Fastest session for me using MindManager

This evening I recorded a meeting for the Winchester Action on Climate Change which had about 20 attendees. It was the brainstorming to start a 3 year plan for CO2 reduction in Winchester. Target 7% per year! The content remains private for now but here are some interesting stats from a event recorder using MindManager.

I walked in with a parent map with some information on it e.g. the attendees but I did not have an agenda. During the meeting I created 6 maps using the Right Click Topic > Send to new map command. Two summarising introductory presentations and three to cover the brainstorms on Transport, Domestic and Business/Government/Organisations plus their group feedback.

I have just used the Multimap View > Combine All to combine all the maps in to one. The statistics say I have 993 words (perhaps 100 of those existed when I walked in the room) in 316 topics (40 were there already).

Not bad for a 105 minute meeting. 3 topics a minute on average proably 10 topics a minute at peak.

Tha facilitator was really impressed by what I did and the load it took of him. He could concentrate on leading the meeting not writing on flip charts. Although he did some flip charts to start with but then realised there was no point.

Now I have to tidy them up and publish them as a web site, Word document and a set of PowerPoint slides by Thursday 17:00. Plus do the day job.

All in an evening's marketing and my bit for tackling climate change.

Is that a record breaker? It was definitely a personal best!

The MindManager Brainstorm Test

Many of you will be using MindManager to brainstorm, mind storm or word storm. I wonder how quick you are at it?

Take this test and then publish your results by commenting on this blog.

Normal brainstorming rules apply:

1. Don't argue with yourself as you enter the words
2. Try to use single words. Perhaps word pairs but not sentences! It will slow you down.
   

Here is how I would like you to proceed:

1. Make sure you can see a clock with a second hand.
   
2. Clear your mind.
   
3. Pick your topic and think about it for 30 seconds. For this speed test I suggest it is something you have been thinking about recently or are currently working on and not a brand new topic.
   
4. Start the clock. You have three minutes.
   
5. Open a new MindManager map and enter the Central Topic
   
6. Start entering your words as Main Topics. Don't organise them or add Sub-Topics. Main Topics only.
7. Stop when three minutes have elapsed. Count the Words and Topics entered. Hint: MindManager Button > Prepare > Properties > Statistics
8. Publish your result as a comment in this blog.

I will publish my result and my tips for this process in a couple of days.

If you want a more elaborate test. Record how many topics and words after 60s, 120s & 180s. Just put a marker in the map and count them at the end of the test. I wonder if there is a trend that one third is more productive than another.

If you are not a MindManager users but you do the test, please publish your results and the application you used.

Have fun.

Forget the Text. Just use Pictures. MindManager and the Tablet PC does the job

On Wednesday evening I went to a presentation by Mike Pounsford of Couravel at the VizThink London meeting organised by my friends at Cognac the Big Picture company. Mike took us through his companies process for visually facilitating the communication of business strategy. More on this in my next blog.

Mike challenged us at the end of presentation to split into three groups and discuss three issues. The group I joined discussed this. Here is your Sunday paper question:

What do these sketches represent individually and collectively? (click to see full size)


How did l do this? With an HP TC2710p and MindManager 8 (but you could do this with MindManager X5 Tablet and a TC1000 four years ago). The map is the record of a 20 minutes discussion between six people. For each phase of the discussion I created a topic and inserted a sketch using gestures. As I became more comfortable with what I was doing I used different pen colours. I did not contribute to the discussion very much.

At the end of the discussion I converted them to floating topics and placed then randomly on the map but so that the map proportions would match the projector screen. When we presented our conclusions to the other attendees we had a graphic artist's picture of our conclusion on a Flipchart sheet and these on the overhead projector, showing how we got there.

I occasionally use this sketch functionality in MindManager but my feeling is that I am under exploiting the opportunity.

MindManager Technical note:

I and others have been disappointed by the rendering of the ink writing or sketching when exported to images. When I export direct to png, jpg or gif, the ink and sketches are not of the same quality as on screen. See below. Here are two ways to improve it:

1. Save to bitmap. Do not resize. Open bitmap in Paint or similar resize and save in png or jpg. Gif will give a smaller file size but not the quality.

2. Use the Windows Tablet PC snipping tool or similar to cut the picture out of the screen and save as png or jpg. Then resize in your picture editor. This is what I did for the above.

Something for you to sort out properly Mindjet!

MindManager Year Planner for 2009 created with Excel

I normally post something to help MindManager Users plan for the new year. I struggled to find something and then I thought about getting the whole year on a map!

It was a challenge but on the way I discovered a useful way of cutting and pasting from Excel. If you structure your spreadsheet like this you can create the dates quickly in Excel and then paste to MindManager.

The first column becomes the main topic. Offset the content of the next column by one row and it becomes a subtopic. The third column creates seven sub-subtopics.

The good thing about Excel is you can quickly create these groups by starting a series e.g. 1, 2 and then dragging it down to fill to 7.

The third column was formed by combining columns 4 and 5.

I then pasted the first three columns on to the map. Hey presto the year appeared.

The organigram format created a compact map to the second level. Increase the level of detail to see the days in a week, month or year.

Download the MindManager map and the Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone finds these of use.

Useful set of utilities for MindManager

Olympic Limited have developed an add in to MindManager which adds a ribbon containing the following new functions:

• Topic Text Locker
• Convert Topic to Call Out and vice versa
• Convert subtopics to text markers
• Convert topics to notes
• Left sided map
• Vertical topic text
• Sum topic values
• Convert link to attachment
• Add date to topic
• Topic calculator - converts a topic value in to sub-topics in different units e.g. miles to kilometres

Free trial available here at Olympic Utilities