I don’t know. Maybe most of you MindManager power users (or even not so power users) out ther have been doing this for years. I just figured it out…

I don’t like the file folder metaphor. And yet, that is how, from day one, I have been saving all my maps. When I try to conjure up a mental image of where my maps are, I see a room full of closed file cabinets. The thought of searching through all those cabinets, even though they have little labels on each drawer, makes me a bit nauseous.

I much prefer the image of my maps hanging like fruit from a tree in my backyard. When I want to find a map, I just kind of pull back the leaves and look for the fruit I need.

I E-mailed Mike Jetter the other day saying how great it would be to be able to save maps like this. He said you can do that already, if in a slightly different way, and explained how to do it. I thought: "Wah! Wah! Wah! I want to do it my way." But then I thought about what he had said, tried it, and, I tell you, it felt like a revelation.

The idea is simple, but powerful. Kind of like the software. Here’s how it works.

First, create a Master Map. Every time you need to start a new map, don’t go to File: New. Instead, open up your Master Map, find the place where you want your new map to reside, insert a new topic, name the topic, then choose: File/Send to/MindManager as new map.

MindManager then opens a new map with the topic title in the center, and away you go. Instead of shoving yet another file folder in yet another musty file cabinet, you have kind of blossomed a new fruit off of your tree. It’s a beautiful thing.

Once I started this, it slowly sunk in that I was saving my visually. I just started this this week. But I already feel my anxiety level dropping as I realize that I am going to have a much easier time finding and, if necessary, moving my maps.

While I don’t have a dog, I can appreciate the concept of "eating your own dog food" (though where/how/why that saying ever originated will remain a mystery for me). If you are using MindManager with any regularity, you clearly understand the value of this visual system. Why then slink back to the file metaphor to take one of the most important steps in knowledge creation: Organizing your knowledge in a way that makes sense to you. Think blossoming trees, not musty file rooms. It’s like a breath of fresh air.  

I have been musing of late on the concept I call the ‘the half-life of information’ and how it relates to the value of information within business. [Half-lives are usually associated with the decay of radioactive materials. The half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a sample to decay. Some materials have half-lives of milli-seconds other millions of years.]

The amount of time information is relevant (i.e. its value to a particular audience) varies depending on its nature. This relevance diminishes, or decays, over time and the rate of decay (“it’s half-life”) dictates the method of communication to its intended audience. For example; breaking news is broadcast on television, radio, web sites and now cell phones for widespread, immediate communication. While research papers describing new scientific discoveries are published in printed journals sometimes a year or so after the discovery.

Now let’s look at the way we create & communicate information in business. When the half-life of information is short (i.e. its relevance diminishes rapidly) we usually create AND communicate the information using a messaging product such as IM or email. This works relatively well when they is a small amount of information to convey, when is typically unstructured, such as news alerts, requests for information and comments.

When the half-life of information is longer (i.e. its relevance diminishes less rapidly) we create, or author using a document-based tool, such as a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation tool. These products are designed to produce, well documents, i.e. structured information in a ‘steady-state’ or complete form. We still may communicate or share the information using an unstructured messaging product or a web site or stored in a collaborative project space. That is we separate production and communication.

But what happens when the information is in flux, i.e. its changing as a consequence of a creation or time-based process, when there’s a team of people involved, when its complex? That is when communication is an integral part of production – what do we do then? Examples are: plans under construction, draft documents, proposals, research notes, competitive product radars, news aggregation, search aggregation, sales opportunity reports.

Well – most people force-fit the two approaches I discussed above. So in effect we are creating and communicating information using documents – either an unstructured ‘message’ documents or a structured ‘production’ documents. Even collaboration solutions are in effect document and message based albeit within new project-orientated frameworks. Net result it’s an ineffective way to create, collaborate and communication information because we are not addressing the ‘semi-structured’ state of information – where its value is still being assembled through personal efforts and interaction with others.

That’s why mapping – represents a whole new category of information format that is ideal for situations where:

• The information is being assembled into a ‘complete’ form
• Collaboration is important in creating the ‘complete’ information
• The information is complex or comprehensive
• It needs to be understood quickly, both its context and its details.
• The process is dynamic, real-time, interrupt driven.
• The information is from multiple sources, both human and system

Mapping is an ideal information format for this semi-structured state of information and as such makes it new and very compelling information format for team collaboration which fundamentally transforms the way people work together to create value.

That’s our mission here at Mindjet!

Chris Holmes, Vice President of Business Development

I love the quote "Writing about Art is like Dancing about Architecture" – not sure who to attribute it to though – Google suggests too many different options – but it’s so true. Another way of saying this of course is "A picture is worth a thousand words".

Imagine looking at the map of the London Underground or the New York Subway system as a textual document describing all the possible train routes and connection options?

I could go on about human cognitive science, the benefits of ‘chunking & chaining’, information maps – but I won’t because ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is good enough for most of us.

However as a software industry we are slow to perceive the fundamental benefits of information visualization and are still largely developing applications that relegate visualization to presentations or reports.

While WYSIWYG productivity applications allow us to produce these powerful visually – empowered documents or presentations we are still required to author them using an approach based on the ‘linear delivery model’ of the document – i.e. page 1 then page 2. That is to say we interact with them based on the format of the document we are creating.

But most people do not think linearly, how many of us can list (say) the 10 most important aspects of any subject in order of priority straight off; let alone fill in the details as we go. Yet we are using productivity applications that ‘force’ the majority of us to think in an entirely unnatural manner! Most of us regularly use whiteboards in conference rooms, offices and along corridors so we can ‘think’ out loud (’brainstorm’), communicate and share new ideas with others in a dynamic visual fashion.

Now enterprise applications are a different ‘kettle of fish’ – they require users to interact with them in way that is far more reflective of their underlying database structure. They are focused on information storage and reports and frankly this has not really changed that much since the ‘green screen’ era of mainframes 30 years ago. Go and look at any CRM system – for the most part there are all forms and tab-based. This is not an ideal approach for the information worker, ask yourself when was the last time a form inspired any creative thinking? Yet selling is a highly creative human-centric business process whose success determines the overall success of any business. Go figure.

So what – well my point is this – I believe that there is a new important trend emerging – Information Visualization and Management – that is going to have a significant impact on the way users work with information. I am talking about an information interface or visual workplace in which users can simply capture, create, aggregate, organize, view and interact and share the information they need using the applications and data sources that are relevant to their responsibilities. The focus becomes the context of the information and not the application serving it. This will decouple the application interface from the information and free business teams to engage and collaborate using information in a far more effective (i.e creative) fashion than is now possible.

Enter Mindjet, actually we have been selling applications based on information mind mapping for a number of years and have built a very enthusiastic and passionate global user base of over 500,000 for our MindManager product. See Hobie’s blog.

As we grow our business we are evolving to address the bigger opportunity for information visualization. I was recently at Demo @15! launching our new Accelerator Solutions initiative to apply an interactive visual layer to enterprise application and web-based information. At the event we showcased our Salesforce.com Accelerator to deliver rich visual maps of customer information to help sales team shorten sales cycles and communicate pipeline status to management. Feedback so far has been highly positive.

I’ll post more as we continue to develop this story.

Chris Holmes, Vice President of Business Development

I’ve been tracking the market response to our recent MindManager Accelerator for Salesforce product launch at Demo this year. One of particular interest is Stewart McKie’s (Ventana Research) Application Landscaping – Enterprise Applications Have a New Visual Front-end article.

"It’s easy to see how this application landscaping paradigm could be applied to CRM, project systems and functional domains within an ERP system such as inventory management and procurement. Ventana Research believes this kind of visual landscaping of existing enterprise data has a big future ahead of it. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would not prefer to navigate data through this kind of visual landscape rather than through layers of hierarchal menus. Ventana Research recommends organizations already leveraging mindmapping consider Salesforce.com for their next sales automation project and that existing Salesforce.com users investigate this powerful and compelling new way to leverage further ROI from their application. ERP vendors looking for a way to jazz up their applications and deliver real value to their customers may want to look at Mindmapping as their next front-end"

In summarizing Stewart also says:

"Ventana Research believes that content and context visualization is an important way for businesses to extract higher ROI from existing enterprise applications. But there are obstacles to overcome when dealing with content and context visualization including identifying an appropriate visualization paradigm and automating the process of visualizing data sourced from existing enterprise applications. MindJet MindManager’s new ability to landscape sales data from the popular Salesforce.com application (an online sales force automation solution) may be the first of a whole new kind of visual enterprise application front-end."

Overall this synopsis is very synergistic with IDC’s views in their Enterprise Workplace: How It Will Change the Way We Work report.

"The convergence between collaborative applications, content management, and retrieval software as well as enterprise portals and business process management capabilities is a step toward realization of the enterprise workplace. With new strides in interoperability standards, the software industry is moving closer to delivering new business value to corporate customers in a unified way, rather than in a multitude of disjointed applications."
Brian McDonough, research manager, Enterprise Portal Software and Packaged Composite Applications

Chris Holmes, Vice President of Business Development