Granted, Freemind has been platform-neutral since the beginning (through its use of Java), and somewhat-integrated with WikkaWiki, but this still very much relies on an individual providing their own server-based architecture. Other tools such as word-processing, calendaring and spreadsheets have had web-based incarnations for a while, but my frustration has been the lack of a truly web-enabled mind-mapping tool: on the desktop I now use MindManager as my core tool for organising and creating information, dropping out to other applications only when a specific treatment of information is required.

At last, companies are rising to the opportunity of this gap in the market – the two best known being Mindomo and MindMeister (still in private beta – subscribe to newsletter to get invitation). Chuck Frey has just published a first feature-comparison of these plus Bubbl.us and Thinkature (although as Chuck points out, the latter two are not really mind-mapping in the traditional sense).

Chuck’s initial conclusions show that the two main products are taking different approaches to development – Mindomo seems to be focusing on UI features whereas MindMeister is providing a basic feature set coupled with good ability to import and export from/to other applications and websites. The collaboration model seems to be different too, with MindMeister offering real–time shared editing.

It will be interesting to see what happens to these products – my guess at the moment is that they will appeal to slightly different groups for whom the differing feature sets create a value distinction. Extrapolating from the sorts of things that people do already, both on- and off-line, I think there are two main sorts of workflows for which these online maps wil be suited:

1. Long-term collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst a group, where the Mindmap becomes the primary repository; and
2. Dynamic brainstorming, possibly primed with information prepared offline, and where the results of the collaboration are taken away for further work.

On the face of it, although both tools could do either, Mindomo seems to be heading in a direction best-suited to approach 1, whilst MindMeister looks to be a good fit for approach 2 as well. Obviously these workflows are not decoupled, rather they are places on a continuum, but it will be interesting to see which gains most traction first.

One of my main concerns about using an online service such as these is the stability and security of the offering – none of us wants to invest time in creating information only to find that the platform we have used for storing and sharing it has evaporated overnight. (Nick Duffill makes a related point) For that reason I suspect that workflows nearer to (2) will be the better initial match for these online mindmapping tools, which in theory should give MindMeister an advantage. Let’s see!

Update

Eric Blue has issued a call for action for a common mind-mapping file format, and Kayuda is another online product that looks worthy of investigation…

No idea exists in a vacuum. It is connected to related ideas, and to the real world, and to other people’s perspectives. Those connecting threads of context are where the vast creative potential of the human mind lies. cite=”http://blog.contentious.com/archives/000288.html”

The idea that the mind works associatively is pretty well established – amongst many other things it’s the key behind mind mapping. Making public some of my own associations I can see a connection between Amy’s thoughts, Tony Goodson’s Butterfly moments and bricolage (worth noting that Tony is a fervent advocate of mind mapping) and the ideas I tried to capture here, in particular:

The benefits of any specific piece of knowledge are not always forseeable until the right combination of circumstances and other people arises – in other words unpredictable emergent behaviour;

Another possible connection is to The Social Origins of Good Ideas

Where Amy particularly extends our thinking is the way she then derives some very specific ideas for enhancements to knowledge management tools that would take advantage of associative thinking:

* Random elements [...]
* Visual juxtaposition [...]
* Embedded brainstorming tools
* Sticky notes (that capture context for the thought) [...]

There’s an interesting challenge for developers here but not an insurmountable one I think… Just needs someone with the skill to hang together a few existing tools perhaps?

In a sense a blog entry like this is a form of the fourth item (“Sticky notes”) because it captures an idea and via a combination of hyperlinks and the use of trackbacks captures a a lot of the context as well – but it’s not exactly fast – how many ideas slip by before you can grab the idea and it’s context? I think we need a system that treats “ideas” as some kind of atom and deals with the messy business of collecting and managing URIs in the background.

For embedded brainstorming tools could someone integrate Freemind with a bliki?

Are there any open source developers out there who feel inspired by this?

Workshop outline:

• Beliefs about Creativity
  • What is creativity?
  • Why is it important?
• Preferred style
  • Innovators
  • Connectors
  • Enhancers
• Pattern Breaking
  • barriers – circumstances
  • barriers – beliefs
  • barriers – environment
• Techniques
  • Brainstorming / Brainwriting
  • Collective Build
  • Random Picture / Word
  • Creative Break
• 8 Rules for success
  1. Believe you can be creative
  2. Be clear about objective
  3. Don’t evaluate until the creative part of the session is over
  4. Persevere
  5. Create an environment that enhances creativity
  6. Use creative techniques
  7. Make sure you evaluate at the end of the session
  8. Take creative breaks

Whilst I was absorbing and reflecting on that I noticed that a few people in my blogosphere have also been paying attention to the subject of creativity.

One of the most prolific is Dina Mehta who has been collecting lots of links to creativity discussions and creativity tools for some time.

Also this week I see Gary Murphy is pointing to this that suggests creative people have brains that are more open to incoming stimuli from the environment. This shows up as low values of latent inhibition, a property that is shared with certain forms of mental illness.

So maybe the old saying “you need to be a little mad to be creative” has some truth in it after all…

# Outrageous Opposites
# The Idea Beam
# The Morphological Matrix

*Outrageous Opposites*

* Agree objective
* Brainstorm solutions
* What are the “outrageous opposites” to these?
* Evaluate

*The Idea Beam*

_A very practical application of chunking up and down logical levels_

* Choose an objective
* Brainstorm ideas – classify on the fly as Broad Ideas, Specific Ideas, Actions
* Use questioning to explore up, down, sideways

*The Morphological Matrix*

* Agree objective
* Brainstorm attributes of the solution
* Select best attributes
* Brainstorm options for each attribute
* Select combinations across attributes
* Evaluate

*Recommended Reading*

* The Right Brain Manager
* Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
* Six Thinking Hats

What I love about the project management link is the way the functionality of this tool complements the total left-brain-ness of standard project management tools. The most important part of any project is the first meeting where the people involved get engaged with breaking the scope down into manageable chunks – to be able to do that with a mindmapping tool and then export a first-cut WBS or PBS is just…cool…

I’ve played around a bit with mind-mapping for a number of years and although you can’t beat the flexibility of pen and paper for personal notes, for collaborative work some kind of electronic tool seems essential. (apart from anything else, I lose paper!)

Links to old broken wiki removed
The other idea that’s nagging me tonight is a need for a MMToWiki tool. I’ve slowly started putting some NLP Wiki pages together but I’m finding the flat-file format of a Wiki rather frustrating when writing a set of interlinked documents. I’d love to be able to outline and write the first major tranche of those pages in MindManager, then export to a set of Wiki-formatted text files.

Hmmm… and when, I wonder, is tool-building a displacement activity from the writing?

[update 2003-02-13] Have found Mind2XML an add-in for MindManager that does “exactly what it says on the tin”. So now the gap in my knowledge that comes into focus is how little I know about XSL

[update 2007--4-11] And almost exactly 4 years after I wrote this post, a very similar idea about the combined use of wiki and mindmaps emerges over at Activityowner.Com – with the big difference that he has actually produced a first draft of a conversion tool…