Upgrading from MindManager 6 to 8

A friend has just updated from MindManager 6 to 8. I gave her these quick tips to alleviate some of the transition pain from drop down menus to ribbons.

• Right clicks on items e.g. topics produce drop downs. As do the tiny triangles and the “down right” arrows on the ribbon.
• Right click favourite commands on ribbon and Add to Quick Access bar
• Right click ribbon and minimize
• Right click ribbon name bar to un-minimize

10 Things to do with MindManager over Christmas and the New Year

1. Make your Christmas present list (Tip: Look at the map you made last year first)
   
2. Record all the Christmas presents your family receive and who sent them (Tip: Use Task resources).
3. Plan the Christmas lunch particularly and the period in general (Bad News: MindManager only works in hours not minutes)
   
4. Make your New Years resolutions (Note: See Tip 1)
   
5. Plan your must watch TV (Tip: Scrape info of BBC web site or similar)
   
6. Play Family Brainstorm (Tip: Great use of wide screen TV)
   
7. Map out the things you did not get for Christmas but will buy for yourself in the sales (Tip: Woolies is a mess. Don't there.)
   
8. Index your LP, CD and Cassette collection prior to selling on eBay (Note: This is for nostalgia not making any money)
   
9. Research your 2009 holidays (Tip: Drag and drop links and prices from web sites. Note: Conflict with 10))
   
10. Pause for some thoughts about how you could make the world a better place in 2009

Please note:

• I have done some but not all of the above.
• Some of these maps will have conflicting content. A master map may also be useful.

Have a great Christmas break and all the best for 2009.

Andrew

p.s. Please substitute Christmas with your preferred festival.

A December Newsletter MindManager Style

I like to write my newsletters in MindManager and distribute them as maps. Once upon a time I was able to copy and paste a clickable map web export in to an Outlook email but security levels no longer permit this. If you know the answer please tell me.
Now I send an email with the text content linked to a web page version. Click the map to load the clickable image map version my December Newsletter.

I also produced the PDF version with the player but this just shows the limitations of this export which is for simple maps only.

I have been following a friends instructions on how to do a mail merge in Outlook. Everything is going well until the merge bit. Then I only get 2 out of the 10 addresses in the trial batch being merged. Aagh! May be some of you will get it by Christmas.

Using MindManager to facilitate the reading of business plans

Over the last week I have produced twenty maps to illustrate a business plan for a start up business. What an interesting exercise. First to produce maps which summarise the following paragraphs of text in a few words using the connectivity and relationships MindManager maps provide you with. Secondly to supply the maps and manage the editing process.

Summarising means taking out all but the keywords. Will the audience (venture capitalists and angel investors) understand them. The business owner had a problem with working from 1 o'clock round to 11 o'clock. They saw 11 o'clock as the starting point. Not sure whether my suggestion "Look at the central topic, relax, where do your eyes go next?" worked.

I supplied the maps and pictures via a web site created with MindManager. My index map for all the maps became the web site. A page for each section of the business plan displayed the picture of the map plus links to the original MindManager map file and the print quality picture file.

Now I have to a wait a little while to see whether my work has worked on the investors. I will comment on this post as I get information.

MindManager User Group in Twitter Groups

I have just created a MindManager Users group on Twitter Groups. Another place for us to congregate. Please click the link to join.