This video clip of Tony Buzan on mindmapping is making the rounds. Jack Vinson and Chuck Frey also pointed it out. According to Buzan there’s a right way and, by implication, a wrong way to draw mindmaps. I suspect Buzan would give me low marks on how I make use of his technique. What good is a tool, if you can’t twist it to your own purposes? In particular, I ignore the “one word per branch” guideline in favor of one chunk per branch. Regardless, I am still a proponent of the technique, both manually and with whatever software tools best suit your style. And Buzan’s Mind Map Book remains your best starting point.
Excellent mindmapping video (and a couple of links)
Really great YouTube clip of Tony Buzan holding forth on the features and benefits of mindmapping. Fascinating stuff from the master himself….
Relatedly, for utter information overload, check out this list of mindmapping tools. Or, check out this relatively recent list of narrowed down options. That second list turned me onto Gliffy, which is best described as free Visio in a browser–very excellent tool for diagramming, but I don’t think it’d port well to mindmapping.
Slacker links: Management Craft
Lisa’s blog is full of good advice.
I too am a great fan of mind mapping and this is the first time I hear about the one word per branch “rule”. Seems it would give an unfair advantage to those who mind map in German where many concepts can be rolled up into a single (but long) word.
I go with one concept per branch; that works for me.