how many people use mind maps "seriously"?

Factual Questions
41

I use Freemind frequently as a hobbyist, for tracking my homebrew and wine projects from year to year, supplies, yields, etc. I love the concept of the mindmapping hierarchical approach, but every application I’ve tried to find (reasonably priced non-enterprise level) falls down on its flexibility.

I want:
Conditional linking
Reports and extracts
Graphing/charting functions
Configuratble data fields within objects
Filtering
Ability to embed macros/functions

Basically, I want a powerful relational database and functional requirements tool, with a quick front end that I can flick and swirl bubbles and arrows around easily.

For $20. Gimme gimme gimme!

42

GargoyleWB, could you please explain what you mean by “conditional linking”? This has been mentioned by other posters upthread as well, but never defined.

Have you ever tried those “enterprise” tools and seen better ones than the cheap stuff you are criticizing?

Your post is also interesting because it makes me think of Excel. Perhaps the underlying model of what you are doing is really a spreadsheet (or some particular subset of all possible spreadsheet types), but you want to have a visual graph interface for that. If that is the case, we have just identified one possible next step in the evolution of spreadsheet software (I may even have seen claims of research along these lines in wikipedia, although quite often the vague descriptions of unknown research projects are easy to map onto what we care about due to Forer effect).

43

I wonder how useful mind maps would be for representing Bayes Nets. It seems linking topics like that would be a really nice way to represent a causal graph in a limited system.

44

For those who may not know it exists (esp those of you who are thrifty), GraphViz is worth looking into. It’s not really a mind map thing, but it might match up with what some folks are describing. Get your database to output the generation file and then generate the graph. It’s not (last time I checked) a drag and drop kind of application.

The images in the gallery are closer to the way my mind works. Most are not hierarchical (though some are!)

45

Re: conditional linking. To use my wine example, I have a supplies and inventory “bubble” that each of my seasons link to. If one year I want to do red wine instead of white, it would be nice if my “inventory to buy” bubble would filter the yeast type I had to buy, the sulfite supplements, etc.

I’ve used a couple of enterprise tools in my work life. They tend to ultimately be able to manage complex projects with ridiculously large numbers of inputs/outputs, but fail when you just need something to run a quick one-off project and don’t want to spend 100 hrs monkeying with the tool. I’ve also yet to see a graceful GUI for these supporting the ability to “sketch out” your ideas on the fly.

46

Exactly - they are for recording your thoughts in a somewhat native format, ready to load back in later and resume thinking, or in order to release concentration on one part of the problem without actually forgetting it - the work happens in the head, not the document.

47

Okay, China Guy, you’ve got me intrigued. For years I’ve had OneNote on my computer, and it’s just annoyed me because of the printer thing. I look at the program, and I’m having a hard time figuring out just how it might be useful. I’m sure it is useful–I don’t doubt that. Hell, other people pay for it, and I just got it with the Office suit for free. Maybe I could use it.

So, could you give me a concrete scenario of how it might be useful to me? Could a teacher use it to design new curricula ? Or what about for planning a conference? Or starting a business from scratch? Because when I simply start the program it looks to me like a bunch of bells and whistles looking for a purpose.

48

Do we need to start an Ask the OneNote fanboy thread? What do you do? And do you use a lot of paper notebooks?

The beauty of OneNote for me is that you can throw all related stuff into one place with pitiful (or minimal) organization and find it all. Heirachy is Notebook (left side) > section (top) > pages (right side).

For example, I could set up a new notebook for conferences because I have to organize several a year.

Then I’ll probably have a couple of sections. Dopefest, Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, etc. So, take Dopefest as a section. Then on the right I’ll have a bunch of pages. First page might be “locations.” I’ll just cut and paste in a bunch of locations for the potential dopefest like restaurants/bars/brewpubs, etc. into this page. Someone sends an email, I’ll just copy over the place to “locations.” I could make a master list of locations in this page.

I’d set up a page for “invitations” and write up a master Dopefest invitation cover letter with details. When I actually want to send out the invitation, I could copy and paste to another program to pretty it up. Or I could just do basic formatting in OneNote and then hit the email page button and send it out.

If someone sent me a detailed email with a ton of stuff, I would just one click and copy the whole email over into a OneNote page.

Get feedback that Joe’s Brewpub is a promising location, I could go to the webpage and one click copy that webpage over to OneNote. ditto with Cecil’s Tavern.

Maybe I’d email these different places to see if we could Christian 'em down for a group Dope Fest discount. Replies would go into the Doper Deals page

I’d have “people to invite” page. Just put in their email and/or names and/or phone number.

Then when things are firmed up, I’ve got all the buckets at least roughed out: place, people to invite, invitation letter, Doper deal, key emails, etc are all right there in one easy to visualize place. And then it’s really easy to send the stuff out. And then on to dope fest2, even if I haven’t organzed anything from dope fest1, it’s still all right there. Now if there are enough pages I might do some consolidation or clean up. But the beauty is that usually there’s not that many different pages where it doesn’t fit on the screen and I feel the need to organize it. it’s just there at a glance - even 3 years later when I need to do it all over again. Or if I need to write up Dopefests for Dummies guide, again all the pieces are right there and pretty easy to organize.

With Windows Live SkyDrive (or through a sharepoint site), you can then put the OneNote notebooks in the cloud. And it’s really easy to make this OneNote online as the master repository, and sync with any number of devices or work from a kiosk. For example, at work, I have an All In One PC, and a netbook, and at home I have a laptop and a desktop, and I have a Windows7 Phone (now OneNote is available for the iPhone). All of these devices sync up with one easy click as long as you remember to do the syncing. (If there is a sync conflict you get two pages to choose from).

If you use a tablet or slate, the handwriting to text function in OneNote 2010 works great. (It used to not be very good but I was playing around the other day and was pleasantly surprised.)

Again, you put everything into one sorta organized place. Got a PDF file, paste it in (and chose between just keeping the file there or having it print in the page). Got a video, drop it in. Web page, paste it. All key emails relating to the subject, paste them over. Got a spreadsheet, paste the spreadsheet in and have a picture file of it.

Guizot - if you had a use scenario from work, I could probably scope out a way for you to get started on it. For example, my brother has a weekly concall going over sales data. He has a section for every week, and just drops all the relevant stuff into different pages throughout the week as it comes in. He’s got a template for how the info is organized on the call. So, Monday morning, he spends 20 minutes organizing the info in this variety of pages (some are from emails, some from a spreadsheet, etc) onto his template. During the call, if there is a question, he doesn’t have to hunt in his inbox or find the right excel file. It’s all right their like a 3 ring notebook.

And the OneNote search function is really good. And it can search on handwriting. There’s a lot more stuff buried in OneNote, and while I’ve been a poweruser since it came out in Office2003, there’s a lot in there I don’t know. And it’s easily synced across all of my computers and smart phone. For me, it’s the bees knees. And if you have a tablet or slate, I have seen some Mind Map type templates set up for OneNote (but it wasn’t my cup of tea).

49

Can you do that thread? I just got the free trial version, and want to see how to use it.

I have a hard time integrating my paper notebooks with my email, excel spreadsheets etc. so I thought this may be interesting.

My wife is looking at setting up a new business, and we’re gathering a lot of information and are brainstorming.

Are there good sources of templates?

50

Ok, when I find some time I’ll get one started. For templates, I have built a few of my own but generally don’t use them. You can do a search on OneNote templates and find a bucketload. Here’s the Microsoft OneNote template link: Free templates for social media, documents & designs | Microsoft Create

I wouldn’t get too caught up in the heirarchy and stuff at the beginning. Simply add a “new section” tab up at the top for a subject grouping. Then add pages on the right for each topic.

Instead of standard work style on some kind of project where you have some emails, a couple of word docs, 2 pdf files and a spreadsheets scattered across 5 different folders and 2 email programs and maybe more than one computer. Just copy and paste each one of these individual files as a seperate page under one section. If it’s not too many pages, you’ll probably not have to do any more organization that just throw 'em all together and have one master page where you write up the draft.

You can copy paste a bunch of things into one page. Say an email, then some relevant points from some websites, save the relevant excel or pdf file on the page. When it gets too much for one page, then add another page.

I use a combination of the above 2 paragraphs

I usually email directly from OneNote (and you can email the OneNote as an email and/or a Onenote attachment. I rarely bother going into Word to format the summary page as the OneNote formatting covers the basics. Depending on your version of Windows/Office you can right click (or get an add in) so there is a button to copy emails or webpages into OneNote pages. If you use a tablet or slate, the handwriting to text actually works really well for most people (lightyear improvement over earlier version)

51

I’ve been playing around with it for a day now, and I really like some things about it.

Immediately, I see some things I like about it. I like being able to put things into different spots on the page without needing text boxes, and to easily cut and past info into it. I’ve often used Excel to do that because it’s easier than Word, but this looks much better.

I don’t use Outlook now, so it may be more difficult to email from here. Is there a way to use this with gmail?

If you have time, do the tread!

52

The OneNote Power User Thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13724210#post13724210