Gordon Brown's Labour Party Conference Speech in a mind map

I thought I would run an experiment today, listen to Gordon Brown's conference speech on the television, map it and publish it. What would it say that the script and the video do not say?

My process was as follows:

• Prepare web export template - minor edits to a clickable imagemap export I have used many times
• Create a folder on my conferenceREACTION web space.
• Tweet that am I doing it.
  
• Start mapping and try to ignore other interruptions e.g. a tweet from Maurice asking if I was there?
• During the speech I posted the map 3 or 4 times. Also added a bit of fill colour to topics and changed the background colour. Note to self - setup a webfolder next time.
• When speech finished, posted map and tweeted again.
• Added images and changed to split tree growth direction to get more content across the screen. The speech flip flops down the tree.

Linked to the map in a couple of blogs on Ecademy:

1. A quick report on Gordon Brown's speech. Please discuss
2. Gordon Brown's Conference speech analysed

And received some feedback:

• "I didn't watch Gordon Brown's speech - but based on the excellent mind map that Andrew Wilcox has produced, I must say it lacks one big thing - VISION."
• "Mind map is cool. Did it take long to do? Obviously not too long."
• "It's interesting to compare the relative small size of the 'New Economic Model' to the larger scale of the other (spending commitment) sections."
  
• "Thanks for the concise overview."

How do you react to Gordon Brown's Labour Party Conference Speech in a mind map?

Using MindManager on the Tablet PC in ink mode

Michael Deutch has written this blog recently:

Touch Me: 10 Resources to Learn More about MindManager’s Touch Capabilities

To prompt discussion about using MindManager on the Tablet PC. For some reason that neither Michael or I can work out my comments are not being published. I have tried from different PCs & browsers. So here is my positive and critical criticism of this mode:

Michael, thank you for referring to my efforts with the Tablet PC and MindManager above.

I have to admit to being someone who has used MindManager Ink mode a few times a week since 2005 when MindManager X5 Tablet became available. It has gone through 4 versions of HPs Tablet PCs currently a 2710p but the TC1100 was the best!

I use it in these three modes:

First: for personal brainstorming. Often standing up and away from the office desk.

Second: for personal note taking and often producing the minutes at meetings.

Third: for recording and publishing events on the web. Frequently I work with teams of people like Maurice mentioned and linked in your blog, to produce a comprehensive record of public and private events. These range from individual speakers, to management meetings, to two day annual conferences, to a rock festival. Using MindManager for three days in a field and in the dark later in the day must be one of the extreme uses.

Using MindManager ink mode is much less instrusive to the meeting than using a keyboard and a more fluid recording process.

MindManager ink mode is a core tool for ConferenceREACTION and the web export is used to produce all the web sites.

BUT MindManager ink mode has been frustrating me since 2005. Why?

1. The eraser on the end of my stylus does not work in MindManager. It does in all other applications.

2. The colour of the ink is not the colour of the converted text. It becomes the default colour.

3. The ink to text conversion was comparatively good on release in 2005. Better than XPs TabTIP but Vista overtook it and Windows 7 streaks away into the distance.

4. The conversion of ink to graphic images is poor. Primary concern is the conversion of sketches but it also applies when you want to put an Ink mind map in a document or on a web page. Borders appear around the ink and there is a granularity not present in the native MindManager map.

5. The clicking the ink colour tool does not return the stylus to ink mode from eraser mode but clicking the ink thickness tool does.

6. The lasso tool (ink dragging) is often sluggish taking several seconds to settle into the new position.

7. The high CPU usage of MindManager in general and the extreme CPU usage e.g. > 60% CPU time when the stylus is applied to the screen. Not good for someone who inking all day! This halves the battery life of Tablet PCs.

8. That there has been no significant development of ink mode since 2005!

9. I would like the mode to be associated with the map. That is when I change from a map I am editing in ink mode to a map that was previously being edited in mouse mode I want the the mode to change to mouse mode.


Despite all the above I will continue to use MindManager Ink mode because it does a brilliant job. You can just do it in pictures.

3 Speakers - 3 Different MindManager maps

I am attending a monthly meeting of Entrepreneurs World. It has networking between entrepreneurs and people who can fund their activities: banks, venture capitalists and other entrepreneurs. At each meeting there is a speaker. Here are the maps of the three most recent ones and some technical notes for MindManager users.

What Ehud Furman did after Shopping.com got acquired by eBay

Note: I have hidden the lines from the central topic. You can use a no lines format option or make the lines the same colour as the background.

Uzair Bawany CEO Contact Recruitment talking about developing a recruitment business and the current environment

Note: I have post compressed (possibly a bit too much) this map image so it will load faster. MindManager produces a high resolution and therefore large JPEG file in the web exports unless you select no background in Web Export > Customise > Advanced Settings, where a smaller GIF will be produced. GIFs are great when there are no photos involved in the map but most photos will look as though they have been through an undesirable special effect if turned into a GIF.

JPEGs can be post compressed before upload to the server using on-line tools e.g. Chami or desktop tools e.g. Photoshop, Gimp or Paint.net. Unfortunately Microsoft Picture Manager only compresses when you resize to standard sizes. A clickable image map must remain the same size or the links will be in the wrong place.

John Viney talking about his life as a head hunter and his approach to investments

Note: This is two clickable image exports. The first creates the header, footer and top map. The second is added to the first by copy and pasting the exported index.html.txt file into the index.html of the first map. Make sure you set the index file name of the second export to something different to the first. I replaced index by parallel_interests in the example giving a file parallel_interests.html.txt and an parallel_interests.gif. This image must be uploaded with those produced by the first export and the edited index.html.

And I did use GIFs for both images in this export. The text is very clear and the images of John Viney slightly distorted.

Fastest session for me using MindManager

This evening I recorded a meeting for the Winchester Action on Climate Change which had about 20 attendees. It was the brainstorming to start a 3 year plan for CO2 reduction in Winchester. Target 7% per year! The content remains private for now but here are some interesting stats from a event recorder using MindManager.

I walked in with a parent map with some information on it e.g. the attendees but I did not have an agenda. During the meeting I created 6 maps using the Right Click Topic > Send to new map command. Two summarising introductory presentations and three to cover the brainstorms on Transport, Domestic and Business/Government/Organisations plus their group feedback.

I have just used the Multimap View > Combine All to combine all the maps in to one. The statistics say I have 993 words (perhaps 100 of those existed when I walked in the room) in 316 topics (40 were there already).

Not bad for a 105 minute meeting. 3 topics a minute on average proably 10 topics a minute at peak.

Tha facilitator was really impressed by what I did and the load it took of him. He could concentrate on leading the meeting not writing on flip charts. Although he did some flip charts to start with but then realised there was no point.

Now I have to tidy them up and publish them as a web site, Word document and a set of PowerPoint slides by Thursday 17:00. Plus do the day job.

All in an evening's marketing and my bit for tackling climate change.

Is that a record breaker? It was definitely a personal best!

Recording and Publishing Events with MindManager

I have been in the last week recording and publishing two events. The first on Monday 17th was for Business Scene and their second London Connections event. About 500 people attended from a wide range of business networks. They listened to some short speeches, the main one being from an MP Mark Prisk - an upbeat response to the credit crunch, toured the 30 stands and networked. I worked with a photographer Andrew Sansom to create this record.



The second event last Saturday was the SouthamptonGOGREENfair with my second MP of the week. Probably a few hundred passed through the event and the largest audience was for Alan Whitehead with about 40 people listening to his personal experience of installing various micro generators on his house.



Both records were created using MindManager 8. Working in ink mode at the events to take notes and then later at my desk to create the web sites and clickable image maps. Some use was made of Microsoft Expressions and Notepad to tidy up and include some objects in the web pages. If only MindManager could include HTML in notes life would be a lot easier for me.

Click the images to visit the web sites.

All of this was done whilst enjoying this winters first cold.

Using the MindManager Sketch Tool for the Tablet PC

Since MindManager version X5 there has been a Sketch Tool which Tablet PC users (or graphics tablet users with Vista) can use to add sketches to their maps. I often use this to make representations of speakers flip charts and slides when there are graphs.

At last week's Ecademy London presentation on using body language and your voice to influence (or at least not give the game away) I used the tool to make a few cartoons.
Click the map to see the big picture of this presentation by Richard Newman and Christian Billet of UK Body Talk on Can You Walk the Talk?.

You won't be able to see that there is some degradation of the sketch in conversion from the Ink to being part of the image map jpg but there is. If a higher quality sketch is required employ someone like my friend Simon Ellinias (see below) and use a drawing package like ArtRage2 export to jpg and include in the map.

Its easy to use the sketch tool in MindManager. Just make a triangle gesture in ink mode and the sketching window appears. If you were focussed on a topic it will a sketch in the topic otherwise a floating image. Once your sketch is complete you can resize it by selecting the topic and right clicking to get the resize option.



Please note Simon and I were talking about Tablet PCs when he drew this particularly second hand TC1100s. I was holding a TC 2710p at the time. Both are excellent mobile Tablet PCs.

Summertime with MindManager - The PERFECT Presentation

"It's summertime and the living is easy". Not quite.

In my breakfast and evenings off, I go out mapping my friends talks and presentations.

This is Dexter Moscow's PERFECT presentation last Monday to Petersfield Ecademy at the delightful 57 restaurant in Liss. It was most enjoyable (and Dexter seemed to be enjoying it as well). A great reminder plus some new insights into all those things you need to do or be aware of, particularly when trying to make an impression on a potential customer.

Click to get the big picture

Technical aside: MindManager 7.1 Pro worked very well on my HP2710p Tablet PC. Don't install 7.2 on a Tablet PC if you want to use the ink mode. Too many ink features do not work.

Producing event signs with MindManager

I used MindManager to produce the signs I need for a recent Open Space event on an A3 Canon iX5000 printer. This proved to be a very effective way to do it. MindManager by default fills the printed page. Simple signs can be made using the Central Topic for the text and using the line and background colour to produce signs like the meeting location names.

Note each of these signs is the same width but because of the number of letters the width height ratio changes. Padding out with spaces or changing the topic margins can help.

Slightly more iconic signs can be produced using the image library. For instance the one Law of Open Space is you can use your feet.

For the Four Principles of Open Space I used a music festival as an analogy. 120,000 turned up for this one, it always finishes dead on time (they want to use the same field next year), queuing early is good - you start meeting people and the comic folk singer brings along an opera singer. The audience switched from mass morris dancing to Nessun Dorma. Photos mine, event courtesy of Fairport Convention. Here I placed the images in floating topics and arrayed them around the central topic.



But next time I will make them separate central topics and print them each on their own sheet of paper. They were too small on a big wall.

Or I could use the poster printing function in the print menu to produce a 10 foot banner like this one. Which is just an image and text in central topic with no shape.



You can see what happened at the event in maps, video and photographs at Open Minded Day 01.

I hope this give you some ideas for your events. Any questions, please ask.

Using MindManager to track the promotion and the results for an event

On Tuesday 22 April, I facilitated my first Open Space Technology event. It was attended by 29 people from Ecademy and their theme was "How can we work better together so that we all get more from Ecademy?". The event was the result of three months of discussion between principally four people. Most of our discussion was on-line using Skype chat and conference calls, and using the Ecademy forums. Two of the people I have never met face to face. One of them attended the event. Apart from the obvious note taking during these on-line meetings, one of the uses for MindManager was to track the promotion of the event and results of that activity.

Use 1 - Monitoring Progress

Initially we had two dates and the map tracked those registering, those who said no or maybe and those that had paid, each linked to their Ecademy profile. I had a MindManager spreadsheet (not Excel range) in the map which noted how these numbers changed on a daily basis. It also showed the home page views for our host Ecademy club for the event.

Each promotional activity was tracked by linking to all the blogs and adverts for the event. Click the image below and you will see the map I shared on line with my colleagues. Each topic with an Ecademy icon clicks through to a page on the Ecademy web site,



Some things I learnt I would like to share with you.

- The MindManager spreadsheet does not work beyond column Z. Mindjet are aware and will fix this.
- Regardless of the bug next time I would use an Excel range for a large spreadsheet such as this. This would allow me to show the summary in one topic and the details in another.

I will publish some more ways in which I used MindManager with these events over the next few days.

Planning a meal with MindManager

An annual event for the local charity I work with called the Alresford Pigs Association is our progressive or safari supper. This year I offered to do a main course. My speciality is Chinese cooking. Below is the map I used to plan the menu and the shopping. I also used MindManager's built in spreadsheet to see how I was doing against my budget of £42 including drinks. Providing it does not all get drunk I might make it under budget.



p.s. MindManager does not do the cooking.

Phew! They left me with a bottle of wine (very nice French White - Picpoul de Pinet from The Naked Grape) and a beer! Leaving me £3.50 under budget.

Mapping and rapidly publishing to the Internet is one of MindManager's strengths.

Last Thursday I attended Ecademy's 10th Birthday Party at the Selfridge Hotel. The centre piece of the event was speeches by two of the founders of Ecademy, Thomas and Penny Power. I mapped both speeches in ink on my Tablet PC (an HP TC4400). Penny's speech in ink is shown below.

This type of map is not a verbatim record of the speech but a key word reminder of what was said. Much like Tony Buzan described 30 years ago in his mind mapping book "Use Your Head".

• Those who attended will be able to jog their memory.
• Those not present may see something of interest and contact the speaker or an attendee.
• The speaker gets feedback from one member of the audience about what they heard.

And the finished map as blogged on Ecademy. You can click it.

There are two drawbacks to using MindManager to create clickable image maps. First Google is not indexing pictures by what you can see (quite a lot of text in this case) and MindManager uses the URLs for the alt text on the links not the topic text (which could be found by Google).

To make this map visible I really have to add the text outline below. Not very pretty but makes the point about the value of mind maps versus lists rather well.

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1. Has a Leap Year Birthday

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2. It's a team

2.1 But a special mention for Glenn Watkins

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=2

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3. Committed to this world

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4. My journey

4.1 Not a physiotherapist

4.2 Telesales course in a Monmouth

See related topics and documents

http://www.monmouth.org.uk/Home/Default.aspx

4.3 Call to customer with cold

4.3.1 Sent them a packet of Ttunes

4.3.2 Got unexpected contract (the biggest that month)

4.4 Selling is about the relationship

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5. Ecademy has a heart

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6. Back 10 years

See related topics and documents

http://asia.ecademy.com/node.php?id=98380

6.1 3 x 0 to 5 year children

6.2 Pizza Express

See related topics and documents

http://www.pizzaexpress.com/find-a-restaurant/restaurant/771/?pc=farnham

6.3 Filled up with Lone Entrepreneurs

6.4 Sucked into the e-commerce Bubble

6.4.1 Valued at £22m

6.4.2 But

6.4.3 We could not sell out on our community

6.5 But then struggle to survive

6.5.1 Back to day job

9-6

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7. Captain Plum

See related topics and documents

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/parachute.htm

7.1 Went to Vietnam

7.2 Then built a Big Business

7.3 One day in a restaurant he was served by

7.4 His parachute packer

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8. Community

8.1 Support

8.2 Testimonial

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=guestbook&id=1001

8.3 Credibility

8.4 Recognition

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9. Acceleration is good

9.1 But slow development is best

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10. Ecademy is Organic

10.1 Much happens by Osmosis

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11. Business Evolution

11.1 Growth by Collaboration

11.2 Candle

11.2.1 Flame

Where you need to be

11.2.2 Wax

What you need to burn brightly

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12. Team

12.1 Julian Bond

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=1

12.1.1 Web Site

12.2 Lesley Morrisey

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=37944

12.2.1 Support

12.3 William Buist

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=37979

12.3.1 BlackStar

12.3.2 Membership

12.4 Sophia Watkins

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=19308

12.4.1 London Meetings & Administration

12.5 Kate Power

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=22057

12.6 Jude Germain

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=78129

12.7 Jamie Roy

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=229497

12.8 Christine Clacey

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=30245

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13. Thomas Power Early Meetings

13.1 Pasta Suppers

13.2 Wine Bar

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14. Advocacy

14.1 Dave Clark NRG

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=42737

14.1.1 Advocating others

14.1.2 Brings you advocates

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15. Institute of Networking

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/instituteofnetworking.php

15.1 Our objective

15.2 Chartered

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16. Touch the keyboard

16.1 Power of Ecademy

16.2 Whispers

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17. Me

See related topics and documents

http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=1001

17.1 I am not the Entrepreneur

17.2 I have a purpose

17.3 Thanks to

17.3.1 Parents

17.3.2 Thomas

17.3.3 Children

17.3.4 The Team