Using mind mapping software to consider the future and its many opportunities

Earlier this week, I watched an excerpt of a conference in which a number of well-known speakers were talking about the accelerating rate of change today, fueled by compounding developments in technology and science. At one point, the keynote speaker talked metaphorically about a fork in the road between “What If?” and “If Only” – the difference between embracing change and our opportunity to develop big ideas, versus putting our heads in the sand like ostriches, and then regretting we didn’t jump at these opportunities when they were first emerging. This really stuck with me, and I quickly mapped it on a Post-it note as a simple, right-facing visual map, with the two paths converging.

As I thought about these two paths over the next several days, it occurred to me that “What If?” is the path of bold exploration, of considering a wealth of futures and possibilities. It is the path of creativity, of dreaming up the Big Ideas that will help bring about a better future for ourselves and others.

The other path, “If Only,” is one of regrets, of possibilities never explored out of fear or simple inertia. It’s the path of opportunities overlooked and chances not taken. It is the way of the risk averse, of the person who has tremendous gifts and ideas, but habitually fails to utilize them – or lacks the drive and discipline needed to bring them to fruition.

Finally, I got to thinking this morning about the role of mind mapping software in this process. Among other things, it is a powerful tool for thinking about the future – for exploring what ifs and possibilities. You can use it to lay out potential future scenarios and map out their likely implications, such as:

What if we had access to 100 times as much information as we do today?What if energy was so abundant, it was essentially free? What would that mean to our business?What if our supply chain could instantly react to changes in component availability, shipping delays and other factors beyond our control?

What is YOUR tool for thinking about the future of your career and your organization? Do you have one? I know what mine is!

Popularity: 1%

Read Full

A snapshot of business use of mind mapping software (infographic)

Category: Resources

I’m a big fan of infographics. So when the chance came to have one created to highlight the results of my recent Mind Mapping Software Trends survey, I jumped at the chance. Artist Jenn Gerlach from InfoGlyphs did a terrific job of highlighting the most important findings of this important survey, which provides a valuable snapshot of the use of mind mapping software in business.

Please help spread the word about the benefits of mind mapping software.

Feel free to share this infographic with all those who don’t understand why mind mapping software matters, and why it’s THE tool for helping knowledge workers to cope with the demands of today’s workplace.

How to save this infographic for your use

If you click on the image below, you can view a full-size version of this infographic (1,000 pixels wide instead of 600). If you want to save it to use in a report or web page, simply right-click and save this JPG image to a folder on your computer. Or you can link to the URL of this blog post. If you have any additional questions about this visual summary, please contact me.

Read Full

Using mind mapping software to consider the future and its many opportunities

Earlier this week, I watched an excerpt of a conference in which a number of well-known speakers were talking about the accelerating rate of change today, fueled by compounding developments in technology and science. At one point, the keynote speaker talked metaphorically about a fork in the road between “What If?” and “If Only” – the difference between embracing change and our opportunity to develop big ideas, versus putting our heads in the sand like ostriches, and then regretting we didn’t jump at these opportunities when they were first emerging. This really stuck with me, and I quickly mapped it on a Post-it note as a simple, right-facing visual map, with the two paths converging.

As I thought about these two paths over the next several days, it occurred to me that “What If?” is the path of bold exploration, of considering a wealth of futures and possibilities. It is the path of creativity, of dreaming up the Big Ideas that will help bring about a better future for ourselves and others.

The other path, “If Only,” is one of regrets, of possibilities never explored out of fear or simple inertia. It’s the path of opportunities overlooked and chances not taken. It is the way of the risk averse, of the person who has tremendous gifts and ideas, but habitually fails to utilize them – or lacks the drive and discipline needed to bring them to fruition.

Finally, I got to thinking this morning about the role of mind mapping software in this process. Among other things, it is a powerful tool for thinking about the future – for exploring what ifs and possibilities. You can use it to lay out potential future scenarios and map out their likely implications, such as:

What if we had access to 100 times as much information as we do today?What if energy was so abundant, it was essentially free? What would that mean to our business?What if our supply chain could instantly react to changes in component availability, shipping delays and other factors beyond our control?

What is YOUR tool for thinking about the future of your career and your organization? Do you have one? I know what mine is!

Popularity: 1%

View the Original article

Read Full

Twitter integration comes to the world of mind mapping software via MindTweet

Twitter intergration has finally come to the world of mind mapping software, thanks to CS Odessa’s new MindTweet plug-in for ConceptDraw MINDMAP 7. This new tool enables you to brainstorm, organize and send Twitter messages from within the program.

MindTweet is available from the ConceptDraw Solution Park; it’s a free download. The app installs a new Twitter icon in the program’s main toolbar. Before you can use MindTweet, you must login to your Twitter account and authorize the app to communicate with it. Once that’s done, all you have to do is select a topic in your mind map, click on the Twitter icon and a dialog box pops up, containing the text of your tweet. It also displays the number of characters left out of the 140 maximum that Twitter allows. You can then edit your tweet as needed and send it. Before doing so, if you check the “done” box in the corner of the dialog box, MindTweet will automatically add a checkbox icon to that topic – giving you a visual indication that this tweet has been sent.

This app is the ultimate in simplicity. But how is it useful?

If your job involves managing social media for your organization, it’s a godsend. MindTweet enables you to brainstorm ideas, themes, keywords and entire tweets using ConceptDraw MINDMAP’s brainstorming mode. I can see how this could be very useful in small group brainstorming sessions. You can also use the program’s presentation mode to share your proposed tweet campaign with your boss or coworker, and annotate the map with their suggestions. You can categorize and organize topic tweets, noting priorities and adding notes for future reference. Icons can be used to denote tweets that are ready to send out, priority or order of tweets to be sent, and those that need additional work.

In other words, you can design an entire Twitter campaign and then send your tweets out – without leaving the mind mapping program.The radial format of a mind map makes it very easy to see the visual sequence of tweets you intend to send out. This approach is ideal for brand-building campaigns, where you want to be able to tell and build upon a consistent story over a series of tweets.

I’ve been using Twitter for several years now. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t any program or online service that gives you the end-to-end power and flexibility that the ConceptDraw MINDMAP/MindTweet combo does. There are certainly many tools that enable you to write and schedule tweets, but nothing that gives you a palette upon which to brainstorm and organize an entire campaign like this.

A few shortcomings

There are three main features that I wish MindTweet offered, but I have to remember that this is a version 1.0 product:

First, MindTweet should have a link shortening tool built into it. If you have a long URL, you must use a link shortening service like bit.ly to generate a shortened URL, and then paste it into your tweet. This isn’t currently handled within MindTweet, but should be, in my opinion.

Second, it would be great if you could schedule tweets from within MindTweet, by turning topics into tasks and assigning a start date and time to them. But then you’d have to keep ConceptDraw MINDMAP open all the time, or would need to have tweets stored in an online repository. Perhaps future integration between MindTweet and HootSuite?

Finally, it would be very cool if MindTweet added a Twitter logo icon to the program’s symbol library. Why? So you could use it to differentiate between those topics that are tweets and others that are simply background information or raw ideas.

Conclusion

All things considered, MindTweet is a great effort by CS Odessa. It’s wonderful to see a developer who isn’t afraid to take the lead and develop an app that brings such valuable social media integration to the table. I can’t wait to see how MindTweet evolves – it should be quite interesting!

Popularity: 1%

View the Original article

Read Full

How to use mind mapping software to manage your blog

about how to use a mind map to generate hundreds of ideas for blog posts (based upon an older post from his blog). It has generated dozens of positive comments. While this is an excellent use for this form of visual thinking, it’s not the only way that mind mapping can be employed by savvy bloggers. It can actually be a powerful, multi-faceted tool to help you to better manage your blogging business.

Inspired by Darren’s simple mind maps, which are meant to spur ideas and open his readers’ minds to new possibilities, I created one that presents a representative sampling of uses, designed to expand your horizons on what’s possible.

Do you have any ideas to add? How else could you manage a blog using visual mapping?

 

Popularity: 1%

View the Original article

Read Full

Mind mapping software is an essential tool for today’s workers, survey shows

Sign up for the RSS feed What is RSS? Home Product Directory Product Reviews Newsletter Power Tips & Strategies Popular Articles Advertise Contact Mind mapping software is an essential tool for today’s workers, survey shows Aug 6th, 2011

View the Original article

Read Full