This week I received 2 invitations to MindManager Connect Beta.  I was pretty jazzed about the idea, but the first invitation came when I was in the middle of wrapping up my taxes and working on a major customer project. 

The next day, I received an email from MindMeister also talking about their MindMeister 2.0 version.  Kind of ironic as MindManager is playing catch up with MindMeister on collaboration, while MindMeister plays catch up with MindManager on look and feel and interface.

Friday, I received the ominous message in the form of a second invitation that I shouldn’t miss the opportunity to try it so I clicked on the button.

That all sounded fantastic!

Well unfortunately, my luck didn’t hold up.  The button with an encrypted hyperlink in it, did not get me into MindManager Connect but did kick me off on the process of having a nice live chat with someone that wasn’t able to get me in either.

Now, I’m feeling a bit like a kid that is promised Santa Clause in July only to be told that Santa won’t be coming until December after all. 

Hopefully, I’ll get a call soon.  I want to open my presents!

Note, I’m not a big fan of Live Chat help these days.  It seems like more an more live chat support workers are unable to actually get anything done.

Customer Service Agent5: Hello, Brett Bumeter. Thank you for contacting Mindjet.
Brett Bumeter: Hi, I can’t seem to login. Probably don’t have a password maybe not a user name. But I received an invitation so I’m a little confused.
Customer Service Agent5: What did you receive?
Brett Bumeter: Mindjet is offering an exclusive first look at Mindjet Connect – a powerful way for teams to collaborate and build communities.
Find out more
With Mindjet Connect, now you can:
Co-edit and share maps simultaneously with MindManager Pro 7
Capture, organize and share maps and files through secure workspaces
Conduct web conferences with integrated desktop sharing, chat and whiteboarding
Start collaborating with Mindjet Connect today and – for a limited time – invite your colleagues and create your MindManager community now!
You will have the opportunity to contribute to Mindjet’s product development efforts by sharing your valuable feedback with us
Brett Bumeter: It also says “Please note – community members need not be existing MindManager users.” which I am, also a trainer.
Brett Bumeter: And this is also my second invitation.
Customer Service Agent5: There should be a link in the email.
Brett Bumeter: Yup, it took me to the login page
Brett Bumeter: http://encryptedlinkremoved.com
Brett Bumeter: sorry, took a while to extract it from the graphic button
Customer Service Agent5: Can you sign in to the login page?
Brett Bumeter: no and when I tried forgot password, it told me my email wasn’t in the system.
Brett Bumeter: I used the email address that the offer had been delivered to.
Customer Service Agent5: You will need to reset your password.
Brett Bumeter: yeah, but how do I reset by username?
Brett Bumeter: It doesn’t even have my email in the system for the username.
Customer Service Agent5: May I have a contact number to call you back Brett?
Brett Bumeter: sure xxx.xxx.xxxx
Customer Service Agent5: We will follow up with you soon Brett.
Customer Service Agent5: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Brett Bumeter: nope, any idea when? I have a meeting soon.
Customer Service Agent5: Hopefully by the end of the day.
Brett Bumeter: OK, I’ll answer if I can. Thanks.

Maybe I’m getting old, but live chat help just seems to take my blood pressure up, I’d rather replace all of the CAT5e cables on my home theater yet again just for the heck of it.

Page Popularity for Site: 33% [?]

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.

Page Popularity for Site: 59% [?]

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.

Page Popularity for Site: 42% [?]

Below are my responses to what I think needs to be done by Mindjet development to save MindManager and make big Mindmaps functional.  Today with MindManager MindMaps, when a map gets ‘too’ big the map is almost worthless.  It becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees.  Below are some of my insights as a long time MindManager user to fix and even save this great software from a premature demise.

First question: What is a big map? In other words, when you think “This is a big map!”, what makes you think that? Is it just the number of topics? The size when expanded? The behavior of MindManager when you are working with it? Where do you draw the line?

• Anything that can not fit in a screen at 100% magnify is big.   Anything that can not print all subtopics on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper is a very big map.
• Big Maps can be simple or they can be complex.  Maps with more than 100 topics are complex.  Maps with more than 3 levels of sub topics are also complex.
• From a file perspective, any maps that have more than 5 connections into Outlook are also going to be complex, same goes for excel or any other program.
• Maps that have embedded pictures (not icons) tend to tax resources as well and can degrade usability.
  

Second question: What is in your big maps? Do all your maps become big, or just some of them? Why do some maps get big and others stay small?

• Business Plans
• Strategy maps
• score cards
• desktop configurations (all my stuff)
• Process planning maps
• Contract management maps
• Website planning maps
• Maps that plan out articles or white papers that end up being more than 1000 words in length
  

    Many of my maps become big.  When they become big, they also usually become worthless and non-functional.  When they start becoming big, I usually try and formulate a MindManager Exit Strategy (How Do I save this data and keep it useful before its lost in MindManager forever)  This usually means that I try and find a way to reformat the information into something that can be published and accessed for posterity.  Since MindManager maps are almost worthless when it comes to sharing with others (emotionally charged phrases there but definitely elements of truth in them) if I do not get large maps into another form, the effort of mapping the information is almost a wasted exercise other than my own self education.

My Large maps are usually transferred to one of these forms

• Website Article via WindowsLiveWriter -> Content Management System  (PS I hope you guys are making progress with the WLW team)
• Static Websites
• Video tutorials or presentations
• Clickable Flash mindmaps to be loaded on a website
• PDF white papers

Third question: What do you do with your big maps? Do you break them up, or do they just get bigger and bigger?

I mentioned my MindManager Exit Strategy before.  I tend to break up maps as I create them today, hoping to avoid large map syndrome.  I used to embrace large maps.  However, that was when I worked in a bureaucratic setting.  Large mindmaps gave me a way to horde knowledge and in a corporation that translates to power and job security.  I don’t have to worry about that type of silly behavior today and for me today, knowledge is not power if its stuck on my hard drive somewhere.  If I can not share it, publish it, teach it, tutor with it, etc. its worthless information to me.  Large Mindmaps today are like dinosaurs stuck in a tar pit.  Their life expectancy is very very short.

Fourth question: What would you like to do with your big maps? Do you wish for specific features or abilities to deal with big maps better than you do today?

I do not think there is anything new in my request that will follow that I have not expressed every few months here on the boards, on the phone with your team, or anywhere else for that matter but I’ll hit the main points again. 

• The Notes section needs an html editor and that needs to include viewing live html
  • that would then give us the ability to embed YouTube video as one simple example
• The program needs to be stable enough to handle large maps
• Connections with Outlook are very poor and can make large maps almost impossible to open.  This needs to be fixed or solved with a different solution (see next bullet point)
• MindManager needs a DB connection interface.   Microsoft has moved to the world of Proclarity and datacubes and scorecards and much more.  MindManager needs to be in this space.  MindManager needs to be able to connect into a database and return results based on mapping that can be configured with PerformancePoint .  Mindjet needs to get some super database programmers in house ASAP if you don’t have them already otherwise this is going to end up as a dead technology in the corporate sphere.
• The DB connectivity would solve this next request, but if it doesn’t happen, MindMaps need to be able to be used by groups in real time across shared servers and also via the internet. 
  
• MindManager could better handle the chaos views of large maps if they moved into 3d mapping technologies.  I’m thinking of a new view (like outline, map, presentation and then 3d)

So that’s what I see.  I think with these improvements this could be a great software program ready to endure another 10 years.  This would open up the software for many more corporations.  It would also make it functional for social networks, even lawyers working with contracts or for example say a Pennsylvania personal injury lawyer trying to organize a case and go to trial against a corporate giant.  This type of tool could level the playing field.

Page Popularity for Site: 38% [?]

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.

Page Popularity for Site: 26% [?]