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Bonjour, je suis Cathy Schneider, Marketing Manager Europe chez NovaMind. Aujourd’hui, je souhaiterais vous présenter quelques nouvelles fonctionnalités de mise en page que vous pourrez retrouver très prochainement dans NovaMind 5

Un des problèmes majeurs avec les cartes heuristiques, ou autrement appelés Mind Maps, est quelles deviennent immenses très rapidement, et tous les logiciels existants ne règlent en rien ce problème.

Nous avons testé l’ensemble des logiciels de Mind Mapping présents sur le marché et vérifié si l’un d’eux offrait une bonne mise en page et évitait ce problème de perte de place. Devinez ce que nous avons découvert ? Oui, c’est exact, AUCUN d’entre-eux n’offrent une mise en page digne de ce nom. Je suis persuadée que si vous utilisez déjà un des ces logiciels vous êtes pénalisés par ce problème.

Alors qu’il devrait en fait s’agir d’un élément fondamental d’une application de Mind Mapping, n’est ce pas ?

Voici à quoi cela ressemble avec les autres logiciel de Mind Mapping (ici, il s’agit d’un produit concurrent, et si vous l’avez déjà utilisé, ou bien même un autre, vous avez expérimenté ce problème) – vous ajoutez des sujets, des sous-sujets et cela déplace considérablement les autres sujets, laissant de large espace inutilisé, comme ici…

Et cela s’accentue dès lors que vous avez plusieurs sujets et sous sujets qui se développent sur plusieurs niveaux, cela pousse l’ensemble et ressemble à ca.

Vous ajoutez un nouveau sujet, qui ne pourra en aucun être positionné prés d’un autre avec tout un ensemble de sous sujet qui ne pourront de toute façon pas s’entre mêler mais qui vous font gaspiller un espace considérable sur votre Mind Map

Chez NovaMind, nous nous sommes dit que nous ne pouvions laisser cette imperfection et nous avons décidé de vous proposer quelque chose de bien mieux que ca

Voici quelques unes des nouvelles fonctions de mise en page disponibles dans NovaMind 5

Cette vidéo est réalisé en utilisant une version Alpha de NovaMind 5, il se peut donc que ce vous voyez aujourd’hui diffère quelque peut avec la version qui sera commercialisée. Mais en regardant cette vidéo aujourd’hui, découvrez l’innovation et prenez connaissance des avantages de la toute nouvelle mise en page de NovaMind 5.

Il y a 4 types principaux d’objets dans vos Mind Maps :

• les sujets
• les bulles d’annotations
• les sujets flottants
• et les formes

Aujourd’hui, nous allons nous intéresser uniquement aux sujets. Pour NovaMind 5, nous avons travaillé sur l’un des principes majeurs, à savoir, garder l’ensemble de vos mind maps le plus compact possible et éviter une perte d’espace totalement inutilisable.

Vous pouvez noter, qu’avec NovaMind 5 si vous ajoutez des sous-sujets ici, les sujets eux-mêmes se positionnent de façon à ce que les lignes de connections s’effleurent sans jamais se toucher, seul l’espace nécessaire à séparer visuellement les sujets entre eux est utiliser.

Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque l’on écrit dans le sujet du dessous ?

Comme vous pouvez le voir, lorsque l’on modifie le sujet, l’écart se referme et lorsque l’on écrit, le sujet est déplacé de façon à utiliser le minimum d’espace nécessaire.

Cela est encore plus évident lorsque vous utilisez un sujet de forme ovale.

Si vous réduisez le sujet, les autres s’adaptent ensemble de façon à rester les plus compacts possibles.

Maintenant, si vous redimensionnez votre sujet, l’ensemble s’écarte automatiquement. Les autres logiciels de Mind Mapping ne vous permettent même pas de redimensionner vos sujets comme vous le souhaitez. NovaMind 5 le peut et vous donne la possibilité de les redimensionner élégamment.

Désormais, vos Mind Maps gardent automatiquement la dimension minimum et la plus compact possible sans que vous n’ayez à vous en préoccuper.

Maintenant, intéressons nous à un autre de vos besoins précédemment plébiscité ; avoir la possibilité de disposer vos sujets de haut en bas dans une arborescence. Voici comment nous y avons répondu…

Avant cela, je me permets de vous rappeler que nous utilisons une version Alpha pour cette vidéo et que l’aspect actuel sera certainement modifié avant la commercialisation, mais cela vous permet d’avoir un 1er aperçu sur cette fonctionnalité.

Vous pouvez désormais aller de la droite vers la gauche comme ceci…

Vers le haut…

Mais nous voulions faire plus que cela et vous donner encore plus de flexibilité dans la mise en page, nous avons donc ajouté la possibilité de choisir également l’angle d’inclinaison que vous souhaitez. Regardons cela dans une autre Mind Map…

Bien sur, cela rend la mise en page de NovaMind 5 bien supérieur à n’importe quel autre logiciel de mind mapping actuellement disponible.

Nous avons souhaité allez encore plus loin, et ne pas avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page disponible uniquement depuis le sujet central de la Mind Map, mais également possible à partir de chacun des sujets, vous pouvez désormais faire ceci…

Dorénavant, vous avez une flexibilité encore inégalée par aucun autre programme de mind mapping, cela vous permet toutes les mises en page de mind maps, exactement comme vous les souhaitez.

Pour les deux mises en page les plus traditionnelles, à savoir horizontales et verticales, NovaMind 5 vous offre la mise en page la plus compact du marché. Nous vous offrons également la flexibilité de modifier vos sujets et sous sujets automatiquement sous l’angle voulu et de garder ainsi vos mind maps les plus compactes possible même inclinées.

…mais nous ne nous arrêtons pas la.

Nous vous proposons la fonction ultime. Il est absolument remarquable d’avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page, mais nous souhaitons souvent déplacer un sujet et le positionner a un endroit bien précis. Et que se passe-t-il ? Les différents sujets se chevauchent, et nous devons déplacer tous les autres sujets un a un.

Maintenant, vous pouvez positionner vos sujets ou bon vous semble, le logiciel garde le contrôle et adieu les chevauchements intempestifs.

Si maintenant je bouge mon sujet ici, les autres sujets quant à eux restent ou nous le souhaitions.

Si vous mettez un sujet au dessus d’un autre, il sera automatique déplacé.

Si vous ajoutez un sujet qui en pousse d’autres, ils seront automatiquement déplacés mais garderons leur liens avec les sujets-parents. Vous n’avez plus à vous soucier des chevauchements inopportuns.

Voici une des raisons pour laquelle nous sommes vraiment impatients de vous proposer NovaMind 5!

 

 NovaMind 5 topic layout (French): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mind Maps are a great way of gathering and organizing material for books, articles, theses, and technical documentation – in fact, any sort of writing.

The example Mind Maps in this video are taken from the two books: Teacher’s Guide to Mind Mapping and Business Guide to Mind Mapping, and are therefore only available as downloads when you buy the books, but you will be able to understand the concepts from just viewing the video.

When I write books or articles, I start by creating a Mind Map of the outline for the book, with the concepts I want to cover as the top level branches, and then details as necessary so that I have enough information there so that I know what I want to cover. At this stage, it is more along the lines of a brainstorming session, as covered in the video about brainstorming. Sometimes, it also includes note taking and research, as covered in the video about note taking, where I will add branch notes with excerpts of the material, and hyperlinks to the source material on the branches.

I have heard from people who use NovaMind for writing novels and short stories they tell me that they create similar Mind Maps with the main points of the story lines, and sometimes create character profiles with the physical appearance, language patterns, character traits, and personal history and relationships all mind mapped out. There seems to be a lot of variation in the way novelists approach their writing, and seeing as I haven’t yet written any novels myself, all I can do is pass on these suggestions.

So at the end of this process, you have an outline of the story, book or article, but it’s not usually grouped and ordered in the way you want it for the finished work. So how I approach the organization process is that I graft the branches so that the main concepts and supporting concepts are arranged as branches and sub-branches.

This gives me an idea of the size of each area of information. At the same time, I’m thinking about the order of the information so it is presented in a logical progression and the information is being introduced in order, building on the previous information.

Now I group it into chapters, and for ease of understanding, I keep each chapter to about 7 main points, because people can on average hold 7 concepts in their short term memory at once, and that’s a comfortable number to work with. Sometimes I’ll go up to 9 main points where necessary, but try not to go beyond that because there is a high likelihood of inducing information overload in the reader.

This may sound like qute a few steps, but in fact this process is usually pretty quick, and you will have the outline and overall content organized in very short order.

The next step, if it’s a book rather than an article, is to use the New Map from Branch function to take each chapter and create a Mind Map for that chapter. If your overall Mind Map had detailed information on it, you would remove the detailed level information and just have the main points on that Mind Map so that you can use it as an overview of the book.

Now for each chapter, you have your approximately 7 main points, and you extend add as many child branches as you need to cover the main points, which will become your headings and subheadings in the text, and then add the body text to each branch.

Of course, being in Mind Map format, you are not constricted to write sequentially. You can add the body text in any order you like.

When you are ready, you can export the Mind Map document with all the chapter Mind Maps into Microsoft Word format, and all the branches and sub-branches will come out as outline levels within the document, and the branch notes will come out as body text, so you can easily apply MS Word styles to the document to format it nicely, and also you will be able to generate a table of contents from it directly.

But in doing this, you are losing the power of Mind Mapping for your readers, so what I do is spend a few minutes on the layout of the Mind Maps and then export them as PDF images and then embed them into the document, with the overall outline Mind Map at the start of the book as another form of table of contents, and then at the start of each chapter, I have the chapter Mind Map which shows people the main points that are covered in that chapter.

I try to make them visually interesting by having different background colors and different styles included in the Mind Maps, but at the same time, if there is something related across chapters, I’ll use the same image in both places so you have the visual connection. Our brains love color and flow, and having different shapes and colors makes them both visually appealing as well as memorable, while the structure makes the information content easily understood and remembered too.

If the book is the type where you want people to take notes, you can include a blank Mind Map at the end of each chapter with just the main branches there so people can make their own notes as they go.

Having the Mind Maps in the book means that when a reader returns to the book later, they will be able to just take a quick glance at the Mind Map and instantly recall the content.

So using Mind Maps can dramatically speed up the writing process and at the same time lead to a much higher quality of output, and completely avoid writers block, because you have the structure in place right from the start and can work on the content in any order, and if you get stuck at all, you can just use the techniques we covered in the brainstorming video for coming up with new ideas which get your thinking going again.

I just can’t imagine writing a book without using Mind Mapping now – it would just be so slow and tedious! So get stuck in to your next writing project using the power of Mind Mapping.

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When I am talking to people about NovaMind, very often they ask what it is, and if I say that it’s Mind Mapping software, they say “ah, brainstorming!”, with a look of enlightenment on their faces. While brainstorming is not equal to Mind Mapping, brainstorming is a technique for generating ideas that dovetails in very nicely with Mind Mapping, so I usually agree with them…and then proceed to show them all the other things Mind Mapping is good for too.

So, enough of the background – all the Mind Maps shown in this video are available at:

http://www.novamind.com/connect/nm_documents/315

The video mentions the Suggesterator™, which is a free plugin for NovaMind which you can download for Windows from http://www.novamind.com/download/windows-support.php and for Mac from http://www.novamind.com/download/mac-support.php

The video also mentions iBlueSky Mind Mapping for iPhone and iPod touch – you can find out more information about this here: http://www.novamind.com/ibluesky/

And without further introduction, here is the video:

Brainstorming is a great way of solving problems and coming up with new ideas. It allows you to examine the problems from outside the boundaries of normal thinking, and understand the issues and root causes, and come up with alternative solutions. Brainstorming can also be used for impact analysis and decision making, as I have mentioned in other videos.

In the project management context, you can brainstorm from the objectives and goals down to the tasks to explore new ideas, possibilities and alternatives. It gives us a much more understandable and complete plan than what you would get if you just stuck to task level planning.

Brainstorming can be great for team building where you have shared discussions, and also for individual ideation, and has the benefits of improving initiative and innovation within an organization or individually, as well as improving quality and profitability, efficiency and morale.

The basic concept behind brainstorming is to capture ideas as quickly as possible so that you get past the judgment that you typically use to assess ideas before recording them, and instead we want to capture the ideas as they occur assuming no money, time, resource or any other constraint, and without judgment, building on ideas as you think of them as well as pushing yourself to think in new directions. The concept is that out of quantity comes quality – there will be great ideas in amongst the many ideas you throw out there.

As you think of the ideas, you record the keywords on branches – at the moment, you don’t care where you put the branches, because you can graft them elsewhere later, but if it isn’t slowing you down, you might like to do some high level grouping by putting some of the main branches in place and adding related ideas as sub-branches. In order to keep up with the recording of ideas, in NovaMind you have the BranchStorm™ system which you can turn on in the Windows version of NovaMind by right-clicking while you are editing text, and turning it on in the context menu, and if you are using the Mac version, you can show the tool palette from the Window menu and then click on the lightning bolt icon to turn on BranchStorm™. With BranchStorm™, you just press return after each idea, and the sub-branches are automatically created and you can keep typing.

Sometimes when you are brainstorming, you will get stuck and run out of ideas completely or you may just think that there should be more ideas related to an idea you have on the map already, but you can’t think of what it might be at the time, so let’s look at some ways of getting unstuck.

Firstly, if you think there should be more ideas related to an existing branch, or additional concepts to come from the title of the Mind Map, add blank branches to your Mind Map, because your subconscious mind hates to leave things unfinished, and will go looking for ideas to fill the empty branches. You can also take a break, and go away and either do something else or go for a walk. Doing something else lets your subconscious mind work on the problem and come up with answers when it is not under pressure. Repetitive activities like walking are particularly good for letting the thoughts surface. If you have iBlueSky on the iPhone or iPod Touch, take it with you and you can mind map your thoughts as you go. You might find that a change of scenery like going to the park or going down by the sea may lead to a different sort of inspiration where you come up with different ideas. Even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should make sure that you take something with you which will allow you to record ideas as you think of them rather than trying to remember them until you get back to the office.

Very often when we are thinking about a topic, we get stuck in a groove where there is a well worn track in our thinking and it is very hard to come up with new ideas. This is where the Suggesterator™ comes into play, and you can select a number of ideas related to the selected branch, and add them as sub-branches. Note that the Suggesterator™ is a free extension to NovaMind which you will need to download and install. At the top of the list are words that are linguistically reasonably closely related to the word on the selected branch, and as you get down the list, the ideas are more “off the wall” to take your thinking in completely new directions. This helps break the train of thinking and introduce completely new ideas.

Another idea is to look at similar problems in different domains and seeing if you can apply solutions that worked in that domain to the idea you are brainstorming about.

You can also ask the question “How would others solve/approach this?”. This is particularly useful when you take the point of view of other parties involved in the problem or impacted by the solution.

You can ask questions like:

• Who?
• What?
• Why?
• When?
• Where?
• How often?
• Who does this impact?

…to encourage yourself to look at the problem from a different perspective.

And finally, ask the question: “If there was another solution, what would it be?”. This is an idea that comes from Neuro-linguistics, and brings your imagination into play. It’s like saying, “I know that there is no other option, but just for a moment, imagine that there was another option, if there was another option, what would it be?”. And almost every time, your imagination kicks in and supplies another idea, and then once that door that was closing off ideas has opened up, it’s often like floodgates opening up and you start coming up with dozens more ideas.

Now, when you have recorded enough ideas, you need to reorganize them by grouping them so that you start with the overall concepts and then organize the ideas as sub-branches so that you can see the the big picture and the details. Where there are important ideas, make sure they are highlighted with adornments or images or by color etc, and also if there are ideas that are related to more than one group, you can show the secondary associations by the link lines.

Now let’s just drill down a bit and have a look at some important points for both brainstorming by yourself and in a group.

The most critical thing is to define the problem or topic clearly first. Have a look at the problem solving video to remind yourself of the four cartesian quadrants of problem definition by asking the questions:

• What is the problem?
• What is it not?
• We have this problem because…
• We don’t have a solution because…

And apply these thoughts to the topic you are examining.

Also define your desired outcome, so you know when you have achieved your objective.

Now start with the subject as the Mind Map title, and imagine that you have your “inner advisor” giving you the ideas and solutions, using the techniques we have already mentioned. Start adding top level branches and then children branches as required, without judgment or limitation, and not worrying about organization.

Stop when you have either run out of ideas and have exhausted the ideas we just mentioned for getting unstuck, or when you have collected enough ideas.

It is only after you have collected the ideas that you evaluate and organize them, and in the process you sometimes need to expand the best ideas to give more concrete detail.

Now when you are mind mapping in a group, you need some structures and methods in place to make sure that the whole process goes smoothly.

You should appoint a recorder, a session leader, and everyone else is the “panel”. You don’t want a huge group – groups of more than 10-15 people can get quite difficult to manage, and it may be best to split into different groups and then combine the ideas later, or consider different aspects of the topic.

Now the next point is very important: there have been at least 25 studies done since 1958 which all show that if you try to brainstorm with an entire group without individual brainstorming first, you end up with fewer and lower quality ideas. So, first go through the definition of the topic and the intended outcome with the participants to make sure you are on the same page, and then do the individual brainstorming and return to share ideas, making sure that you give everyone a fair say. As the ideas are mentioned and recorded on the overall Mind Map, there are going to be ideas relating to those topics come up from other participants, and these should be recorded without judgment or constraints, and also without elaboration – you just want the keywords. Then the process of grouping, culling, and elaboration is much the same as for individual brainstorming.

With this structure in place, and using these techniques, you will be able to brainstorm ideas and solutions either individually or in a group, and come up with better solutions and ideas.

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mind Mapping is a very powerful tool when it comes to solving problems. In this video I will show you how you can take a structured approach to problem solving which will allow you to generate more ideas and better solutions. You will hear about the four step method of problem solving, and you’ll get a feel for how this can work for you.

The first and most important step of all is defining what the problem is. Now this may seem pretty obvious, but actually a thorough examination of what the problem is can lead to a redefinition of the problem, or turning a huge problem into something manageable, and helps get you in the right frame of mind to solve problems that initially seem overwhelming.

So the goals here are to have a narrowly defined problem that we are sure is not multiple problems, but a single well defined problem. We need to be sure that it really is the problem, and that the problem is not obscured by emotion, opinion, hidden or open agendas or anything else. It is also important to understand why it’s important to solve the problem, because this will give you the impetus to actually follow through with the process.

Now the first four ways we examine the problem are based on what are known as the cartesian quadrants, based on the work of René Descartes, and the concept was originally applied to proving a theorem – if you could prove it by examining it from all of these perspectives, it was taken to be proven true. However, we are using it in a slightly different way here, because we are using it to examine the problem it from all four of these perspectives, which will eliminate everything that is not the problem, and we will have a clear and concise grasp of what the problem really is (or at least what we believe it to be). Don’t be surprised if viewing the problem from these four perspectives completely changes the problem you are solving, or even proves that it wasn’t a problem in the first place. Often our original idea of what the problem is, is actually symptoms of the problem, and this method allows you to break through to the core problem.

The video walks you through a practical example of problem definition based on this Mind Map. As you go through the definition of the problem, you add branches to your mind map, narrowing down the definition to the core issue, but also generate some strong starting points for brainstorming solutions.

Some people also try to define the objectives and what constitutes a good solution very tightly during this phase of problem resolution. I believe this is counter-productive, because it narrows your thinking. The process we have gone through with the definition of the problem has already narrowed things down quite sufficiently.

Also, while we have been talking about this in terms of problems, I prefer to use the word Challenge, because our thinking about problems are often ones of fear and dread of these heavy things that weigh us down and hold us back, whereas challenges are things that we step up to and overcome, and feel positive about our progress. Also, this methodology doesn’t need to be about solving problems – you can use exactly the same method for identifying and going after new opportunities.

Next, the video explains the four step method of solving the problem.

Part of this process is brainstorming. Brainstorming is designed to be free from judgment, and the idea is to get as many ideas out there as quickly as possible. The concept is that quantity yields quality, and the more ideas generated, the more solutions you will find. This is the opposite of linear thinking, where you arrive at one solution and then stop thinking.

With brainstorming, you want to generate as many ideas as possible just throwing them out there and recording just the keywords on your mind map so you can keep up – maybe using the BranchStormâ„¢ feature of NovaMind. To get things started, you have probably generated some ideas or categories of ideas just from the problem definition exercise. Add those categories to your Mind Map, and then add sub-branches for specific ideas. Think from the perspective of no resource constraints – assume you have infinite money, staff, time and expertise available at your disposal. You can pull it back to reality later.

If the ideas come too fast to organize them as you go, just get them down there and organize them later.

But what if you run out of ideas?

Here are some ways of getting the creative juices flowing again:

• Get up and go for a walk, or do something else completely different and come back after half an hour
• Add blank branches to some of your categories and ideas, and your subconscious will work on ways to complete these branches by supplying ideas – you can do this before going for your walk, so your subconscious has been triggered to search for specific ideas
• Use the NovaMind Suggesteratorâ„¢ to come up with new words and associations, and build your ideas from there. Choose some of the words from near the end of the list of suggestions where they are more “off the wall” suggestions, and work out connections with the problem
• Think of ways of “improving” an existing solution or proposed solution
• Ask the question “If there was another solution what would it be?” – this tricks your brain into supplying another idea when you don’t think there is one, and once you have come up with one more idea, the flow of ideas starts again.
• How would other people solve this problem? People from another country, your competitors, your ancestors, children, etc.
• What limitations on your thinking have you imposed? Although you are supposed to be brainstorming from the perspective of no constraints whatsoever, your mind is probably so attuned to judging ideas and limiting what you come up with as potential solutions, that you need to ask “what other solutions are there if there are no restrictions?”. How can you reverse or get rid of those assumptions and limiting decisions. What possibilities open up when you do?

During the brainstorming, you were not judging anything. Ridiculous ideas were recorded along with sensible ones without judgment. Now it’s time to organize the information on your Mind Map into different categories, where you have a branch for each category, and the proposed solutions and ideas as sub-branches.

Remember that there are always multiple solutions to problems.

So check what is going to be feasible, what fits with practices and policies, or where changing those practices and policies would be a better solution. Make sure you take into consideration the effects of your proposed solution on everyone involved, and whether the idea really does constitute a solution to the problem. If a solutions looks ridiculous, ask how you could accomplish the same thing in a different way, or which parts of that idea can we actually use.

Make sure the solutions fit with the facts of the situation, and judge the impact on both the problem and anyone and everyone affected. Every potential solution will have pros and cons – make sure you think about that as you make your decision as to which of the proposed solutions to follow first. Make sure the cost and time to solve the problem is worth it. Which solutions are you best equipped to implement? What are the short term and long term benefits of each solution? How do the solutions fit with your time and resource constraints?

Record further details under the preferred options on your Mind Map, such as time frames and the steps involved in achieving the desired outcomes.

The video tells you how to gather the required information and take action on implementing the chosen solutions, and follow up to make sure that the things you did actually solved the problem.

So, watch the video above if you haven’t already done so, and I wish you all the best with using NovaMind to solve all your problems and generate new ideas and solutions.

 

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In this video, you will discover new ways to make your message heard loud and clear. It will show you how to stay on topic and never get lost in your notes. You will be able to fully get to grips with the techniques for building and holding rapport with your audience and keeping them focused on the presentation, in a way that they will understand and remember.

In the last talk on presentation preparation, we talked about the presentation templates built in to NovaMind and also the 4-Mat system of presenting information in the order: Why, What, How, and What If.

We were talking about the overall structure of the presentation, and didn’t get into the fine details of delivery and wording, but along with the personality types that are being spoken to with the 4-mat system, there are four basic learning styles, and when you use the actual words that these people understand and resonate with, they will be able to see what you are getting at.

Those main learning styles are: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Auditory digital.

For the visual people, you should use words like: appear, clear, crystal, envision, focus, hazy, imagine, look, picture, reveal, see, show, view, and watch.

For the auditory people, you should use words like: all ears, harmonize, hear, heard, listen, question, resonate, rings a bell, silence, sounds, tune in/out.

For the kinesthetic people, you should use words like: catch on, feel, grasp, get a handle on, hard, harsh, sense, sensitive, solid, tap into, throw out, touch, turn around.

For the auditory digital people, you should use words like: change, chart progress, conceive, consider, criteria, decide, experience, know, learn, makes sense, motivate, perceive, plan, process, think, understand.

Using Mind Maps for your presentations makes your life really easy as a presenter, because your entire presentation is right there in front of you the whole time in a very compact form. You always have the topic at the center of the mind map, and the main points as the first level branches, so you never get lost, and always stay on topic.

It makes it easy to establish stronger eye contact and rapport with your audience because you don’t have to remember where you are up to on a huge page of written notes or shuffle your way through cue cards. Instead you have a diagram that resonates with your visual-spacial memory, so you can immediately see on the Mind Map where you are up to, and how that relates to what you have just said and what you are going to cover in the rest of your presentation.

The keywords on the branches keep you on topic without tying you to a particular way of expressing it, so you can open up and use your natural language instead of sounding as if you have read it out, as you would if you had read from traditional notes.

Because you can see at a glance how much information there is left to cover in the presentation, you can pace yourself and always finish on time without rushing, even if you do allow audience participation during the presentation.

From the audience’s point of view, they get a clearly structured presentation where they can see how it all fits together. The presentation is logical and flows so they can understand it and fit it in with their existing knowledge. They feel that you are talking directly to them because you are triggering their interest through the 4-mat structure and the learning style keywords.

Best of all, you can also print the mind map out without text on the branches and hand these maps out to your audience. They can fill in the text on the mind map during your presentation as you reveal it to them. This has a multitude of advantages for their attention and absorption of the information because they see it (great for the visual people), they hear it (auditory), they get to write it down (kinesthetic), they get to think about it and put it into their own words and extend the ideas (auditory digital). So all the learning styles are fully catered for in one place.

This is a very powerful presentation system.

So how exactly do you give a presentation from a Mind Map?

Start by stating the topic – the mind map’s title. Then go around to the innermost branches to give an introduction and tell people what to expect from the presentation.

Next, for each of the innermost branches, go through all its sub-branches to give the details for that topic.

Finally to wrap up your presentation, go around the innermost branches again and let that be your summary.

Normally you would give the presentation using the NovaMind presenter so that you can project it onto a screen and progressively reveal the branches, showing the first level branches for your introduction first, then go through the rest of your presentation delving into the detail as you go.

But if you don’t have those facilities available, you can:
* Export to PowerPoint or Keynote using the built-in mind map export tools,
* Print out the mind map to use as your notes,
* Set up the mind map on your laptop for you to see,
* Print your mind map out as a poster

The video covers these points in a bit more detail, as well as providing a number of tips which will really help you get the best result from your presentation, so watch the video now to get the full information.

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the immediate availability of new presentation templates as part of the latest release of NovaMind 4 Pro and Platinum.

NovaMind is frequently used for presentations and to make it easier for you to create compelling presentations, two templates have been added.

The first is based on the excellent book “Beyond Bullet Points” by Cliff Atkinson

Beyond Bullet Points Mind Map Template

The template prompts you for the main points of your presentation so that you have a well structured presentation which takes into account the setting of the presentation, your role, the explanation of the current challenge and the desired outcome, and how to achieve that outcome. The details of how to structure your presentation in this way is explained in Cliff’s book.

The second template is based on Paul J. Kelly’s excellent book “The 7-Slide Solution”

The 7-Slide Solution Mind Map Template

The template is set up so you can easily fill in the different portions of the presentations: Firstly engaging the audience, telling your “back story”, building the story and bringing it to the boil, then offering choices of solutions, providing resolution and setting up for a sequel. Full details are provided in Paul’s book.

Both presentation templates are from well respected authors and provide a good starting point for any presentation.

Hi, in this video you’ll learn how to upload a Mind Map to NovaMind Connect from within NovaMind.

The text below is basically the script of the movie for those who prefer having it in writing.
(more…)

 

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NovaMind for Windows received a significant update today with the ability to export Mind Maps directly from NovaMind to PowerPoint.

This capability opens up new sharing opportunities where there is a need to brainstorm ideas using Mind Mapping techniques, and yet to share the information using more “traditional” presentation software.

The files produced are the new PPTX files used by PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.

Here is a video of the export procedure and results:

Standard text styles are used wherever possible to make sure that when you apply a theme to your presentation in PowerPoint, the styles are applied consistently throughout the presentation.

Images on the branches are transferred to the presentation, and the branch notes become speaker notes.

This makes the transition from your NovaMind Mind Map to your PowerPoint presentation almost instantaneous.

The NovaMind Presenter allows you to give great presentations directly from within NovaMind, and also to edit the Mind Map while you are presenting. This gives you a very powerful but flexible presentation system. This video shows you the ins and outs of using the presenter to give your presentations.

There is no setup work to go from your Mind Map to the presentation system – just click a single button. And during the presentation if you want to go in to a specific branch, or expand other branches, it’s all just a click away.

NovaMind directly supports a very clear presentation style where you can give an overview of the main topics or objectives of the presentation from the first level branches of the Mind Map, then go into more detail as you visit each of the sub-branches. Then you can go around the top level branches again to give the summary of the presentation.

There is lots more information on how to give great presentations in the presentations section of the NovaMind web site.

 

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The NovaMind Presenter is a powerful presentation tool, and although it it very straightforward to use, there are some things in this video which you would not know by just playing with it. Generally it’s more fun watching a video than reading documentation – especially if you are a visual learner, so watch this NovaMind tutorial video to get up to speed quickly with the ins and outs of the Mind Map presenter.

With the NovaMind presenter, you can create great presentations directly from your Mind Maps with virtually no extra work above just creating the Mind Map.

NovaMind directly supports a very smooth presentation style where you can give an overview of the main topics or objectives of the presentation from the first level branches of the Mind Map, then go into more detail as each of the sub-branches is visited in turn. Then you can go around the top level branches in turn again to give the summary of the presentation.

There is lots more information on how to give great presentations in the presentations section of the NovaMind web site.

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest Mind Map Connection newsletter, which contains information about the latest developments in NovaMind, including:

Mind Manager import functions

MS Project import and export functions

Crossgrade discounts

New Mind Mapping tutorial videos and web pages about how to use Mind Mapping for various types of planning

The “back to school” site license sale starting on 3rd July with 50%+ off a limited number of site licenses. Although this was prompted by the tight funding within schools, it is also open to anyone who is feeling the pinch of tough economic times.

Here is the link to read the full newsletter:

http://www.novamind.com/mind-map-connection/mmc-2008-06-28.php

Enjoy!

Gideon

There is now a video tutorial now available to help you get up to speed with the NovaMind screenwriting capabilities. NovaMind helps screenwriters by allowing you to visualize the screenplay both from a visual storyboarding perspective on the Mind Map, but also use the built in screenwriter, in a combination we call ScriptMappingâ„¢.

Find out more by watching the video below:

 

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This video explains what is in each of the different editions of NovaMind Mind Mapping software: Express, Pro and Platinum, and helps you choose which one is the right one for your mind mapping needs.

 

For a complete feature comparison, please see the NovaMind features page.

 

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the first of a new series of tutorial videos on NovaMind for Mac. This first video shows you all the basics of creating your first mind map in NovaMind.

 

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NovaMind is pleased to announce the first of a new series of tutorial videos on NovaMind for Windows. This first video shows you all the basics of creating your first mind map in NovaMind.

 

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