?

3. Organize tasks. How can you group tasks together to be more efficient with the work you do each day?

4. Plan for expansion. If you are looking to grow your business, what areas should you augment? What areas could you pare down because they aren’t really paying the bills to make room for new things?

5. Diversify. Are you concentrating too much on a single area of Web work? What if that work dries up? What other areas can you branch into in order to have other options

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of mind mapping, you might want to take a look at “The Mind Mapping Manifesto” by Chuck Frey or go to his blog The Mind Mapping Software Blog. Although his material seems very “salesy” at first, you can find some gems tucked in between the hard sales pitches.

“You’re a victim of ‘information overload,’” says Frey. “To survive, you need to sift through a mountain of information, ideas and knowledge, synthesize meaning from it and communicate it in reports, plans and other business reports.”

Don’t we all!

Are you mind mapping and if so, how are you doing it and what has it done for you?

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