Here to for, I’ve generally built videos and tutorials with the unorganized approach of recording some video while I do something and then going back and editing it into something useful.

Today, I was working on a viral video for a client and actually built a story board of the video before I put it together attempting to plan out how I would present the video.

This actually worked pretty well for me, even though the story board turned out to be very rough.

Here’s a quick video showing the MindManager map I used for this situation.

Plus, here is the resulting viral video that I created from the story board draft.

Note. there’s a technical sound glitch in the final product that is the result of a problem with Camtasia’s ability to render 2 tracks of sound and a slow motion video clip at the same time.  I’m hoping to resolve this by reworking the clips in Pinacle.  If that succeeds I’ll add a third movie with the corrected result. For now, there are a couple sections where the volume level is a little buggy.

So now, I have to crack open this new software, get it installed and start learning some advanced techniques.  Coming soon, I will have my office on the fishing dock converted into a green room studio, you won’t even be able to see the patio furniture when I’m done, but I’m not sure what I’ll do when the occasional duck flies through my office.

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Journey to Create Video Tutorial for Internet Research with MindManager Pro 7

I do not work in the worlds of Macro writing or testing or even in the world of browser plugins and add on’s, but I would really like to see someone that is versed in this area tackle this issue with a tool that makes it easier to gather information from the web and map it out faster in a mindmap (MindManager being my preference, but if someone else figures it out with a different tool, I will definitely use it even if I have to run the thing from the command prompt.)

I often times have to do a deep dive investigating a topic of information with web research.  Once I have a large number of links for further review, I like to start pushing them into a MindMap.  MindManager has a useful tool for doing this one page at a time from Internet Explorer.  However, MindManager falls short in the following areas:

• Doesn’t work with Firefox, Opera, or Safari
• Doesn’t have the ability to send multiple tabs, bookmarks or favorites into a Mindmap all at once.
• No longer has the ability to send highlighted text on a web page into the mindmap with the topic name and link
• I’d like to see the highlighted text of a web page either become a sub topic or at a minimum get pushed into the notes section of MindManager.

Plus, Internet Explorer is just plain tedious for doing this work as compared to other browsers. 

That said if you have to use Internet Explorer then you have to so I put together this video tutorial to show you how to use it.  Its a manual process but can get the job done.

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A week or two ago, I started seeing this advertisement featuring an actor from Law an Order.  I think the ad is for TDAmeritrade.

Anyway, I noticed that the ad features a mindmap in the background to help rapidly convey some information about the products and services without anyone actually having to spell it out and speak it. 

More and more I am finding mind maps in advertising used to get a point across more rapidly and even add some zing to a commercial.  If you think about it, when is the last time you saw a TV commercial where they flashed up a 3 bullet slide show that could have been generated with PowerPoint?

It just doesn’t happen that often and when it does, it is not terribly effective.  I think this is a simple example of a societal trend.  More and more people are starting to

• accept mindmaps
• understand mind maps
• demand graphics that are more media rich and full of information
• look to take the concepts they see on TV and bring them into their own work and presentations

That last point is key.  Many of us have the Master’s equivalent of an understanding of what is good media and what is bad media. 

We know it when we see it.

WE might not be able to write a dissertation on good v. bad, but we now the good stuff when we see the good stuff and we really know the bad stuff when it flashes on a screen in front of us.  I suspect that this media savvy that is growing in the average consumer and professional will drive more people to demand and eventually create their own better media presentations and tools.  That of course leads us back to my example.  When people start looking for a new way to convey information, mind maps are a natural evolutionary step.

But it need not be limited to presentations.  I think we will start to see a number of interfaces from cell phones to GPS configured with menus that take the shape of mind maps.  Even remote controls or tv menu systems could benefit from this type of layout and organization.  When that happens the demand and use will grow even faster.

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About 8 months ago, I was dabbling around with MindManager org charts and took a Snagit snap of one and then started rapidly adding hot spots.  Before you know it I had a pretty complex image and when I went to save or export it, I realized that I had to save it to Flash.  I’ve taken intro level classes in Macromedia Flash, but working in Snagit was a great deal easier for what I needed to accomplish.

I wasn’t trying to make a South Park cartoon episode nor make a radical flash animated website, just a functional, clickable org chart.

Several months later, and I got around to experimenting more with this functionality, and I think it is extremely useful in making a mindmap very rich in content for sharing either on the web, or for sharing directly with people that do not own MindManager.

Sorry Mindjet, this one may not help sales, but as soon as you find some more ways to get rich media into MindManager, I’ll be a very loud evangelist again.  Until then its work around city!

So I put together a couple maps (one political trying to make sense out of the news and probably failing, and one about a new Google advertising ad system).  Neither make much for reading, but I treated the topics as an opportunity to play with MindManager, Snagit and learn something new.

Plus, it was a good excuse to procrastinate on hunting down some cheap flights to Austin for SXSW.  I hate booking flights.  I have no reason for this, just always feel like I’m getting ripped off.  I’d almost rather drive.

After creating those, I received a email or call from someone in the MindManager Yahoo Group asking me to walk through the creation process and did that.  During that session, I learned and realized that these files do not have to be published on the internet, but that they can be viewable from a hard drive as well, the video shows this in practice and shows how it works.

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I came across a mindmap on a Quickbooks website this evening.  It inspired me to start taking snap shots of some mind maps that I find in different areas.  So this is the first in what will probably be a long series of snaps. 

Just as a matter of form, I wanted to point out that I liked the concept of thread lines from the central topic to the main topics that are essentially hollow or corridors or conduits (soft duit ) 

On the down side, the text is a little small, even on the actual image and slightly bigger icons would probably help.

Next, I’m going to be taking a look at mapping some student loans for a financial article I’m writing on a different site.    As I do other articles with Mind maps, I may also start to share those examples here as well.

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