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MindMaps for meeting notes

by Tris Hussey on October 6th, 2006

I opened your eyes to mind mapping recently and I promised that I would talk about how I use mind mapping in more detail with each case.  First up, meeting notes.  Before I get going I am going to say that from now on I’m going to be talking about mind mapping in MindManger.  Hobie Swan introduced me to MM at Gnomedex 2005 and I’ve never looked back.

Okay meeting notes.  Taking notes in a meeting is pretty critical.  Actually, let me clarify that, taking good, usable notes in a meeting is critical.  Once the notes are taken, though, what happens to them?  Me?  If I take them on pen and paper (fountain pen of course, but that’s another story), they tend to get lost and aren’t much use to anyone else.  Then there is the old standby by of taking notes in MS Word.  Good, electronic, indexable by the computer, e-mail-able.  But … notes in Word, I’ve found tend to get, well, wordy.  It’s really easy to miss important things like action items unless someone also takes the time to go through the notes and reformat them.  Then there is mind mapping.

Since the idea behind mind mapping is parent and child topics and sub-topics, it’s perfect for meetings.  Because the topics can be moved around, it’s great for when something comes up later that relates to an earlier item.

In MindManager you can easily make a topic a task, that can have dates and people tied to it.  And if you are sent the map, then it can be synced up with your own Outlook tasks.  Okay that’s spiffy, but what about sharing the notes around?  Yeah, not everyone has MM or wants to download (or can) the viewer.  Export to Word.  Simple, one click, done.

Let me give you a real-life scenario.  Few months ago Qumana had a big meeting.  An all-day strat meeting.  Important things were being talked about.  Notes had to be taken.  I was designated as note taker (because I had already done it with MM in other meetings).  By the end of the day the map was huge, but managable.  The export to Word, simple.  I did spend a little bit of time cleaning up the Word doc, but after an all day strat meeting everyone had a copy of the notes (in both mapped and word formats) in a day.  My only delay was waiting to sync up anything I might have missed (I hadn’t).

This is no bull, I really take notes much faster in MindManager than I can on paper.  Without an a priori structure of even lines on a page, I just put stuff and connect stuff as my mind wishes.  I really put down my thoughts more clearly.

Mind maps for meeting notes: fast, organizable, exportable, grok-able.

Tags: mind mapping, MindJet, MindManager, meeting tips

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POSTED IN: Cool downloads, MS Office, Meeting magic, MindManager, MindMapping, Software tips, Time savers, Word