The Luxor Theater was the location for TEDxRotterdam on last June 4, 2010. Speakers from all over the world gathered to present ideas which are worthy enough to be distributed. Or: Ideas Worth Spreading. The theme of the day was: ‘Somethink Completely Different. The program consisted of several special performances and Talks. Our partner World of Minds facilitated this event via livemindmapping on a livestream on the web. It was possible to follow mindmaps grow which were made by the team of World of Minds. (Photo © Marc Nolte)

Wat is TED?

TED is a nonprofit organization that spread ideas which are worth it. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. It started 25 years ago as a four-day conference in California. The annual TED conference invites world ’s greatest thinkers and doers to speak for up to 18 minutes. After that, the presentations are made available on TED.com.

TEDx is a program of local, independently organized events that bring people together to share the TED experience. On a TEDx conference, video and live speakers will be combined so that great discussions are elicit. Also a great degree of involvement will be developed in the exclusive group of attendees. These local, self-organized events called TEDx, where x stands for “Independently Organized TED event”. Although TEDx is a self-organized event, the big line in the program is according to the TED principle.

Program

(photo © Thomas Dral) TEDxRotterdam consisted of a very diverse program. It distinguished itself from other events because all the speakers differed from each other. Each speaker had his or her own style and subjects. This ensured that the audience got inspired again and again. Also the  many performances between the speakers were very enjoyable. Quite something else between the speakers, like a piece of music, singing or dancing, ensured that the audience remained fresh and sharp. This made it attractive for the audience to listen attentively to the innovative ideas of the speakers and receive these ideas. Also people were able to redistribute these ideas and create new ideas by themselves.

The program consisted of four parts:

1. Our World,
2. How We See The World,
3. How We Experience The World and
4.How We Explore The World.

Our World

The host of TEDxRotterdam, Max Westerman, welcomed everyone and explained what the day would bring and what the rules were to the speakers. Each speaker had only eighteen minutes available during his or her presentation.  Also he explained how people inside and outside the theater could participate directly in the event. People exchanged ideas with others by using Twitter through the hashtag # TEDxRdam.

To get started right away, none other than the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, was the next speaker. He had a few important issues about poverty. Aboutaleb grew up in a poor Moroccan village so he had experience with this subject and knew so much about it. Remarkably, he began his presentation with an impressive Moroccan poem.

The remainder of Part 1 of TEDxRotterdam brought forward some great quotes. After the impressive performance of Besim Hoti and Marielle Rijkaart, Bas Haring said during his presentation: “Sometimes you need to be an island, so you’re blocking other people’s ideas and begin to think for yourself. ” A distinct quote because TED stands for sharing ideas. This quote made a lot of people think.
Arjan el Fassed, located in the top 500 of Twitter users,  presented on the great impact of social media. In example, there is a street named after his Twitter-account: the ‘@arjanelfassed tweetstreet’.

How We See The World

AAlso during the second part a number of renowned speakers presented. Olympic swimming champion Maarten van der Weijden discussed a very direct and honest presentation about overcoming cancer. Like in Part 1, this part consisted of a few performers such as Harry Merry and Ntjam Rosie. Igor Nikolic gave one of the best presentations, according to many specators. This was because his speech filled with nice one-liners like: “Evolution is about trial and error, not trial and success.”

How We Experience The World

In Part 3, it was Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer who presented vividly on library 2.0. Eppo is a librarian by profession and talked about the impact of the internet and other media for libraries. Eppo said tactfully about libraries: “It’s about meeting people, not the books.” After other speakers in this third part, including the pastor Abeltje Hoogenkamp and APOPO founder Bart Weetjens, had spread their ideas, it was concluded with the brilliant performance of Celine Cairo. (Photo © Marc Nolte)

How We Explore The World

Part 4 of TEDxRotterdam brought the last but certainly not the least speakers. Professor Dick Tibboel gave an interesting presentation about pain. He explained that over 4 million people in the Netherlands are 65 years or older. Many of them suffer daily pain and therefore “a new instrument” is developed so that pain in humans can be easily identified.
Host Westerman shut off and looked back on a day where many new ideas arise and spread.

(Photo © Bram Muller)

Livestream livemindmapping

Besides the live videostream provided by TEDx there was a livestream with the mindmaps: livemindmapping. All day long there was a team of mindmappers in cooperation with the experts from our partners aHa!Coaching and Hypershifters who were actively mindmapping the presentations. The mindmapping team consisted of Alexis van Dam and Mathieu van der Wal, assisted by Denise de Wolf and Edita Artemis. The mindmaps was accessible for everyone via a livestream on the website of our partner MindMeister. MindMeister is an online service for easy online mindmapping. MindMeister focuses on online collaboration through mindmapping. In addition, this service allows mindmaps to share with others and for example connect to a website. It is possible to start a mindmap and share this via a so-called Wikimap with others so people are all contributing in the same mindmap.

Talks are set out in the mindmaps via live stream.

Anyone can read and review the presentations online. This made TEDxRotterdam globally accessible. People gained insight in the large amount of presentations due to Livemindmapping. All the information could be retrieved easily. The visualization of a presentation leads to more associations and stimulated thinking. In addition, a mindmap offers a visual structure of the talk. The livestream is also perfect for people who missed a part of the presentations or even all the presentations. They could retrieve these presentations at a later time. So these people were still aware of all the ideas that were spread on that day. See all mindmaps via the special TEDxRotterdam mindmapstream.

Satelitelocations

People who could not be present at the Luxor Theater, TEDxRotterdam could be followed from the living room via the livestream of the mindmaps and the video’s. However, TED is about sharing ideas, so many people had the need to follow the event in the company of other TED-fans. A few locations in the Netherlands where hosting the event on a big screen. One of these locations was de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a livestream of the mindmaps was available at this location.

Twitter, tweets & retweets

The #TedxRdam hashtag on Twitter was and is still widely used. Through these hashtag (#), very positive noises were spread about the event and also about the livestream containing the mindmaps of the speakers. Not only during the event, but also after the event people are tweeting about TEDxRotterdam. This was of great value, the tweets offer insight into important issues and opinions, and are accessible to everyone. In this way, the TEDx ideas were also spread through Twitter.

What’s Next?

After the successful facilitation of TEDxAmsterdam 2009, also the Rotterdam edition is more than successful too. TEDxRotterdam spoke the words: “Somethink Completely Different” and they absolutely lived up to this.

Hypershifters thanked the organization of TEDxRotterdam for this inspiring day filled with new insights and ideas.

Have you missed the special TED event? You can watch the videos again. On the livestream you can look back the talks in the form of mindmaps in a visually way.

Would you like to receive the latest developments of World of Minds’ livemindmapping on events? . Follow partner World of Minds on Twitter @worldofminds and LinkedIn! Also register for our Research Report and follow us on Twitter @hypershifters. More information about livemindmapping can be found on the livemindmapping website!

PRESS RELEASE

CS Odessa Announces Update to ConceptDraw MindWave, a No-Cost Mind Mapping Gadget for Google Wave

San Jose, California, June 2, 2010 – CS Odessa has released an updated version of its popular mind mapping tool, ConceptDraw MindWave for Google Wave. This is a no charge Google Wave add-in, which enables users to rapidly collaborate with any amount of people, from 2 to 2000.

ConceptDraw MindWave provides teams the opportunity to interactively collaborate on a mind map while building a map structure that represents the focus of collaboration. The mind map can then take full advantage of Google Wave playback, or be downloaded to one’s desktop for further development using ConceptDraw MINDMAP.

Improved Functionality of ConceptDraw MindWave2:

• Getting Started mind map on first launch to introduce new users to functionality.
• Horizontal scroll bar for more versatile navigation.
• Automatic hyper linking of URL topic text.
• Added help and privacy resources to gadget
• New shortcuts and many usability improvements

Olin Reams, General Manager for the Americas at CS Odessa, observes, “We demonstrated ConceptDraw MindWave, at the recent Google I/O Developers Conference. ConceptDraw MindWave was presented in the Sandbox and was a huge success.”

“Many of the developers and spectators in attendance were able to immediately see the great potential in being able to build and store a mind map whose access can be embedded anywhere HTML appropriate, such as a web page or enterprise portal. Participants are then free to discover and interact with the wave mind map, join the conversation, and add or edit information. The end result is a great collaborative productivity tool.”

ConceptDraw MindWave is a no cost gadget for Google Wave. To install ConceptDraw MindWave, please visit: http://www.conceptdraw.com/mindwave

ABOUT CS ODESSA

Founded in 1993, Computer Systems Odessa supplies cross-platform productivity tools and graphics technologies to professional and corporate users around the world. With headquarters in Odessa, Ukraine and an office in California, CS Odessa sells products internationally through resellers in over 25 countries. The ConceptDraw Productivity Line of products has won numerous awards and is used by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

www.conceptdraw.com

Mark wrote a very informative book titled “Crystal Mapping: The Bigger Picture”, which was published during 2007.

As CEO of Crystal Mapping and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Mark spends his time committed to finding new ways of combining words, pictures and numbers to present information and knowledge.

Improving understanding and changing the way organizations think and communicate is his mission. Mark and his colleagues also offer a business management consulting service through The Visual Perspective at http://www.thevisualperspective.com/

While talking with Mark it became clear the circular Crystal Map approach had real merit. This product adds to our expanding world of visual mapping tools in a very unique format. So here’s a brief synopsis of the idea with a few questions answered by Mark.

Brief description of Crystal Mapping:

The best way to describe it is to show it so here is a screen shot of a basic map:

The first thing you’ll notice is the point I make about it using circles to organize discrete bits of information into a unified whole rather than the traditional ‘root and branch’ style of mind mapping approaches.

The thing that strikes me right away is the sense of unity you get from such a clean view of the information. It really does start to give the viewer a feeling of gestalt and that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts! Of course you’re not limited to three levels of details as to delve deeper into the map, click on any segment and it takes you to another level of iterated detail. A visual audit device on the left side of the screen leaves a ‘breadcrumb’ trail to always make it clear where you are in the map.

From a utility point of view, as you’d expect you can attach/embed hard disk files, URL links, images and copious notes to the segments to enable the viewer to access more detail about any particular segment but – as Mark say’s, you never lose sight of the bigger picture so whatever content you look at its always in context, helping viewers to form a real understanding of whatever is being presented in the map.

Q & A:
Mark, tell us how you came up with the idea of Crystal Mapping and why.

Well it was really a case of necessity being the mother of invention. In a previous business I needed a way of presenting company objectives to everyone in a way that was inclusive across functions and geography and that represented the unity of the business. It was that word ‘unity’ which got me drawing circles as they just seemed like the logical way for me to represent that we are all part of the same team, and everything else stemmed from there. However I didn’t start the business which eventually became Crystal Mapping till a few years later.

Why didn’t you use a more traditional mind mapping approach to organize your thoughts and represent your ideas for the business.

To be honest the ‘node and line’ approach didn’t really seem to me to convey the ‘unified – one team’ relationship I was trying to represent. Mind maps are great in some contexts but you do get the feeling that right now they are pretty much used in a blunt manner for everything – a bit like a guy with a hammer seeing everything as a nail! I think you’ve made the point yourself Wallace that not everything as a visual mapping solution has to be a mind map – it’s time we had more variety to meet the different demands of the visual mapping world.

So what’s the benefit of crystal mapping over mind mapping and why would business use a crystal map rather than a mind map.

In my mind the bigger question is getting business users to appreciate the generic benefits of visual mapping in the first place. As you’ve mentioned before we are still a long way off mainstream acceptance! So assuming we have a receptive audience who are turned onto visual information management, we have to provide them with the right solutions to their needs. My view is that there are certainly many ways to ‘skin a cat’ (such a quaint phrase) but it definitely doesn’t always have to start with mind mapping. For example if you want to communicate your company / team objectives; using a crystal map gives you a much more one company – one team feel as everything is joined to the core of the business so employees see themselves as part of the bigger picture.

In education my research and feedback from schools is that crystal maps offer a great alternative to mind maps as they are much more ordered and structured and thereby allow students to recall the content more easily.

Crystal Mapping is a cloud app – do you think mainstream business users are going to embrace cloud technology?

I know there is a fair amount of debate about whether business is ready and willing to embrace ‘the cloud’ due to data security issues of their information being ‘off site’ but I believe this is more apparent than real. Just as we as individuals initially reacted very cautiously to internet banking but now think it a necessity, so will business start to adopt and benefit from the utility and cost advantages of cloud technology. Personally I would be far more worried if I were running a desktop/server only software business.

Why do you believe users will purchase and subscribe to Crystal Mapping?

Because its good value for money as cloud apps are, it’s easy to use and it ‘does what it says on the tin’ i.e. it helps you clarify your thoughts and ideas and makes them clear to others – crystal clear if you like! More than that little pitch response – CM is great for collaboration (a real benefit of cloud apps.) and the fact that we have a desktop version which synchronizes with the web app. Being server based means; if our business users want to ‘play safe’ – they can, and we don’t need to store their ‘sensitive’ files outside of their own internal server comfort zone.

On top of this we have some features that make CM unique. For example we have built in an auto-generation feature which creates a map from one word for education and business research. So if you wanted to build a map of RFID in the retail industry let’s say – you type in ‘RFID Retail’ and the app builds the first level of the map. You can then edit as you like and continue asking the system to auto generate your map content – not just the segments but the Notes content as well.

We also have a search feature that helps users build maps by automatically creating search strings in Google, Bing, Flickr, You Tube and Wikipedia. This not only helps you find the content to help build you map but lets others continue the search for more detailed or specific information as they might require.

Another important capability of CM is the data load of any given map stored in the cloud. We currently allocate 1GB of data storage for subscribing cloud user; this will indeed increase when we have a more defined user base. We have everything in place to increase the data load capability significantly according to demand, and we shall offer specific data storage levels priced for corporate users.

What is your approach to The Voice of the Customer?

At Crystal Mapping, we firmly believe the user base defines the future direction of this product. With this in mind, we proactively measure the needs and wants of our users. We also believe communication is a key factor in the continuous improvement process.

What’s your pricing strategy?

Pricing is per account and at the time of this interview is offered at £29.99 (around $45/€33 at current exchange rates). We offer site/group and volume discounts and education discounts.

Wallace Tait: Visualmapper
www.visualmapper.org

For Hypershifters it is important to collaborate in real time with colleagues and clients. Combine this with MindMapping for overview and insight and it all makes more sense. One of the best offerings on the market is MindMeister from MeisterLabs.

MindMeister is rapidly moving forward to become the most interesting web 2.0 application for collaborative MindMapping. Besides features like Geistesblitz which allows you to enter ideas to you mindmaps without even opening the application (via mail, SMS. (i)Phone and gadgets). MindMeister now teams up with Google apps.

Now you can connect MindMeister to your own Google Apps or buy it at the Google Apps Marketplace. This means that you can save your maps to Google Docs directly and that you can use all your Google contacts in MindMeister.

Check out this introduction movie to learn more about this great integration.

Besides the integration with Google apps, MindMeister also released an new version with some interesting new features.

• Customizable templates (including background colors, images, organic and color branches)
• More Formatting options for the nodes. At last you can use background colors and shapes around the nodes.
• There is a built in chat functionality. This enables you to chat with one person at the time or to perform a group chat with all participants.
• And there is more to come….

If you don’t know MindMeister please check out their tutorial movie at.  It will only cost you a few minutes to get an idea of what this stunning application is capable of.

A Tour of MindMeister from MindMeister on Vimeo.

A complete new review of MindMeister is coming next… Stay tuned.

My iPhone is packed with similar products but this one really stands out. Now you can create beautiful mindmaps with just using your fingers. This is completely different from the other Mindmapping apps where the software determines the way your mindmap looks.  iMindmap Mobile enables you to produce BUZAN proof MindMaps on the small screen of your iPhone.  Normally there is a catch when an app is free, but not in this case.

It has a rich feature set that is comparable to the paid apps.

• Speed mindmapping mode. Just type your word en press +
• Edit branch colours
• Add hyperlinks
• Add Notes
• Mail the map as iMindmap file so you can edit the map on your desktop computer.
• built in help which is really useful

The screenshot shows the main interface and the kind of mindmaps that you can create.

So don’t wait and rush to the app store to download this nice new app.

I am very happy to see a contextual analysis tool included with Comapping. This will be invaluable for cutting through document and web page overload.

The bottom line is, we have an excellent marriage of a very effective process approach to information management in the Comapping app, and we also have an ideal contextual analysis tool.

Context Organizer is a standalone cloud application service working at this time on the Amazon server (extremely fast), that can indeed be added to numerous other software apps. I would expect the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo to be interested in this app for convergent use with their respective web search engines. The “Analyze” button will probably be a standard for web searches.

As much as we should be contextualizing every piece of information we create and share (Use the T.A.P process); the vast number of documents and web pages that have been created thus far, are probably full of filler words and text that are useless to getting to the point of communicating with clarity.

The question of IP security is handled with an arrangement to have an internal server install setup; corporate wide cloud configurations are available from Comapping too, thus enabling a more robust secure environment for IP. Of course, Comapping clearly indicates the security level of your information embedded into a Comap; whether it is documents, media formats or text of proprietary nature.

The Comap and analyze tool now give you the opportunity to see what these two combined tools can do for your information clarity. Time management and effective communications are two of many constraints we experience within our academic and business environments.

For the academic; the use of Comapping with Contextual Organizer will be invaluable, as the cloud gives you the ideal medium for creating, managing and sharing information and knowledge with your colleagues and students within a protected cloud space.

For The Business user Comapping can become a very convenient information carrier and knowledge mapping tool; becoming a standard process and system tool for creating all relevant information associated with your business management system. The addition of Contextual Organizer now gives you the ability to research Web Pages. With the insertion of a URL you’ll be offered an “Analyze” button and voila, the Contextual engine which uses the Amazon server extracts the contextual relevance for your research purposes. In a similar vein, attaching a document to your Comap, you’ll be offered the same “Analyze” button, simply click the button and your document shall be extracted with textual relevancy.

OK, so what use is this you may be asking? I too asked the same question some time ago when I was using the desktop edition of Context Organizer. The point of extracting context from Web Pages and documents is quite simple; we are overloaded with data, information and knowledge and we need to get to the point of the barrage of data that attacks us daily. Imagine a colleague sending you a PDF doc that is 500 pages long (Crazy eh?). Extracting context enables you to get to the root points of documents, while speed reading your way through the extracted relevancy associated with the docs.

The example Comap below shows you hyperlinks attached to the map branches that have been “analyzed”. The relevancy is extracted and numbered, and the relevant word is underlined red. The same can be accomplished with adding a document such as Word or PDF too.

I encourage you to download the latest edition of Comapping with Contextual Organizer beta included, and I’m confident you’ll get to the proverbial “AHA” moment pretty soon while using this very affordable and efficient information management tool.

Wallace Tait: Visualmapper
www.visualmapper.org

Hypershifters reviews

Hypershifters focuses on the use of visual mapping software. It addresses open source, freeware as well as commercial solutions. The added value Hypershifters provides is in research, advice and consultancy for experienced and inexperienced users. Many users have concerns about the potential of visual mapping in their work environment. This was reason for Hypershifters to create a test team that, co-advised by international experts in the field of visual mapping, critically reviews current products. Not so much viewed from the intricacies of the software, but rather from its scope of applicability. Think, for example, of doing some brainstorming, meeting management, project management and knowledge management.
The reviews are based on a matrix drafted by us to serve as a yardstick for the aforementioned scope of applicability. Besides the reviews you will also find the results in a comparison table.

Wallace Tait and Brian Friedlander

Web 2.0 has certainly made a significant impact on the ways we now create, manage and exchange information and knowledge. Collaboration is indeed the corner stone for real time communications within personal, academic and business arenas while using web 2.0 (Cloud) applications.

We have simply been given much more flexibility through the use of cloud computing.

Regarding Visual mapping; cloud collaboration has exponentially increased the potentials for being more effective and productive. The cloud can become a repository (Data bank) for storing and sharing much of your information and knowledge, and you also have control over who gets to access your information too. Less travelling to meet clients, your web space becomes a virtual office and classroom where you can operate, collaborate and present with ease; as long as you have web access.

There’s a recent interesting trend coming from web 2.0 visual mapping apps. They are now moving towards offering desktop versions of their apps, so desktop computing isn’t dead yet.

We were recently given access to Comapping by Michael Pliskin Director of R&D. Comapping is both a web and desktop based information management app that expresses a left to right format defined as visual mapping. The desktop application seamlessly synchronizes with the web based tool.

During the summer of 2006 Comapping was born through a joint venture between Area9 in Denmark and Lanit-Tercom in Russia. These two organizations initially developed and used Comapping as an internal organization wide communication tool. They were frustrated with limitations that traditional mind mapping software posed. Soon realizing they were not alone while facing similar limitations with incumbent mind mapping software applications; Comapping was further developed for wider commercial use.

It’s an awesome information mapping/management tool that enables you to collaborate with absolute ease, and it’s extremely fast. The developers have crafted a new and expressive category of information mapping that is independent of the Mind mapping genre. The Comap, Comapping and Comapper shall without a doubt, be definitions associated with forward thinking information management.

Using Comapping has exponentially enhanced and improved our time and project management, to the point of having more clarity that equates to monetizing other more important aspects of our consulting work. Simply put, Comapping has; and continues to transform our information management capabilities.

In our opinion Comapping has a powerful advantage over mind mapping apps, due to the left to right format and the top down logical process approach of this format. Project managers will most certainly feel comfortable with Comapping, as shall Business System managers who use the ISO 9001 standards.

The left to right format, when mapping expresses a very comfortable and logical feel to Comapping.

Asger Ottar Alstrup, CEO and Board Member of Comapping developed the unique auto-collapsing algorithm that optimizes use of often scarce computer screen real estate while mapping. The animated look to Comapping is very comfortable and pleasing to the eye. Navigation throughout a map while presenting information to colleagues and clients is one of the great strengths of Comapping.

Real time collaboration is indeed a notable strength of Comapping. You will find it easy to invite a colleague into your mind map and give them permission to read or edit your map. While collaborating on the map, you can view where your colleague is and what part of the map they are editing. You can also use a chat window to communicate during the session.

The experience of co-editing the map was fast and flawless. One of our top features of Comapping is the ability to easily publish your Comaps to you blog or web site by simply copying an embed code.

With the recent addition of the Comapping desktop application, and its strong import and export features, Comapping is a strong information mapping tool for your collaboration needs. The desktop version is a clone to the online version, enabling you to work off line when required.

Once you have created your mind map using the desktop version of Comapping you can save it to your online account and then access it through your browser. Comapping gives you lots of options if you would like to Export your mind maps to other applications.

We found the no nonsense approach to mapping information while creating, managing and exchanging relevant business information was performed with ease. The learning curve was so short; we were up and running with Comapping within 10 minutes.

Comapping is continuously being developed, therefore the user can have confidence the developers listen to the voice of the user. Expect a great future from Comapping.

The Personal, Academic and Business application of Comapping is very evident, and we encourage you to download, use and purchase this excellent information management tool. It is available in two formats; desktop and web editions. Visit www.comapping.com for more information.

Below is the Comapping welcome map; to navigate the map, choose a topic and press the tab key.

Wallace Tait: Visualmapper
www.visualmapper.org

I’m the manager of global communications for Mindjet. We sell our products around the globe and have offices on three different continents. My job is to maximize Mindjet’s awareness in all of these different locales, focusing on spreading the message of Mindjet’s leading position as a provider of personal productivity and collaboration solutions that visually connect ideas, information and people to save time, improve business processes and drive innovation.

2. Overview the history of Mindjet to date?

Mindjet started in the mid 1990s as a programming project by Mike Jetter centered on the technique of mind mapping. Shortly thereafter he formed a company to sell his new software. With more than 10 years of development, Mindjet is the worldwide leader in providing visual information mapping and collaboration solutions to users around the world.

3. Why do you believe Mindjet is and remains to be the leader within the Mind mapping arena?

Mindjet is used by more than 1.5 million professionals around the world in six out of every 10 of the companies listed in the Fortune 100. By dramatically boosting productivity and team effectiveness, Mindjet has a proven track record of delivering solid business value for our users. Surveys across several industries show that Mindjet can increase productivity by up to 25 percent by making meetings, common communications and project management tasks more efficient and effective. When potential customers evaluate all of their options, they’re consistently drawn to what works; oftentimes the best sales reference is word-of-mouth. Well, almost 70 percent of our current sales come this way: a friend or a colleague telling another friend or colleague. Those are excellent references for us, and they have helped us maintain our leadership position.

4. Would you agree the term “Visual mapping” encompasses moving beyond mere Mind mapping?

Mind mapping is a technique, primarily a brainstorming technique. Obviously, MindManager is a great brainstorming tool, but it’s much more than that as well: people use it to drive presentations, manage complex projects, streamline complicated business processes and reduce time-to-market. As you know, many people also use it to keep their day-to-day lives in order. Lots of individuals have suggested several different names for what MindManager can do for you or your business, so something other than “mind mapping” would be accurate in that it goes beyond just the act of brainstorming. As it stands though, “mind mapping” seems to be the term with which most people are currently familiar.

5. Has the term “Mind mapping” been an impediment to the further infusion of Mind Manager as a Visual mapping product?

Sometimes people hear the term “mind mapping” and it conjures up ideas completely unrelated to what MindManager actually does. But one of our primary jobs is to educate potential users about the benefits of Mindjet, and that’s where we focus our resources. Once people see the power of what Mindjet offers and how we offer significant business value by cutting down time-to-market, reducing the length of the sales cycle, or smoothly managing a difficult project, they don’t care what it’s called. They just know that we made a significant difference in their ability to achieve success!

6. The business and academic environments has been the focus of Mindjet for some time; what about a more personal approach to productivity and self development?

One of the great things about MindManager is its flexibility. That means that you can use it to manage an enormously complex project; like for example all of the logistics surrounding production of a new airplane being built by a major aircraft manufacturer. Or you can sit in your office, at home or at work, and map out your personal goals, and keep your day-to-day life on track. At www.mindjet.com, you can find many use cases from individuals who use Mindjet in business and academic settings and also personal productivity use cases. I would also encourage readers to check out our blog at http://blog.mindjet.com where our chief evangelist Michael Deutch often posts about ways to improve your personal productivity and accelerate your development.

7. Do you have any favorite add-ins you use for personal productivity and self development?

I think all of our add-ins provide potentially excellent added value for our users depending on their needs. All users need to do is to check out the Mindjet Partner Solutions site at http://mindjetsolutions.com/Default.aspx to see the many offerings that are available and find out which may be best suited for them.

8. Why so many third party add-ins for Mind Manager?

I think one of the strengths of any particular software platform is the vibrancy of its developer community. The thousands of new apps each month in the Apple App Store, for example, are a testament to the iPhone’s popularity. While we’re not on the same scale as Apple (at least not yet!), we’re proud of the strong developer community that has formed around MindManager and we’re constantly encouraging innovative developers to produce add-ins that will augment the already significant value of our products.

9. Have users asked for specific add-ins to be integrated to Mind Manager?

Whether it’s for features or add-ins, we constantly get requests from our users. If you have an idea for an add-in or a way to improve any Mindjet products we encourage you to send your ideas to products@mindjet.com.

10. Database qualities are being offered in competing benchmarks; can we expect a more robust approach to the data/information/knowledge management in future editions?

MindManager 8 in fact has a robust data linking ability that enables users to connect their MindManager maps to Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SQL server, MySQL server, and .CSV format databases. You can find this feature in the Insert menu under “Databases.” We are always working on ways to improve Mindjet products, however, and anyone with any suggestions should send them to products@mindjet.com.

11. How has Web 2.0 impacted Mindjet’s approach to SAAS?

We have a technology that is especially well suited to the social and community-driven aspects of Web 2.0. At its very core, a MindManager map is a very powerful way of sharing information. That information could be for internal use only, as is the case in many business implementations. But when you want to communicate information to the outside world, you can create a Mindjet Player file that can be shared on any website, blog or wiki. This can have a tremendous viral effect. Mindjet recognizes the power of hosted services and their ability to take advantage of user communities online. In the future, you will see a new approach to way Mindjet tackles sharing capabilities online.

12. Mindjet Connect: has it fulfilled your expectations regarding collaboration?

We’re constantly impressed by what our customers are doing with Mindjet Connect. We currently have thousands of Mindjet Connect users who are logging in and collaborating with their colleagues. They’re using it actively to do everything from implementing new sales force training programs to the planning and execution of academic conferences to information dashboards for remote workers and more. Visual collaboration is a central tenet of what Mindjet is all about, and we’re continuing to invest in, develop and expand our collaboration capabilities for our users.

13. Can you (within reason) give us a glimpse of what to expect from Mindjet in future editions?

Well I can’t say specifically what we’re working on, but I can say that we have an exciting pipeline right now. It’s so exciting that I’m anxious to just let all the news out now, because it’s that cool. From collaboration products to solutions to the different platforms on which our software is available, we’re working on a little bit of something for everyone.

14. What are users saying about Mindjet Mind Manager?

We have tons of great quotes from our users. One of the best, I think, is from Stu Schmidt, currently vice president of sales at Unisfair and former Webex executive. Stu recently said that MindManager “is the only application that I’ve said is never optional. Wherever I go I have to have MindManager.” Stu has detailed for us the business value he gets from deploying MindManager throughout his organization, including the fact that MindManager has cut the length of his company’s sales cycle by 66 percent. When you get results like that for your customers, consistently and across the board, it’s not hard to find great testimonials!

15. What are the challenges for Mindjet, as we move towards a more monetized knowledge economy?

We prefer to see them as opportunities. As the knowledge economy continues to grow, knowledge itself becomes more valuable. As knowledge becomes more valuable, easy access to that knowledge will be very important. We believe we’re well positioned because Mindjet makes visual collaboration and productivity solutions that, at their core, provide people with instant access to both their own and their colleagues’ information, so they can make the best informed decisions to improve their bottom line, to make a sound organizational decision, or to simply organize their personal life so they can put themselves in positions to succeed. We believe Mindjet is an invaluable tool for the knowledge economy, and will become even more so in the future.

16. What is your elevator conversation piece regarding Mind Manager?

MindManager is a personal productivity solution that visually connects ideas, information, and people to help you save time, improve business processes, and drive innovation. MindManager enables you and your team work in real-time to organize, manage, and communicate ideas and information while solving real business problems.

17. What’s the link to your sales pages at Mindjet?

You can find our free trial page at http://www.mindjet.com/products/trials/default.aspx or you can find out how to contact Mindjet Sales at http://www.mindjet.com/store/contactsales.aspx

Wallace Tait: Visualmapper
www.visualmapper.org

Dustin’s role is the Visual mapping visionary and evangelist utilizing strong customer and partner relationships, leading the company’s explosive growth in the productivity software market. Newport has more than 18 years of experience in software at some of the industry’s leading technology organizations.

Previously Newport, was UK Managing Director at Mindjet. Other positions held included Sales Director at Novium Plc; EMEA Vice President of Sales for AppsMall LLC and held senior sales roles at Novell, Remedy Corporation and Informix.

About MindGenius

The first MindGenius applications were released in 2001 by software developers Gael Ltd and, since then, the user base has grown in excess of 300,000 registered licenses.

In March 2008, MindGenius Ltd was set up as a separate trading entity. In September 2008 MindGenius Ltd became certified Microsoft Partners with an ISV / Software Solution competency, and the MindGenius application achieved certified for Microsoft Vista status at the same time.

THE INTERVIEW:

1. Who are the leading minds driving MindGenius?

MindGenius is a collaborative enterprise taking inspiration and input from a variety of sources. The direction and guiding principles of the application and the user experience are born out of the fact that MindGenius originated within Gael, a leading Quality Management System vendor.

Unlike other Mind mapping software applications, MindGenius became fully tried and tested and evolved out of the needs of an organization managing big ticket and highly complex end-to-end sales and implementation cycles. This sets MindGenius apart from its competitors as it was essentially developed ‘on customer site’ over a number of years where the specific needs of a sales and implementation team could rapidly be developed into the product itself on an ongoing and iterative basis.

Responsibility for the vision and technical road map are shared by the co-founders and owners of the business Derek Jack and Donald McIver. Dustin Newport takes full responsibility for the commercial ‘taking to market’ of MindGenius which is including the development of global sales channels, alliances and sales team.

2. Give us a brief history of the organization?

The product itself was created as a must have tool within Gael as no other mind mapping product on the market could effectively synchronize the actions and results orientation that the business required with the initial free form map created within the client.

The first version of MindGenius was released in 2000. Despite very little efforts to actively market and promote MindGenius, the product sold over 300,000 licenses up to 2009 via the web shop and a handful of channel partners.

In 2008 it was decided that MindGenius should be separated out from Gael and the independent organization was created. At the beginning of 2009 a significant investment of private financing took place and the company elected to invest in bringing in proven industry knowledge to drive its commercial business.

Since the beginning of 2009, the following key milestones have taken place;

• Re-launch of Website giving a refreshed look and feel and clear explanation of the product.
• Setting up of a new sales office in the South of England, providing global reach through phone and web based product demos.
• Launch of a new ‘Premier Partner’ program providing a best in class lead management system via a Partner Relationship System (PRM) Portal.
• Launch of our first monthly customer newsletter

3. List the environments where your products are being used?

MindGenius is used across a very broad array of environments. Our initial dialogue with customers revealed a surprisingly large community of users requiring ‘assistive technology’ due to learning or working difficulties such as Dyslexia. Specifically MindGenius has some unique functionality that resonates well with Dyslexic users such as the ability to maintain a linear and non-linear map view pane simultaneously on the screen. Other key environments are the more typical you would expect of Mind Mapping users such as;

• Sales professionals: Managing customer meetings, Gaining consensus and clarity with clients, Strategic Sales Planning.
• Project Management Professionals: Six Sigma/Lean Sigma professionals, creating ‘work break down structures’, specific use within project planning and inception work prior to exporting to MS Project.
• Independent Consulting Practices: Used extensively in client facing scenarios for problem solving and requirements gathering.
• Bid and Tender Response Teams: We find we have extensive use within this particular profession. Specifically the ability to import an MS Word document into a map and break into its constituent parts to assign key actions and owners is seen as a killer feature. This enables a far more rapid engagement with the contents of the ITT (Invitation to Tender).
• Teaching Professionals: Used across all areas of the teaching profession from adult learning through to Universities and schools at all ages. Specifically used as a highly visual and engaging way of presenting the lesson. Also used in the process of lesson planning.
• Students/Learners: Used at all levels of learning. Visual maps improve the cognitive retention of information for the students. Helps with revision process and structure for essays.

4. What are the capabilities of MindGenius?

MindGenius enables rapid capture of ideas and/or information in a visually contextual ‘map’ interface. The map view can be either traditional ‘mind map’ view or tree diagram, organagram or affinity map.

MindGenius captures information simply through the typing of key words of phrases, no ‘hot keys’ are needed to insert parent or child branches onto the map. This makes MindGenius one of the most effective and least cumbersome tools for data capture.

Data captured in MindGenius can be ordered and sorted using ‘Categories’. In turn, comprehensive business rules can be applied to help prioritize key action areas or address key problems.

Additionally, MindGenius also supports exporting functionality to major Microsoft Office applications such as Word and PowerPoint as well as Visio, Project , PDF’s and HTML files.

As mentioned above, MindGenius also enables the importing of data from MS Word back into a map.

5. Within the UK and EU MindGenius has an established footprint; what about North America?

MindGenius has an impressive user base in North America despite no office and light channel presence in the market. We have key blue-chip customers in North America ranging across several key industries and reaching several hundred users in a number of instances.

A combination of technology and cultural shifts have led to an almost universal acceptance of entire sales sales cycles now being conducted over the phone and via web based demonstrations. Customers are more than happy to jump onto an ad-hoc ‘web meeting’ in order to view our software, look at sample maps and ask key questions.

Therefore we find we are being highly effective in both stimulating demand AND closing business among key business in any part of the world, including North America. If any of your readers requested a demonstration, it would be highly likely they would be able to receive it on the same day, driven out of a sales office in the UK.

6. MindGenius has recently been slightly updated; can we expect a more aggressive push to market from MindGenius?

As discussed earlier, MindGenius is in the process of re-launching itself this year. A significant investment in key staff, infrastructure and marketing is being well received by our customers and prospects.

This is just the start as we are planning on further sales staff and developers before the end of the year.

In the last 3 months alone we have trebled the number of visitors coming to our website and downloading a trial version of MindGenius. Each trial user receives individual contact either from a MindGenius sales representative or channel partner within (typically) no more than 2 working days.

We believe these stats and this sales process are already demonstrating a much more aggressive push to market for the company. Such approach is already driving a significant uptick in our revenues.

7. How do you differentiate MindGenius from the other leading visual mapping tools?

Having worked for a major competitor and been in the mind mapping software industry for nearly 5 years I am well placed to specifically identify the key strengths and differentiation of MindGenius. They are as follows;

 The ability to manage simultaneous ‘Linear’ (outline), and ‘Whole Map’ views on the screen at the same time. The MindGenius ‘map explorer’ pane enables large complex maps to be navigated highly effectively. It is possible ‘zoom in’ on a key branch or component of the map from within the explorer pane and see this immediately represented on the main map pane. This feature has long been praised by MindGenius users.

 MindGenius has the ability to create ‘Category Centric’ maps. This is highly unique. By understanding which categories have been used within the map, it is possible to create an entirely separate map view that separates out the original ‘parent’ and ‘child’ relationships and puts each item into their respective category ‘buckets’. This is a hugely powerful feature, particularly among project management communities as they need to allocate resources and assign actions by ‘High Impact’ items for example. Other mapping technologies have a ‘filter’ function (as does MindGenius) but you still end up with the data being contextually dispersed across the map. The Category Map function enables relevant data to be viewed through a single lens where the context is no longer relevant.

 MS Exchange ‘Resource Allocation’ is also a highly unique feature. Rather than assigning tasks to names that have no relevance to corporate data, MindGenius enables the importing of the local contacts or corporate MS Exchange database. In doing so, all resources used within a map are aligned to the corporate database for correct Contact, Email, phone, title information etc. Thus tasks can be rapidly synchronized to the correct users via their Outlook system.

 MindGenius has the ability to tailor Q&A templates within the product that drive the user to explore a topic within a predetermined manner such as a SWOT analysis. These template styles are built in and prompt all the relevant questions to be asked in the context of the engagement. We supply core sets of templates relevant to our different product versions of ‘Business’ and ‘Education’.

 As well as product differentiation, we believe it is very important to differentiate ourselves commercially too. A combined proposition of product functionality AND commercial value is important to our clients, particularly in these more austere times. We approach this from 2 different angles;

o 1) MindGenius has a very low cost operation due to fully embracing a channel and web approach to conducting global business. MindGenius runs its’ global operation from just 2 UK based office facilities. MindGenius has therefore managed to avoid the costs and complexities of running several multinational offices with all of the associated staffing and management overheads. MindGenius passes on this low cost to its customers through one of the most competitively priced business Mind Mapping solutions on the market.

o 2) MindGenius takes a very flexible ‘can do’ approach to alliances and partner relationships. Our flexible approaches to commercial positioning and packaging have made us a highly attractive partner for bundling and solution propositions with Alliance partners. One of our core values is to be ‘easy to do business with’. Customer and partner feedback alike is suggesting that we are differentiating ourselves from our rivals substantially with this approach.

8. What are the benefits of using MindGenius within, Personal, Academic and Business arenas?

I believe these examples and illustrations have already been covered above.

9. What do you envision in the visual mapping arena as trends for future use of visual mapping software?

We envisage a number of fundamental enhancements in mapping software that specifically address the dynamics and interactions at a ‘human layer’ within teams. The notion of how team brainstorming unfolds and needs to be captured is open for tremendous enhancements (across all mapping technologies), and we are working on a number of areas in future product releases that focus on this important area of increasing value and productivity.

This is an exciting yet proprietary area for us and therefore cannot be divulged in any more detail at this stage.

We envisage that visual mapping software will continue to permeate into the lives of any student or professional that uses a computer.

In my 5 years in the industry I have witnessed a fundamental seed change in the acceptance of mapping software as a key ‘must have’ application for the desktop, but we still have a long way to go.

We can well envisage that within the next 5 years no consumer or business customer would expect to receive a PC without a mapping based application installed upon it – much in the same way that we expect a word processing application today.

This view appears to be shared by the many vendors that appear to be entering this same space. Whilst clearly this is competition, this is also further legitimizing the maturing of this particular sector.

10. What are your users saying about MindGenius?

Our users are telling us that MindGenius is highly integral to the way that they work. We receive daily feedback that MindGenius is a favored mind mapping application specifically because of its simplicity and ease of use and that it is fundamentally engineered around actions and results. We have many customers who have been using MindGenius for many years and remain very loyal to us.

11. What can we expect from further development of MindGenius?

There’s nothing we wish to disclose on this at the moment as commercially sensitive.

12. Where should a potential user of MindGenius purchase the software and what’s the cost?

We list local resellers on our website, OR a user can purchase from us directly via our web shop. Any prospective user can download a 21 day trial free of charge from our site. The product then still enables users to open maps as a ‘viewer’.

MindGenius ‘Business Edition’ is available for;
GBP 147
USD 235
EUR 169

MindGenius ‘Education’ (for Students and Teachers) is available for;
GBP 57
USD 91
EUR 66

Wallace Tait: Visualmapper
www.visualmapper.org