A challenge to developers of mind mapping software

In a recent blog post, Brett Bumeter took Mindjet, the developer or MindManager 7, to task for not keeping pace with users’ changing needs. That, however, is not the focus of this post. Rather, what I’d like to do here is take some of Brett’s key points and issue a challenge to all developers of mind mapping software. I believe that he has identified some real needs here that ought to be addressed by them. Here are some examples:

Web 2.0 awareness: Recent developments in what is popularly called Web 2.0 (social networking, blogging and user generated video) are not yet reflected in today's mind mapping software. Mind mapping software needs to be able to interact with a variety of popular tools, including Digg, Linkedin, blogs and YouTube. Improved RSS support would be a big plus, too. Brett points out that MindManager’s RSS capability doesn't interface with FeedBurner, the largest and most dominant feed management system on the Internet.

Improved Office integration: Integration with Microsoft Office applications is sometimes troublesome; most recently, several bloggers have reported that Microsoft's most recent update to Outlook has broken MindManager's Outlook linker.

Integration with corporate databases: Integration with databases has remained at rudimentary levels. With much of today's corporate data residing in ERP systems, CRM and other high-end databases, it is impossible to connect this data into visual maps today. Imagine if you could query your corporate database from within your favorite mind mapping program, add the resulting data set into your map and then maintain a live connection to it.  This would take the idea of mind map "dashboards" to the next level!

Improved collaboration: In the last year or so, a whole new genre of web-based mind mapping tools has emerged, which make it much easier for users to collaborate on visual maps. Other than Mind Technologies adding a client/server version to Visual Mind 9, very little has been done by software developers to enable real-time collaboration on mind maps. According to the surveys I have done, collaboration is of great interest to users of mind mapping software. Clearly this is a need that should be addressed by developers.

More innovation: Innovations in the world of mind mapping software need to move beyond the realm of cosmetic changes, such as adoption of Microsoft's fluent UI (the love-it-or-hate it ribbon toolbar).

Help in managing large maps: Brett also points out that users need a more effective way of managing large, complex maps. Perhaps developers need to consider rendering maps in 3-D, or some other tech make could be developed that would help users to work with complex maps more effectively.

I think there's still plenty of room for innovation in the world of mind mapping software. What do you think?

Comments

[Andrew Wilcox]

There are huge opportunities in the area of social networking. Here are some examples from my favourite social network Ecademy.

www.ecademy.com?xref=45995

Whenever I attend an Ecademy meeting I copy and paste the attendees list to a MindManager map. During the meeting I add notes and actions (Topic Alerts are great for this) on my Tablet PC in ink. The following day I ink to text and review the meeting.

That sounds great doesn't it?

But you get a different result depending on whether you cut and paste from Firefox (my preferred browser) or IE (currently producing the best paste result). But the paste is still a mess. I end up with one topic per attendee containing their name, company, membership level, Skype status, & location.

I would like a topic with their name linked to their Ecademy profile plus subtopics for each of the previous items with a filter option not to include country or Skype status for instance.

I can use a two step process: paste to Excel, delete columns, search and replace unwanted text, paste in to MindManager. With the correct add in I could probably get the cells inserted as sub-topics.

Now Ecademy does have a FOAF file which is an XML file listing all your contacts and some other data e.g. how many messages you have exchanged. You can open this XML with MindManager and it is readable but includes all the field names as well as the data. With this data you could imply other information and add it to the map. For instance their profile photo.

Can MindManager cope with my 1251 contacts and all their associated data?

How can I keep the map up to date with new contacts and contacts whose data has changed? Possibly 10 per day.

If it could then I would use MindManager to overlay information on my social network. For instance marking up my inner circle, my collaborators, my service providers, the good guys, the bad guys, the people I know I should be talking to expand and strengthen our relationship.

MindManager is already the hub of my CRM system. I would like it to be the hub of my SNM system!

p.s. It also needs to do this for Xing, Ning, LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Myspace

[dmstauber]

I read the post by Brett Bumeter about his difficulty in dealing with large maps in Mindmanager. I was surprised, because I often use very large maps to plan workshops and new businesses. I use Mindgenius, and the key is the outline-style navigator screen, which appears simultaneously with the map. When I click on a topic in the navigator, the map centers on that topic. I can also move topics around in the navigator as well as in the map. This makes it very easy to move around in a large map, whereas without it I can imagine getting lost as Bumeter says he does in Mindmanager.

Do any of the other major mindmapping programs have a feature like this? I have been considering switching to Mindmanager since it seems to be the industry leader and has lots of good features, but I think this would be a deal-breaker for me.