Mind mapping software is often dismissed by linear thinkers as being somewhat frivolous and not worthy of their attention. But by ignoring it, they’re missing out on one of the most powerful productivity tools of the modern age. This infographic explains why (please click on the image to view the full-sized image).

The creation of this chart has a twisted but interesting history:

A few days ago, I had the privilege of listening to an excellent TED talk by visual thinking expert Nancy Duarte, in which she talked about how to craft persuasive, engaging stories that will have an impact when you present them to the people and groups you need to influence. Her breakthrough in understanding what makes an effective story is when she realized that the world’s best speeches followed a common pattern: They oscillated between describing the present conditions to which the audience can relate – the problem state, if you will – and a compelling future state in which the problem has been solved – a utopia where everything is ideal. In the process, these speakers literally compel their audiences to want to achieve that ideal future. An example of what this looks like appears below:

This visual model is marvelously simple!

The examples Duarte shared were Steve Jobs’ launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007 and Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. In the case of the iPhone launch, the inimitable showman compared the state of affairs of cell phones at the time with a utopian picture of what these devices could be – a telephone, music player and much more. In the case of Dr. King, he compared the challenges that African Americans were facing at the time of his speech and a future vision of equality for all men, regardless of creed or color. Who would have guessed that these two famous speeches had so much in common?

Connection with mind mapping software

I was blown away by Duarte’s keen, simple insight, and got to thinking about how I could apply it to this blog and the field of visual mapping. What if I painted a picture of the present challenges that executives face without a visual thinking tool like mind mapping software, and then compared it to what an ideal future with it could look like? I further realized that I had a wealth of excellent data from last year’s survey that I had communicated with you back then, but perhaps I needed to do a better job of “unpacking” it to help you understand what it means, and why you should care. That would lend credibility to these ideal future benefits.

So I combined these two sets of elements – the present/future comparison and the survey data – into a single infographic that I think does an excellent job of telling the story of why executives who aren’t utilizing mind mapping software should be.

If you want to share this infographic with others (and I encourage you to do so), you can download it as a PDF file here.

Mind mapping software is often dismissed by linear thinkers as being somewhat frivolous and not worthy of their attention. But by ignoring it, they’re missing out on one of the most powerful productivity tools of the modern age. This infographic explains why (please click on the image to view the full-sized image).

MindMapper 12 was recently launched by SimTech Systems. It strengthens this program’s position as a solid mind mapping program for business. Here are the most significant new and improved features and my thoughts on them:

Project management: MindMapper 12′s project management toolset has been significantly expanded. Tasks can be shown in a new schedule view, which is a Gantt chart. Topics are displayed on the left side of the schedule, along with start and end dates and planned and actual costs. The next section of the table displays resources (people and equipment assigned to the project), their cost (per hour or unit cost) the planned and actual hours they have put into the project and the cost implications (rate multiplied by time). The final part of the table displays the task durations in a Gantt view. The horizontal bars in the Gantt chart automatically display what the developer calls their “achievement” rate – the percentage of task completed – in visual form. The percentage complete is depicted in a striped pattern, as shown at right. It’s a great way to communicate this information visually.

When you add schedule data to a map topic, it gives you the option of inserting  dependencies, right in the map view. This is depicted as a relationship line, and is displayed as a connecting line in the Gantt view.

Presentation mode: Three presentation options are now offered in MindMapper 12:

• “Brief with outline” displays your map as a hierarchical outline in a narrow vertical panel on the left side of the screen. If you click on a low-level subtopic, it is highlighted in the map view to the right, while all other topics are dimmed. You navigate through your presentation by clicking on the points in the outline.
• In the “brief with scenario” option, the program displays larger chunks of your map at one time. The developer defines a “scenario” as one logical unit of the mind map – usually one topic of the map plus its subtopics. Both modes provide your audience with an important sense of context – in other words, they show how the topic you’re currently viewing is related to the rest of the map.
• The third mode, which is simply called “play slide,” expands the topic to fill the screen without any other interface elements displayed. The program gives you several options, which enable you to select a range of slides to present from, as well as set up a delay function so your presentation can run by itself – useful for locations like sales displays and trade show booths.

Table conversion feature: When this new command is selected, all of the sub-topics below it are converted into a table. The program enables you to select from a number of table styles and templates. I’m not sure how I would ever use such a feature; think of it as a different way of presenting the lower-level content of your map in a more linear form.

Field topics: This interesting new feature enhances your ability to create records and capture data in them. Think of a field topic as a fill-in-the-blank record capture. When you convert a topic into a field, the original text (address, for example) is grayed out and you can enter data into it (the person’s actual address). This gives you a way to easily capture simple data in your maps, while ensuring that it is entered in a consistent format (see screen capture).

Enhanced printing: One of the complaints of mind mapping software is that printing large maps can be ponderous. If you try to print one of these monsters on a single page, the text is so small that it’s unreadable. The alternative is to print your map across multiple pages, but you’re usually at the mercy of the way that the program decides to divide your map into separate pages. Not so with MindMapper 12. It solves this challenge by giving you an improved set of printing options. For example, you can move your map freely around the print canvas to position it exactly as you want it. You can change the level of print zoom, and perform physical and logical partitioning of pages. With the physical partition, you select the percentage zoom and how many pages horizontally and vertically your mind map should be printed on. With the logical partition, the program does it for you, based upon the first-level topics.

Collaboration: Sim Tech Systems, the developer of MindMapper 12, has launched an online collaboration service, which enables you to conduct online meetings with other MindMapper users, and to share and co-edit your maps with them. To utilize this feature, you must subscribe to the MindMapper Collaboration service. Packages are available that enable up to 5 or 20 people to participate in an online meeting.

A voting tool gives you a structured way to get input from meeting participants, while a report window enables you to see who contributed which content to the map. At any point during the online meeting, the organizer can take a “snapshot” of the map, which can be used to roll it back to a previous state – useful if you don’t like the direction the meeting is headed. I like the way the developer has implemented this feature; snapshots are much more manageable than trying to roll back the map one step at a time to a state that is 200 changes back, for example. As the meeting organizer, however, it’s up to you to remember to take snapshots throughout the meeting. This is an excellent feature!

If you don’t own a licensed copy of MindMapper 12, you can still participate in an online meeting, utilizing a web version of the program called iMindMapper. It requires Internet Explorer and administrative privileges to download and install an ActiveX control on your computer.

Upload to Twitter: MindMapper 12 gains a simple social media feature. You can select a topic and upload it to your Twitter feed. This may be useful if you want to plan a campaign of tweets. You could use it to launch these brief messages, one at a time. It would be nice if tweets could be scheduled, so you could set up and automatically deploy a tweet campaign from within MindMapper. A future capability, perhaps?

MindMapper Mobile for Android: An Android version of MindMapper was also released at the same time as version 12, along with a web folder application, so the mobile and desktop versions of MindMapper can exchange maps. It’s a free download and is available in the Android Market.

Ideation meeting templates: MindMapper 12 has a new tab in its ribbon toolbar called “ideation.” Within it, you can use a number of techniques to capture ideas, including:

• Radiant association
• Attribute listing
• Processing planning
• Cause and effect (fishbone mapping)
• Backward thinking
• SWOT analysis
• Forced connections

When you click on an ideation technique, the program displays a sample map (see screen shot above) – which is very helpful if you don’t know anything about some of these methods – while a vertical pane on the right side of the screen displays some explanatory text and a simple step-by-step procedure to use the technique. It also contains links to completed examples of each map type.

It’s nice to see this level of support for idea development and creative problem solving in MindMapper 12. The number of ideation techniques included is impressive. I also like the fact that the developers weren’t satisfied to just provide the tools, expecting you to figure them out. It actually explains how to employ them and gives you sample maps to help you visualize what to do.

Conclusion

Sim Tech only releases upgrades to MindMapper every two to three years. But usually, the wait it worth it, and MindMapper 12 is no exception. The program’s expanded business toolset should make it attractive to many executives. It offers an extensive array of capabilities that are equal to almost any business task you could think of, but arranges them in a logical, easy-to-use way. That’s a fine balance that’s not easy to achieve.

My favorite capabilities in this new version include the rollback capability of the online collaboration space, as well as the clever implementation of its brainstorming techniques. A lot of thought has obviously gone into how to make this program easy for people to use, without a big learning curve.

MindMapper 12 Professional is available from the Sim Tech Systems website and it costs $249.

In the process of creating this presentation, I learned a number of things about Prezi, both pro and con:

Pros

I laid out my main points in linear order in Notepad, and then used them as a guide to create a corresponding hierarchy of objects in the workspace. It was easy to add all of my text, arrange it how I wanted and then add images to it. It couldn’t be any simpler. Even the confusing looking “transformation zebra” – a set of striped, concentric circles that are used to control the rotation and size of objects in Prezi, turned out to be delightfully easy to use.

In general, Prezi was easy to use and intuitive to figure out. This is one of those apps you can just begin to use and figure it out as you go. For example, I learned how to re-order the path for your animated presentation just by playing around with Prezi. Turns out that in the middle of each path segment, there’s a circle that you can drag to an object to create a new node in your presentation. Another example: If you have created a frame around several objects, you can drag the path node to the border of the object; Prezi automatically centers the viewfinder on the frame and its contents.

Cons:

Prezi sometimes acted flaky. There’s a set of interlocking circles that float in the upper left corner of the workspace when you’re creating a prezi, which functions as the application’s toolbar. Sometimes this disappeared and I couldn’t figure out how to make it come back. So I’d have to log out and then log back in.

Text is only available in one color – black. Prezi does offer a number of templates, which apply a set of background colors, fonts and text colors to your prezi. That’s probably why you can’t change text color at will – because it would probably mess up these templates.

I discovered I had to be careful about the sizes of images I imported into the Prezi workspace. If they were too small, they appeared to be jaggy in my presentation. Case in point: The black and green logo for the Mind Mapping Insider program. I had to eliminate it, because I didn’t have the time to create a larger version.

I tried to create a list of 7 or 8 items, and then have Prezi zoom in on each one successfully – a technique that I had seen used in some other prezis. This took some effort, between sizing and positioning items properly, but it looked cool. Unfortunately, after I worked with this “zoom list” for a while, I got an error message from the application, telling me my file was too large. Apparently, whatever mathematical formulas Prezi uses to calculate the size and position of objects in the workspace didn’t like what I was trying to do. To fix this problem, I made all of the items in the list the same size, and just created a series of quarter-turn rotations to walk the viewer through my prezi. This comes up near the end of it.

Conclusion

So that’s what I learned. Prezi is a fascinating, easy to use tool that has a ton of promise, but is still slightly rough around the edges. If you’re looking for a multimedia tool that’s going to add some pizzazz to your blog or website, you can’t go wrong with Prezi.

It’s hard to explain what this browser-based application is and what it does. But it’s much easier to show it. Here is a prezi about mind mapping that someone shared in Prezi’s online gallery. It’s typical of a presentation created in this unique medium. To advance the presentation below, simply click on the right-facing arrow:

How it works

Prezi uses your content to create a story line, and then enables you and your audience to zoom in, zoom out and move through its elements in an amazing way. It enables you to show the bigger pictures and the details at the same time, on a single canvas. To create a prezi, you lay out the elements of your story – words, pictures and other elements – on the canvas; a “path” tool lets you select the order in which the presentation will “fly” through them.

In addition to presenting your ideas, Prezi can also be used for mind mapping, note taking and sharing information. Files created in Prezi can be embedded in a web page (as I’ve done above), published to social media sites, shared on a blog or posted to the Prezi “explore” library. This last resource, available by clicking on the “explore” tab at www.prezi.com, is an excellent way to see what others have created – and, by extension – what it’s possible to create with this powerful tool.

You can get started with a free Prezi account – a great way to explore this tool and whether or not it fits with your work style. It offers limited storage and places a Prezi watermark on each of the presentations you create. Still, it’s a good way to get started with it. A basic paid subscription to Prezi costs US$59 per year (less than $5 per month) and includes 500MB of online storage space. A Pro version is also available for a $159 annual fee that gives you four times as much storage, as well as access to a downloadable desktop version of Prezi.

Why is Prezi well suited to mind mapping?

Like conventional mind maps, Prezi enables you to see your information in chunks or elements, and to depict the relationships between them. It enables you to present multiple levels of detail, and even adds elements of space, movement and time to the information you need to capture or communicate. In addition, Prezi – like mind mapping – does an excellent job of supporting non-linear thinking, which is key to exploring a topic or idea in its myriad of details and possibilities. The unlimited canvas of this application facilitates letting your mind take your map where it wants to go. You can easily add images, web links and even multimedia files to presentations created in Prezi. Finally, like mind maps, Prezi helps your ideas to stand out and command attention.

An excellent guide to Prezi

A great guide to this Brave New World of visual thinking and presentation is Stephanie Diamond’s new book, Prezi for Dummies. I’ve known Stephanie for a number of years via my Mind Mapping Software Blog. She’s an incredibly smart person, an ardent user of mind maps for marketing, and I implicitly trust her judgment. If she says something is important, then you better pay attention. She has written a practical, fun-to-read guide to all things Prezi. Her breezy prose and numerous examples help to demystify this fascinating application, which requires you to throw out your existing presentation mindset and to rethink how you gather, arrange and present information and ideas.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a new way to present your ideas and explore how mind mapping works on this unique platform, why not sign up for a free basic Prezi account? You may also want to take a look at Stephanie’s book, which is an excellent “how-to” guide to this powerful and flexible tool.

What to look for

Logical, easy to use controls: Controls to navigate your mind map in presentation views should be simple and easy to use. This is critically important because when you are standing in front of an audience making a presentation, you don’t want to be fumbling around with your program trying to get it to work the way you want it to. Ideally, the program should work equally well with the mouse, a wireless presentation device and keyboard shortcuts.

Annotation: One of the powerful benefits of utilizing mind mapping software in a meeting is that you can actually annotate your map during the presentation to accommodate feedback from your audience. This may be especially valuable in a small group setting where you and your colleagues are reviewing a business plan, for example.

Displaying attached assets: Business mind maps are essentially visual databases. Their value is derived from the topics and subtopics and their relationships with one another. But another part of their value comes from the ability to link to files, e-mails and web pages. The presentation mode of the mind mapping program you select should be able to display these information assets seamlessly, without any glitchiness.

Configurable: The best programs for making presentations give you options on how the program will behave, and what map elements should be displayed or hidden. This enables you to customize the program to meet your unique needs. If you’re presenting to a small workgroup, for example, you may want to display more map elements, because it will be more of a working session. When presenting to a large group, on the other hand, less is probably best.

Try before you buy: For best results, I recommend downloading a trial version of the programs you’re considering and creating several mind maps that are typical of the type that you’d like to present as part of your work. Once you have set up your maps, invest some time playing around with each program’s presentation mode to see which one is the best match with your presentation style.

The best mapping applications for making presentations

Here are the 3 best mind mapping programs for making presentations, in my opinion:

iMindMap 4: This program, developed by Buzan Online, has some neat capabilities, including a two-screen setup – so you see a special presenter view with a menu bar at the bottom of the screen that controls your presentation and notes for your reference, but your audience only sees your map. Also, the presenter view displays a timer, which shows you how much time you have spent on the current slide and the presentation in total. If your map contains links to child maps, those are displayed in your presenter menu, so you can jump back and forth easily between the parent and child maps. Finally, iMindMap’s presentation mode extends the program’s organic mapping focus: Clicking on the forward button of the presentation toolbar causes your map branches to smoothly and organically “grow” into place. It looks very elegant, among the best mind mapping software presentation modes I’ve seen.

NovaMind 4: The NovaMind Mac presenter mode (see image above right) divides your map into a series of “slides,” consisting of your entire map, each topic and its associated subtopics. Like other mind mapping software presentation modes, it “walks” you clockwise around your map and its contents, branch by branch. Where NovaMind differs is that it doesn’t make you, the presenter, click on each branch and sub-branch to expand it. It does that for you, creating a set of views with each topic and sub-topic automatically centered on the screen. This enables you to focus on presenting your remarks, and eliminates the need for you to fiddle with your map while you’re talking.  The presentation view in NovaMind also contains an elapsed time clock. Below that is a split screen; the left side displays the view of your map that your audience sees, while the right side displays the “slide” that will appear next on the screen. This gives you a preview of the next slide, so you can mentally prepare for it. Finally, below the split screen is a selector panel, which displays a timeline of all of the map views that will be part of your “slide show.” You can use it to jump to any “slide” in your presentation at any time. In the Windows version of NovaMind, the presentation mode highlights the branches and automatically expands children branches as necessary to show the detailed information. The presentation toolbar also enables you to access the program’s libraries of icons and images, which can be dragged and dropped onto topics, edit task information and access the Suggesterator, a thesaurus-like tool that you can use with your colleagues to brainstorm additional topics and ideas while in the program’s presentation mode.

MindManager 8: MindManager’s presentation mode is uncluttered; a narrow toolbar at the bottom of the screen gives you controls to move through the branches of your map, with automatically expand one by one. It also contains buttons that enable you to adjust how your map topics behave in presentation mode, show/hide the ribbon toolbar, expand the number of levels of topics initially visible, and show/hide map and topic elements, such as links, attachments, images and callouts. In fact, MindManager offers a surprising level of granularity in customizing what’s visible and what’s not in presentation mode; a long list of map elements is displayed in the selector, with checkboxes next to each one. Want to display attachments in your map? Check the box next to it. MindManager defaults to a common-sense set of map elements, but you can easily customize it to meet your presentation needs. One tip: the less clutter, the better, especially when audiences can easily become overwhelmed with “map shock.” You can edit MindManager maps in presentation mode, using the program’s extensive list of shortcut keys. Right-clicking on a topic also gives you access to a bevy of topic elements. If you need to, you can also turn on the ribbon toolbar in the presentation views options menu. While MindManager doesn’t offer the split screen option that several other programs utilize, I think you’ll find its presentation view to be powerful and flexible enough to meet just about any need.

Most people have sat through more mind-numbing  PowerPoint presentations than they care to think about.  Most contain too much text and not enough visuals to  capture and retain the audience’s attention. That’s why  mind mapping software, with its organic visual  appearance, is a compelling alternative for presenting  your ideas.

Most of the top mind mapping software programs now  offer a presentation mode, which enable you to walk your  audience one branch at a time through your map’s  content in a very focused, engaging way. To do this  effectively, however, there are a number of key things you  need to keep in mind:

Building your presentation

1. Good organization of your map content is a must. Remember: many people in your audience may not  have seen a presentation made with mind mapping  software before. Once the “wow” factor wears out,  you need to be able to persuade or inform them with  map content that is well organized into a natural  progression or “flow” that your audience can easily  follow.

2. Try not to make your map too complex, because the  average person can’t keep more than 3 to 4 key  points in their mind at one time. That’s why  PowerPoint slides with more than 3-4 bullet points  are famously ineffective. Presentation expert Cliff  Atkinson calls this the “eye of the needle” effect: if  the typical human brain can only handle a limited  number of “chunks” of information at that time, then  we need to plan our presentations accordingly.

Atkinson recommends formatting your mind map as  a right-facing tree, starting with a top-level topic and  then drilling down into successive levels of detail. The  key is to break your presentation down into digestible  “chunks” that the minds of your audience members  can easily process. Mind mapping software is an  invaluable tool for deconstructing your presentation  topic into its component parts. Also, formatting your  map as a right-facing tree makes it easier for you to  envision the flow from broad overview to the details of  your presentation, and will ultimately make it easier  for your audience to follow the progression of what  you’re trying to say.

3. Be sure to incorporate color and images into your  mind map, to add visual interest and engage your  audience. The brain loves color and images, and  you’ll get better audience attention if you make them  part of your map. After all, you would never dream of  making a PowerPoint presentations with black-and-  white slides, would you? Then why would you do so  with a mind mapping program?

4. Limit the number of levels of topics in your map,  since each one will open as a separate step in your  presentation. That’s the functional equivalent of  incorporating too many transitions into a single  PowerPoint slide – where you may have to click your  mouse numerous times to get all of your slide’s  content to display. It tends to annoy audiences and  breaks the flow of your presentation too much. So try  to avoid it.

5. Know your audience: Finally, as with preparing any PowerPoint  presentation, know your audience and plan  accordingly. A presentation made to your firm’s  president shouldn’t contain as much detail as one  made to middle level managers, for example.

Pre-presentation preparation

6. Be sure you’re familiar with your program’s presentation mode controls. What if a member of  your audience asks if you can go back to particular  topic on screen? Could you do it? Like a good Boy  Scout, you need to “be prepared.”

7. Test everything: If you’re going to use file or web links in your map-based presentation, you should remember to test  them beforehand, in the location where you will be  making the presentation. This will help you to verify  several things: First, that the Internet connection is  working; second, that your links are properly  formatted (for example, if a web link is improperly  formatted, it may not open during your presentation,  or you may get a “page not found” error – how  embarrassing!); and third, that your map and  presentation controls are displayed properly at the  native resolution of the projector or web conferencing  application that’s being used to display your  presentation.

A recent experience of mine helps to illustrate the  importance of advance preparation. Recently, I was  one of two speakers in a webinar, and I was using  MindManager 7 to support my presentation via  WebEx. Much to my shock, when I entered the  program’s presentation mode, the presentation  control bar was hidden behind the Windows toolbar -  which meant I had a major problem. Fortunately, I  discovered this before it was my turn to present, and  I quickly changed the settings of my laptop’s toolbar  to “auto-hide” – and I was able to successfully give  my presentation. But I should have tested this before  the webinar started. You can never be too careful  when it comes to presentation technology. When you  least expect it, it can bite you in the butt!

8. Annotation adds value to your presentation: If you’re presenting to a small group, don’t forget that  many programs that have a presentation mode also  enable you to annotate your map with additional  topics, notes and other resources. It’s a great way to  record team member feedback during the meeting.  When the meeting is over, you can e-mail the  annotated map to the people who attended your  meeting, as a set of visual “minutes” of the meeting.

Conclusion

If you take these steps to prepare a solid, well-organized  mind map and test everything prior to your meeting as I  have recommended, you should be able to deliver a  presentation that will “wow” your audience, and will help  them to retain your key messages.

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