During the last year, Google+, the search engine giant’s aggressive foray into social media, has grown quickly. Along with that, mind mappers, bloggers and software developers in the field of mind mapping software have set up pages on Google+. If you click on the mind map above, you’ll be taken to clickable version of it which you can use to navigate to each personal and product page on Google+.

What’s surprising is the number of key people – and especially software developers – who are missing on this important new communication channel. While I can sympathize that this is another social media outpost they need to update on a regular basis, the fact is that having a quality presence there and excellent content that visitors give a “G+” to (their version of a “thumbs up” can play major dividends in terms of improved ranking in Google search results.

Here is a mind map of the content of my new book, Up Your Impact: 52 Innovative Strategies to Add Value to Your Work.

(please click the image to view the full map as a PDF file)

Are you worried about the future of your job? Has your career stalled? Has your work drained the enjoyment out of life? If so, it’s time to employ a new strategy.

Adopting a value-added mindset is the antidote to fear and uncertainty. Instead of being disadvantaged by tough times, you can turn them to your advantage.

In my new book, I reveal a set of practical, proven strategies you can use to turn the odds in your favor: Greater job stability, more opportunities for advancement and greater satisfaction in your job. No B.S. – just ideas and insights you can use now to make a difference!

BiggerPlate, the world’s leading mind map gallery, recently added groups to its repertoire of services. Here’s a closer look at their capabilities, and how they will evolve in the near future. As they are currently configured, BiggerPlate groups now allow members to:

• Create your own groups and populate them with maps from the BiggerPlate gallery
• Join other groups to view the maps that other visual thinkers have curated
• Add maps to the groups of which you’re a member.

In a recent e-mail conversation, I asked site owner Liam Hughes a series of questions to help you better understand what these groups are, how you can benefit from them and what features he expects to add in the near future.

Chuck Frey: What was your goal in creating groups on BiggerPlate.com? What needs do they fill for visual mappers?

Liam Hughes: The primary goal was to give users of Biggerplate another intuitive way to arrange and navigate the mind map content on the site. In particular, we wanted a way for the content to be interpreted and organized according the interests of the member community. Giving our members the ability to create and curate collections of maps around particular subjects of interest seemed the best way to do this!

In terms of what needs they fill, I think the groups will help people to more fully see and understand how mapping is being used in situations and contexts that are particularly relevant to them. For example, if I’m a software tester, I can join the software testing group, and see how other software testers have been using mind mapping in their work, and this may inspire me to use the tools differently, or try mapping in a new context. We think contextual learning like this is invaluable, and a very powerful way for mappers to improve their use of mapping.

Frey: Your blog says “this is a great foundation upon which to build some amazing new features that are going to enable Biggerplate users to come together to share their experiences, learning, and mind maps around subjects that interest them.” How, specifically, will groups become a learning tool?

Hughes: Seeing how other people are using maps is extremely valuable in itself, but seeing how an IT Project Manager uses maps is perhaps of limited use/interest if I’m a 4th grade science teacher! However, if I can join (or create a group) for 4th Grade Science teachers, then bring together maps and other mappers around this subject, I will potentially learn a huge amount about how others are using maps in situations and contexts that are particularly relevant to me. That’s very useful learning, and a great way for us to build greater collective understanding of how maps can be used most effectively.

Frey: Can anyone create a group?

Hughes: Yes, anyone can create a group.

Frey: Have you been satisfied with their rate of growth so far?

Hughes: We’ve been really pleased with how this first beta phase has gone, and in particular, it has been very exciting to see such variety in the groups that people have created. There are already over 80 groups on the site, covering a very wide range of interests, and even though the groups are still fairly basic, people are joining up and helping to build the collection of maps within them. It’s been very encouraging, and has confirmed that we are correct to make this a core focus for this year.

Frey: What other capabilities are planned?

Hughes: First and foremost, we’ll be working on making Groups more visible throughout the site, so that you are more able to discover them, and engage with them as you move around the library. Following on from that, we will be working to make it easy to navigate content within groups, and find groups of particular interest to you. On a slightly longer time-table, you can expect to see greater options for group control (closed vs open groups for example) and more ways to see and keep up with new content and activity within your groups. We’re also looking closely at the best ways to enable members to interact within groups, and the jury is still out on what exactly that will involve, but you can expect to see improvement in how you can engage with other group members.

Frey: Will there be any support for discussing maps contained in groups, or one-to-one messaging between members?

Hughes: At the moment, we’ve got a Facebook comments feed in each group so that people can have discussion within a group about the map content if they wish. Over time, we will be looking at building more complete discussion capabilities, primarily to allow more ‘thread’ based discussions to take place with the group. As mentioned, we’re still assessing what the best ways to do this might be, so it’s a little further down the line, as is one-to-one messaging.

Frey: Is there anything else my readers should know about BiggerPlate Groups?

Hughes: The most important point is that groups can help you find mind map content that you may not otherwise have discovered on the site. It has already helped to bring some ‘buried’ content back to the surface, and I’m seeing maps that I had previously forgotten about or had not seen before which is exactly the purpose! The Groups are a major focus for us this year, and we are looking to build these into something that enables mappers to engage with each other around map content in relation to a particular subject. You can therefore expect to see fairly regular updates and improvements being made, and an increasing focus on enabling the mind mappers of the world to engage more directly with each other to share their content and experiences of mapping. It’s worth getting involved now, so you can be part of the journey as it evolves!

Dan Roam, author of the visual mapping books The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures and Blah, Blah, Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work, compares the process of visual thinking to carving a faceted diamond out of a rough piece of the crystalline substance. This is a very powerful analogy.

In their natural state, diamonds do not look like the beautiful, multi-faceted gemstones that are one of the world’s most valuable substances. Instead, they look like a lump of crystal. In much the same way, raw information must be carved and shaped to create something of meaning and value. Most people don’t know how to do this.

It takes an experienced diamond cutter to carve the stone and reveal the beautiful facets of the diamond. In much the same way, a visual thinker dissects a large pile of information, classifies it, organizes it and converts it into a cohesive visual presentation out of it that is thrilling to behold. Visual thinkers need to be skilled at systems-level thinking, able to recognize patterns and connections within the bits of information they have gathered, and a keen eye for separating valuable elements from the useless bits.

In both diamond cutting and visual thinking the primary process is one of simplification, cutting away that which is not of value and maximizing the presentation of the parts that remain Like a diamond, information has multiple facets; in a mind map, these are reflected as primary topics, each containing a depth of subtopics, much like the reflections and refractions within a fine diamond.

The final point of comparison between diamonds and visual mapping can be found in the worth of the raw material versus the finished product. Coal has little value. It’s basically carbon formed into a shale-like substance. But compressed under the proper heat and pressure conditions for millions of years and then chiseled and shaped by an experienced diamond cutter, it is transformed into something of incomparable value. In the same way, a visual mapper takes a pile of information and knowledge and transforms it into something of much greater value – a business decision, a plan or a multi-million dollar idea.

That’s the power and value of visual thinking.

Visual thinking is an essential executive skill today. If you want to keep up with the latest thinking on this fascinating topic, why not follow these 10 visual thinking experts on Twitter?

Please click on the image above to load a clickable image map, where you can navigate to the Twitter feeds of these experts. Or navigate to them using the links in the descriptions below. Rather than just give you the “tip of the iceberg, I took some time to locate some of their best work, so you can get a better sense of who these people are and what they do – and the rich, vibrant field that is visual thinking!

Dan Roam
@dan_roam

Author of the best-selling books The Back of the Napkin and Blah Blah Blah and frequent public speaker, Dan has done a lot to bring visual thinking to the attention of executives and leaders, and has created a simple framework to begin using it. Here’s his blog.

Mike Rohde
@rohdesign

Mike has been a leading advocate and practitioner of a visual technique called “sketchnoting,” which makes conventional notes more visual through styling your hand-written text and adding simple doodles and sketches. He presents regularly on this topic at the famous SXSW conference in Austin. Here’s his excellent blog.

David Armano
@armano

David has an extraordinary talent for designing and producing business diagrams and infographics. He is a frequent public speaker on the topic of visual thinking. Here is a link to his blog and his visual thinking set on Flickr, which contains many excellent diagrams.

Nancy Duarte
@nancyduarte

Nancy is the author of Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences and slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Check out her blog and a recent TED presentation, which gives an excellent overview of her storytelling techniques! Click here for her Twitter feed.

Sunni Brown
@sunnibrown

Sunni is an expert on visual notetaking and graphic facilitation. She is a frequent speaker, and was one of several co-authors with Dave Gray of the seminal book Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rule-breakers and Changemakers. Here’s a recent TED talk that summarizes the benefits of visual notetaking. The is also the leader of the Doodle Revolution, which you can read about on her blog.

David Sibbet
@davidsibbet

David is the author of Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity and Visual Teams: Graphic Tools for Commitment, Innovation, and High Performance and is a leading thinker in the organizational use of visual thinking techniques. His website and blog, where he posts updates on what he’s working on and thinking about periodically, can be found here.

Dave Gray
(@davegray

Dave is the founder of XPLANE, a visual thinking consultancy that was acquired by the Dachis Group. He is the co-author of Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers (along with Sunni Brown and James Macanufo), and is one of the deepest thinkers in this space. I’ve been following him for years, and always love his fascinating insights. Check out this video interview with him and his Communication Nation blog.

Kumar Kolanganti
@visualoomph

Kumar is passionate about information and data visualization, and shares best practices on these subjects on his blog and in his Twitter feed. He is also the developer of a pictorial resume creator called PictoCV.

Jeff Bennett
@vizthinker

Jeff is the founder of Digital Splash Media and is a proponent of using video infographics to communicate information to audiences. He curates them at VideoInfographics.com.

Karl Gude
@karlgude

Karl spent 25 years visualizing information for various large news organizations including The Associated Press and Newsweek magazine. As a visual journalist, information designer and artist, his mission was to simplify complex topics so that the average reader could understand them. His extensive collection of infographics can be found in this Flickr set.

Who would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the comments, please!

The mind map above was produced using MindManager 2012 for Windows.

Visual thinking is quickly growing in importance as a strategy for attacking difficult business problems. But what’s driving this need and why should you learn about it?

That’s the purpose of this new mind map, which outlines the major drivers behind the growth of visual thinking (the “why”) and codifies the benefits of adopting this type of mindset (please click on the map to view a larger image).

What do you think? What would you add to this mind map? Please share your thoughts!

This mind map was created using iMindMap 5 Ultimate for Windows.

Investing time in improving your skill with mind mapping software can have a strong payoff in improved productivity, according to a deeper analysis of my survey research.

Last year, I conducted a survey that showed that mind mapping software is the ideal productivity tool for today’s busy executives. After writing about Biggerplate.com’s new training program on the blog this morning, I got to wondering about the connection between mind mapping skill level and the benefits enjoyed from it. Intuitively, it seems there should be a direct correlation between the two. After all, the more skilled you are with a software program, you can work faster and more efficiently, and apply it to a greater number of tasks. Wouldn’t it be great if I had some real-world data to back up that assertion, I wondered? Then I suddenly realized that I may have this data, embedded in last year’s survey results.

So I opened up the survey data, and sure enough, the first question asked respondents what their skill level with mind mapping software was. Perfect! So I filtered the results of the survey by skill level, and the data below emerged. The percentages above each bar in the charts indicates the percentage of respondents in each skill level who answered in this way – in each case, this represents the most popular response.

Time savings with mind mapping software

As you can see from the chart, there is a direct correlation between your skill level and the number of hours you can save per week. The time savings doesn’t increase when you advance your skills to become an intermediate user, stuck between 1-2 hours per week. After that, however, it becomes a hockey stick-shaped curve, with time savings more than doubling when you become an advanced or experienced user, and then nearly doubling again between there and the expert level.

Productivity increase with mind mapping software

At the beginner and intermediate skill levels, productivity remains steady at a 10% increase. As you transition to become an advanced or experienced user of mind mapping software, however, users at this level said their productivity increase was 3 times that – a remarkable 30% increase in productivity. Imagine what you could do with that kind of efficiency! Surprisingly, there was no further increase in productivity between advanced and expert users.

What does this mean to you?

The sweet spot appears to be at the advanced level. Growing your skills to this level of proficiency appears to have the biggest payoff.

What this means is that if you need more hours in the day to get your work done, or if you’re looking for a way to become more productive, you ought to consider investing in my Mind Mapping Insider membership program. The tutorials, reports and resources it contains are designed to help you become a highly skilled visual mapper.

Four courses are being offered initially:

• An introduction to mind mapping
• Mind mapping for marketers
• Mind mapping for business planning
• Mind mapping for innovation

Training will be provided on any one of the four mind mapping software programs that the website currently supports: MindManager, iMindMap, XMind and MindGenius, and can be tailored to the needs of specific clients and their needs.

I was curious about what’s behind this move, so I interviewed Biggerplate.com founder Liam Hughes via e-mail:

Chuck: What made you decide to launch this service? What unfulfilled needs did you see that you aim to fill with your training programs?

Liam: We have done various pieces of mind map training over the years, but it never quite felt like the right time to invest in making this a more structured and/or widely available part of the business. After the growth and success of Biggerplate.com in 2011 however, I felt that the offline side of our business was failing to match the standards set by the online side, and I wanted to change this. We felt there was a need (and a space) for more targeted training services that focus on particular processes or job functions using mind maps, and this is what our training products aim to do. We currently have a program focused on marketers, a program focused on business planning, and a program focused on innovation, with others in the pipeline. The idea is to provide a training experience that is entirely focused on practical contextual learning.

Another consideration was the huge disparity in the price of training services that we saw elsewhere, and the belief that we could be very competitive in this area due to the strength of our online business. We set ourselves the objective of designing a range of products that could be delivered worldwide at prices that were competitive, regardless of where the training takes place. With Biggerplate being a global community of mappers, it was extremely important for us to be global in our thinking about these services, which means ensuring people who want training overseas are not financially penalized for the fact that we are based in the UK! It’s taken a little longer than planned, but we are very happy with the outcome!

Chuck: Will you be the person who delivers the training worldwide, or will you hire others to do so outside of the UK?

Liam: All training around the world will be delivered by myself and the Biggerplate team, which we are very excited about! (We don’t get out much…)

It’s important for us to ensure the style, tone, quality, and delivery of the training experience fits with what people associate with Biggerplate and expect from our brand. At this stage, this can only be achieved by keeping everything ‘in-house’, and that’s why we do not hire others to do training on our behalf. We have been fortunate enough to establish a strong name for ourselves in the mind mapping world, and I would not want to damage that by having anyone feeling short-changed by us, or having a training experience that falls below the standards we set.

It’s also important and enjoyable for us to meet mind mappers and our members in person, and this is something we have been more focused on over the last year. Our aim is to combine training assignments abroad (and in the UK) with opportunities to host small public events for our members in the local area, with a view to further strengthening the connection between Biggerplate and our users around the world, as well as the connections within the mind mapping community as a whole, which is a key part of our overall mission.

Chuck: A number of software resellers already offer mind mapping software training. How will the training from Biggerplate.com be different, better or unique?

Liam: Our aim is to be specific and focused on the practical use of mapping and mapping software within a particular context. This means if you are a marketer, for example, we’ll show you the ways in which mapping can be used in specific marketing situations and processes, rather than giving you the A-Z of everything a particular mapping program can do. Software training can sometimes be like being taught to drive by the maker of your car. By the end of it, you may know everything about the body, the engine, the lights on the dash, and the service plans available, but that information does not exactly prepare you for the reality of the open road, or even how to pull out of the parking lot!

Perhaps an advantage we have is that we don’t sell mapping software, and neither do we need to make it look great; it will do that by itself when left in the hands of someone who fully understands the contexts in which it can be put to use most effectively. Our job is to give people that understanding, and the confidence to explore mapping in ways that make sense to their everyday working lives. The mind map library and community at Biggerplate gives us truly unique perspectives on how people around the world are using maps in a variety of organizations and situations. It is this knowledge and understanding that enables us to help others do the same!

Chuck: What kind of training materials will participants receive as part of your on-site training? (such as a manual or worksheets)

Liam: We call it “The Playbook.” It’s a workbook or manual that is specific to whichever training program a person is taking with us. It is used for various exercises during the workshops, and also contains a huge amount of practical “when you want to do this, click here” type information, as well as numerous map examples and templates to provide food for thought. It has a distinct Biggerplate “tone” to it, and also contains suggestions, ideas, exercises and activities that can be carried out after the training is completed to try and reinforce learning once participants are back to the reality of daily working life. It also contains information about other sources of quality mind mapping information, such as this blog, and some of the other great sites that mapping experts around the world are running for the benefit of others.

Chuck: What is your experience in a corporate environment? How does this give you a unique perspective on the needs of business people?

Liam: In the early years of Biggerplate (2007-2009), my working life was divided between developing the Biggerplate website and working within my dad’s small consultancy firm, delivering training and consultancy services to businesses all over the world. The business is largely focused on change management, strategic planning and executive training programs. It was what you might call a baptism of fire for someone who was straight out of university and looking to build a mind map library!

The experience was invaluable in helping me understand the value of making information and problems more visible and visual. I gradually integrated mind mapping into more and more of the work we were doing, usually with great effect. From small to large businesses, a key problem that many people have is that information, learning and problems are largely buried on hard drives or in “the cloud.” Working with people to overcome these issues served to reinforce my belief that mind mapping is a powerful tool to overcome these issues, provided people could see the relevance of it to their particular department, job role or challenge.

This is something I think the mind mapping world has perhaps been slow to deal with, and in many cases we sing the virtues of mapping, almost as if the map is the end goal in itself. It is not necessarily the answer to everything, and in many cases is simply another tool to be used as part of a set in order to complete a particular process. However, my work in this area served to reaffirm that people are far more able to make sense of complexity when it is made more visually accessible, and maps are a great way to do this!

As Biggerplate has grown into a fully-fledged business, I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with a number of interesting individuals and businesses of all shapes and sizes around the world, who have helped me to further develop an understanding of where mind mapping can fit into daily life to improve performance, understanding and results. The training services we have designed keeps these ideas at their core, and when combined with the learning and experience we have from our library and community, we think the final products are unique in terms of their focus on context-specific learning and practical mind map training.

Chuck: Any thought of delivering this type of training via GoToMeeting, WebEx or other web conferencing applications?

Liam: It’s certainly on our radar, because this is obviously the way that much of the world is going. On a personal level, I prefer to be in a room with people and engaging with them in person. You can feel and respond to the energy and interests of the group in a way that just not possible online, ensuring people get what they want out of a training session. However, the realities are that you can’t be everywhere at once, and some people simply won’t be able to access our training services, no matter how affordable we try to make them, because of budgetary restrictions or other factors. We therefore need to come up with an answer, and perhaps online training webinars are the way forward.

We may go part of the way to solving this issue when we rebuild the tutorials section of our website later in the year. On the old version of Biggerplate, which as retired in March 2011, this was a highly visited but poorly constructed area of the site, and we decided not to rebuild it until we knew we could do it properly. The new tutorials area will pull together the best video tutorials on the web from software developers and mind mapping experts, to provide a learning hub that will hopefully help numerous people to get to grips with mind mapping without necessarily having to engage with paid training services. While we will be sad not to see them in person, if they can become a mind mapping expert by spending time in the new tutorials section, then we’ll consider that a win, too!

The Noun Project is a large collection of over 800 open-source icons that you can use with your mind mapping program – with a little bit of modification.

“The Noun Collection consists of the symbols we feel best communicate the objects or concepts they are representing, while at the same time exhibit a high level of design skill and execution,” says an explanation of what the mission of The Noun Collection is. In the open-source spirit, this large library of vector art contains icons created by contributors from around the world, and the site has been translated into 25 languages. This library enables you to view graphics by topical categories, featured collections and keyword search. Because it’s open source, The Noun Collection is constantly growing, as designers and illustrators from around the world contribute their best icons and symbols.

Designed for use by illustrators, these high-quality images are in a scalable vector graphic (SVG) form – perfect for incorporating into an illustration. As their name implies, SVG files can be made larger, without any loss in quality. The problem for mind mappers is that most visual mapping software can’t import this type of graphic file. So you will need to use a graphics program (my preference is Adobe Fireworks – but it can’t open SVG files, unfortunately) to convert it to a format that your program can handle, such as JPG, GIF or PNG. From there, you should be able to import them into your mind mapping program. Click here for a post in which I summarized which programs enable you to add to their icon and symbol collections, and which do not.

If you don’t have a commercial graphics editing program that can handle SVG graphics, you may want to consider a free or low-cost SVG editor such as Inkscape or the browser-based SVG-edit.

If you’re handy with graphics editing software, you may want to consider adding some of these icons to your favorite mind mapping program.

There’s no such thing as information overload. That’s the audacious claim of the author of the Innovation Leadership Network Blog, Tim Kastelle.

Kastelle contends that there has always been too much information. It’s just that in the past, we developed methods of managing it, filtering it and working with it that were reasonably effective. What’s changed is that the volume and velocity of information we must deal with today have grown so much that our traditional methods of dealing with it don’t work any more.

That may be true up to a point. But I think we are truly facing an information glut today. The number of “channels” we need to pay attention to has expanded almost exponentially, including Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Facebook, information streams on our mobile devices and more. But our ability to handle all of it as human beings hasn’t changed very much. We must be extremely selective about what we pay attention to, so we can find what we need and then be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, signal from noise, useless information from the nuggets that we need to do our jobs.

We need better filters

The bottom line is this: We need better filters to manage information today.Not surprisingly, I view mind mapping software as one potential solution. Here’s why:

Think about the process you follow when you’re conducting online research. Chances are, it looks something like the flow chart above. Mind mapping software is a powerful information capture tool. It then provides us with the ability to review what we’ve gathered, identify patterns and meta-categories within it, organize it into logical chunks and discard what isn’t really useful, add our interpretation to it and then share it with our key stakeholders.

What readers of this blog have to say

Data from my 2011 survey reinforces the idea that mind mapping software is a key tool for handling information overload. 52% of survey respondents reported that it’s a “significant” challenge for them. But 36%also said that their mind mapping software has helped them to a “significant extent” to manage this challenge. Another 20% called it “invaluable.”

So how about you? What tools are you using to manage information effectively?