That’s definitely one approach. It should depend upon how familiar your audience is with mapping too. I’ve witnessed clicking around the map causing confusion.

However, to your point, I recall a government contractor’s comment about briefing the secretary of defense. Paraphrasing: “There’s no other tool I’d rather for presenting to the secretary of defense. You have two minutes and nothing else provides the big picture like MindManager and the ability to drill into details if any questions come up.”

Specifically, here is how I would answer your four questions:

* How do I know what content to use?
By learning about your audience ahead of time and by gauging the feedback from the audience as you give the presentation. Include all of the content in your presentation, but only open those parts that are relevant at “run-time.”

* How much is the right amount of information for the presentation?
This will vary with the audience. With MindManager, I can use one presentation for multiple audiences, going into various levels of depth for various groups. For example, I recently used the same map to talk with a group of principals and a group of teachers. The two groups had different interests, but I was able to use one map.

* What’s relevant to the audience?
Try to find out before you give the presentation, but be prepared for surprises. With MindManager, it’s easy to deal with surprises, as opposed to slide show software.

* What extraneous bits can be left on the cutting room floor?
Who says they need to be? One person’s extraneity may be another’s area of focus. If you organize your mind map well, you can quickly find seemingly extraneous bits of information if it turns out that your audience is interested.