Collaborative mind mapping - I’m lovin’ it

For the visual learner in me … my primary preference (which is odd given that I’ve been a music student and professional musician for a long time - one would think I’m more auditory … but for me it’s more about spatial relationships which can be seen in my mind’s eye rather than being heard as tones. Subject for another post … I digress)

I use mindmapping and concept mapping for so many things - meeting agendas, presentations, whitepaper outlines, instructional designs … you get the picture. When my team leader asks for my ideas about something, I usually whip out a quick mindmap (like this one - click the image to see it … it looks much better)

And I’ve mentioned before how I use various tools to help me get - and stay! - organized.

A few of my colleagues and team mates have taken to exploring the use of mindmapping - perhaps not as rabbidly as I do. And the one thing that we really needed was to be able to collaborate in real time …

Sure - we will often use our enterprise-wide IM and meeting platform. Then one of us has to share our desktop, then give everyone permissions to edit … works okay - and is necessary for things that are proprietary or require a secured server to protect our client’s information. It is a bit wonky, though, because this was platform was never meant to do what we are asking of it now.

NOW … for those moments when we don’t have to worry about intellectual property, client data and the like I’ve started using online (dare I say “web 2.0″?) tools. They are quick, easy and much more intuitive than our inside-the-house platform. They are designed to do only one thing - and they do it well.

So far, I’ve played around with Bubbl.us … and have found it really really good.

Now, This post  introduces another player: MindMeister. It’s in private beta - so you have to request an invite to play … but it, too, looks promising and useful.

The value for me in these kinds of tools is that they are easy to get to, focused on a specific function, and pretty intuitive for users (geek and non-geek alike).

Technorati tags: mindmapping, Bubbl.us, MindMeister