Best Regards and thanks again!
Brett

Our May 1 announcement of the May 30th availability of MindManager 7 has met with tremendous excitement and incredible reviews on the improvements we’ve made to MindManager – all enhancements driven by feedback from our customers. In the midst of the great reception– a few misperceptions have been floating around that our non-disclosure (NDA) agreement has silenced our beta (or Early Look) participants – many of whom also are product evangelists. I welcome the opportunity in this public forum to clarify the misperceptions and invite our “Early Look” customers to tell the market what you think of MindManager 7.

Our NDA agreement for the “Early Look” participants was only in effect from the time that a customer signed up to test and evaluate MindManager 7 until we made our public announcement of its availability. Our NDA was over on May 1– I’ll look to our evangelists to openly share their feedback on MindManager 7 — as I know they helped us deliver a product we are proud to offer to new and current customers.

NDAs are very standard agreements in a beta process that enable the software developer and the customer community to have open dialogue. I’ll also underscore that we take our beta process extremely seriously, as do our customers, as it is crucial for us as a company to deliver the absolute best product experience.

After months of thousands of our customers testing MindManager 7 and providing feedback – we announced on May 1 that we would ship MindManager 7 on May 30 for general availability. We are so appreciative of the Early Look participants who provided us critical feedback and helped us refine and deliver what we think is the most significant release of MindManager ever.

We look forward to your continued support in communicating your thoughts about the product, as the NDA is now lifted.

Warmest regards to all –
Lisa

After engaging some people yesterday after this article, I believe we will see a correction in course from Mindjet.

I think it actually is too late, as the results have shown. The forums have been pretty quiet, and the product is out in a few short weeks, so any discussions about how features coudl have been improved or implemented differently, can’t be implemented in time for release.

Something to consider for future releases - perhaps leverage MindJet Labs a little more with proof-of-concept features?

McMapper,

The relevant section of the NDA is as follows I believe, (please let me know if you have identified another area that might contradict this or shed more light on the situation)

“Definition of Confidential information: Recipient agrees that all proprietary information disclosed by Mindjet to Recipient relating to the company’s business and to the Beta Test Program will be referred to collectively in this Agreement as “Confidential Information”. Such information shall include, but not be limited to, Mindjet Software, documentation, marketing information, product test results and feedback.”

My Follow up Points

1. That section covers the information generated from the beta testing and not the inclusion of participation as a confidential item.

2. Even if I am wrong, Mindjet should have considered explicitly encouraging beta testers to go out and talk about the new product. Better yet, they could have channeled feedback or experience from the beta testers into buzz building marketing campaigns.

3. It is not too late! Mindjet can still go in and do all of these things. A simple email to the group of beta testers clarifying the NDA and allowing people to

a. talk about their participation

b. encourage them to talk about MM7’s features and how they were able to use them to best advantage and maybe even

c. discuss the process and their involvement in it can make for some great stories

I think it would make for very compelling marketing for Mindjet to be able to say, here is one of our Beta Testers, they helped us identify this initial design flaw. We took their feedback and solved the problem and now you our future user have something wonderful to use.

or

We had feedback from 343 beta testers on this issue. 299 testers suggested we choose solution A and 23 suggested solution B and 21 others suggested individual suggestions.

We went with Solution A as the default and made Solution B as an optional choice for users. That’s why we did it! We listen to our users and our beta testers to make the best products possible.

The message between the lines here is that Mindjet listens, acts and improves!

Springboarding off your post, in a recent post on my blog, I pointed out how the Law Of Intended Consequences may affect this version launch.