Mindjet partner in Poland, Explorer Consulting, has published a visual guide to using MindManager 8. Wojciech Korsak, the author, is an innovative mind mapper that frequently posts in several of the growing Mindjet communities.

Wojceich’s guide illustrates MindManager’s features and functions highlighting capabilities and how they are accessed via MindManager’s ribbon. It quick and easy to review and is geared towards new users of MindManager 8.

Here’s an example page that illustrates the ‘format boundaries’ feature:

10 Free Copies for Mindjet Blog readers:

Wojceich has provided me with 10 copies to give away to readers of the Mindjet Blog!

For a chance to win, add a comment below. Share how MindManager has made you more effective and leave your name & email address in the comment form. We’ll pick 10 replies from the comments and Wojceich will send you a copy of the eBook with a personal dedication.

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

Yesterday, while checking my messages, I noticed a link to a map in the BiggerPlate gallery of MindManager maps. In it, I saw a user, msdizzy, added three dashboard maps which were pretty similar to some that I’ve posted in the past.

Take a look at these real-world examples…

Corporate Objectives & Balanced Scorecards

This map contains a branch for each major category of this organization’s balanced scorecard: Improving health, finance, service, people, and learning. The next level of the map contains an objective and an attached spreadsheet for each major objective which breaks it down into smaller objectives, measures, targets, and actions. I like this approach, especially when you’re using the embedded browser to quickly see (and update) the details for each area.

You can download load this map from BiggerPlate here.  

Build a Business Case

Want to gain support and funding for your next initiative? Here’s a template that walks you though the creation of a business case for your project idea. Quickly pull together all of your supporting information and research to build out a compelling case to move forward. Take advantage of topic notes, hyperlinks to files, attachments, embedded spreadsheets and more to paint as complete of a picture as possible.

As a best practice, I try to limit the number of main topics to about 8 topics. In this case, the project title could be incorporated into the central topic. For example, you could rename it to be "Business Case: Project XYX". This elminates the need to click into the project title to see which project we’re actually proposing a case for.

You can download load this map from BiggerPlate here.  

Home Dashboard

At times, it seems as if our lives get more complicated over time instead of simpler. Here’s a great way to stay on top of your home life by creating a dashboard to have all of your personal account information easily accessible. You can add branches to input all of your detailed information or utilize the topic notes. Also, you can see that there are links to other maps and sites. These days, many of our home accounts are available online. Add their links and update your accounts (e.g. pay your bills) directly from your dashboard.

You can download load this map from BiggerPlate here.  

Many thanks again to msdizzy for sharing her maps & the BiggerPlate team for sharing them with the world!

Related Resources:

• My maps on BiggerPlate
• Have All Your Answers on a Single Page
• Integrate Your Work in Dashboards for Optimal Performance

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

Here are three recent articles related to Mindjet’s collaborative mind maps:

Forbes.com: The Power of Mind Mapping: Dan Woods, chief technology officer and editor of Evolved Technologist, first mentioned Mindjet in his June 2nd Forbes post, Google’s Enterprising Moves. Today, Dan goes beyond mentioning and shares how Mindjet’s collaborative mind mapping "work profoundly well and allow my teams to achieve a much higher level of productivity." Check out the whole article to learn why Dan prefers mind mapping.

Adobe.com’s Developer Connection: RIAs that rock: David Tucker, a software engineer for Universal Mind, reviews MindManager Web along with the NY Times Reader and industry standard wireframe builder, Balsamiq Mockups for Desktop. According to David, "Mind mapping RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) have been around for the last few years. While many of the applications have done well, none of them has reached the level of the new MindManager Web application." Others at Adobe have taken notice too. Adobe Evangelists Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick have also noticed MindManager Web and have posted about it here and here.

Selectour Selects Mindjet: Selectour, a leading network of independent travel agencies with 550 outlets in France, will be leveraging the full set of Mindjet software…MindManager, JCVGantt and Mindjet Connect to develop the creativity of employees, promote communication within the work teams for create a collective dynamic, optimize project management and increase efficiency and productivity of employees. Thanks to Google’s translations you can check out this recent release.

Have you been collaborating with Mindjet?
We’d love to hear how! Add your comments below.

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

Recently, Augusto Pinaud, a Mindjet customer and avid GTD practitioner, shared with me his unique vision board mind map. Being a little new agey myself, I loved the concept. In fact, I created my first vision board earlier this year and keep it near my bed. It’s the first thing I see when I wake up and one of the last things I see before I go to sleep. Hey, when in California… 

What is a vision board? A vision board is typically created on poster board where you put a collage of images that you’ve collected from various magazines. They’re pretty simple to create.

The general gist of a vision board is that when you surround yourself with images of who you want to become, what you want to manifest in your life, where you want to live, your life will change to match those images and desires.

Having your dreams and goals in front of you is an effective way to stay focused on what you want to achieve.  

A Vision Board Mind Map

Download Augusto’s Vision Board Example Map and send him some thanks on Twitter.

What you’ll need for creating a vision board mind map:

• Open up Mind Manager and map out what you’d like to include in your vision board.
• Find evocative images (e.g. flickr’s creative commons search) and your own pictures to represent the vision’s and goals you would like to materialize
• Find inspirational quotes that you’d like to internalize (e.g. inspirational quotes)
• Add the images and quotes into your map
• Make your topics Adjust your topic line and fill color properties to match the map’s background color
• You can play around and create a hierarchy within your vision map and use MindManager’s ability to hide / show different levels of details to allow you to see the big picture vision or the very detailed break out of each item on your map

Two Ways to Use Your Vision Board Mind Map

• Your Default Map: Adjust your MindManager 8 general options to set this map as your default starting map. Each time you open up MindManager, you’ll see your ‘vision map’. With MindManager Mac, you can do the same by adjusting the ‘preferences’.
• Wall Paper: Save your maps as an image and use it as your desktop’s wall paper.
• Horizons of Focus: If you’re into GTD and have created a horizons of focus mind map, you can link your vision map to your horizons map. Periodically (e.g. your weekly reviews) review your vision and goals.

For more information about vision boards and how to create them, check these resources:

• How to Make a Vision Board 
• Squidoo Lens: What is a vision board and How Do You Make One? 
• Create your vision board online 

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

The Power of Visualizing Information

The Wharton School of Business completed a study that proved the benefits of increasing visual elements in presentations and tightly integrating them with words. By comparing visual presentations with verbal presentations, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of visualizations. Take a LOOK and SEE for yourself.

• 64% in the group with the visual presentation made a decision immediately after the presentation. The control group took longer to decide.

• The meeting time for the visual presentation was 24% less than the verbal presentation.

• When a visual presentation was delivered, 79% of the participants reached consensus compared to 58% in the group that had no visual language.

• The presenter convinced 67% of the people when using both verbal and visual language. Purely verbal presentations only convinced 50% of the participants.

Presenters who used visual language were perceived as more effective than those no using visuals. The audience responded that the visual presenters were:

• Clearer,
• More concise,
• More interesting,
• More professional,
• More credible, and
• Better prepared

So, the next time you have something important to say, try showing it instead!

More resources to learn about presenting information visually:

• 10 steps to great presentation maps
• How to make a great presentation by mapping your content
• Become a presentation superhero
• The secrets of using colors
• What is a picture worth?
• 10 fixes for font foibles
• More fun for font fanatics
• Effectiveness of visual language presentations (MacroVU visual language course)

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

Happy hump day! Here’s a collection of mind mapping links that include some best practices, new visual thinking tools, and great ways to leverage mapping in your day-to-day work.

• Tips On How To Use Mind Mapping As A Writing Aid: Nice article from MindMapSwith that covers where and how mind mapping can be used in a writing process. Since I’ve been writing more frequently, mapping has become an invaluable tool for my own process. Here’s where I map in my own writing process: Plan my writing (e.g. my editorial calendar), perform the research, outline & draft my articles, and finally to help promote my final work.
   
• 15 Effective Tools for Visual Knowledge Management: Eric Blue pulled together a great list of tools for visual knowledge management. When you get to the final page, you’ll see #1: MindManager
   
• Mind Mapping or Idea Mapping?: Jamie Nast, author of Idea Mapping, poses the question and highlights the benefits of breaking the rules…
   
• 3 Speakers – 3 Different MindManager maps: Andrew Wilcox demonstrates the power of using mind maps for note-taking at live events. I really like this example, great use of MindManager’s features and an example of ‘idea mapping’ as it breaks the rules of traditional mind maps.  
   
• How to add visual dimension to your mind maps with a background image or color: Mindmapping software blog’s Chuck Frey explores the use of background images and colors for maps. I agree with his final tip: test, test, test. More often than not, I’ve found backgrounds to be more distracting than helpful but admit they can improve a map if used effectively.

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email

Wow, I forgot to post the top 5 Mindjet blog posts yesterday. Without further ado, here are the most viewed posts of May:

1. How to Create a Strategy Map that Works
2. Integrate Your Work in Dashboards for Optimal Performance 
3. Visualize Google Search Results in a Mind Map 
4. 15 Free Courses for Small Businesses 
5. The Art of Using Twitter 

What would you like to see in the Mindjet blog in the coming months? Feel free to add your suggestions below.

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter. 

Sign up to receive the Mindjet blog via email