Meetings Buzz - the Power of Mix

It seems that my last post ('The Ultimate Meetings Management Tool?') has created some favourable buzz in the blogosphere. Hobart Swan, has started up a good blog recently on MindManager applications, references this use of MindManager with the Tablet PC as quoted in Marc Orchant and James Kendrick's Tablet PC  podcast.

Their references are very warm, especially from Marc in the podcast. But really, I can't believe nobody's thought of this mix of technologies before. This has made me think...

Perhaps it is the mix of technologies and some new application of the mix that creates a performance breakthrough. This is brought out nicely in Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog where she posts, "Why I want a TabletPC". She has come (like me) to the mix by first being a convinced Mind Mapper. But when she encountered the mix of a Tablet PC, Mind Mapping and Mind Manager used to capture lecture notes, she had a 'Wow!' moment.

Mind Mapping, thanks to Tony Buzan, has been around for at least four decades. I was coached in the mid-90's by Tony's colleague, Vanda North, and my early responses to computer-based Mind Mapping were fairly equivocal. Even when MindManager X5 was first launched, I felt it lost some visual versatility ... but that was until I mixed pen technology through a Tablet PC. What a mix!

Comments

[Hobart Swan]

Patrick,
Sorry to post such long comment, but I wanted to share a case study we at Mindjet did at the end of last year that discusses the PromoGuy's "trifecta":
1. running meeting with MindManager
2. on a tablet
3.using wireless

Feel free to shorten this as you so desire. But here is the full case study.
Thanks,
Hobie

When Richard Goldberg, chief technology officer of dataDOC Technologies, is called in to help a company improve the way it operates, the first thing he does is get a ground-level view of the business. "When we are contracted to reengineer a process, what we typically do is meet with line staff and map out what they do in their jobs, where that touches other areas, and what tools they use to accomplish their jobs."
Before his company began using MindManager, Goldberg would undertake this first step using traditional word-processing or flow-charting tools. While these applications created views of problems and solutions that made perfect sense to him, they were usually too complicated for his customers to understand. MindManager 2002 for Tablet PC improves Goldberg's ability to work on the go, whether that means making the most of a business lunch or interacting with clients in hospital halls, on factory floors or board rooms.

Maximizing the "Power Lunch"
One prospective health industry customer contacted dataDOC when it was so frustrated by with security issues that it was about to simply cut off Internet access.
"They had about 40 PCs in one location with no virus protection, no network administration, no firewall. They wanted to fix it, but didn't want to spend any money.
It was an interesting challenge," Goldberg says. When his partner first presented the company with dataDOC's solution, "they just choked on it," Goldberg recalls.
When his partner started talking about the company's problem and the proposal over lunch one day, Goldberg opened up his MindManager 2002 for Tablet PC and started to build a handwritten map of the proposal.
The original proposal was a standard multipage text document that gave all the details of what ultimately needed to be a very complex solution. "But business people don't necessarily need to see all those details to make a buying decision," Goldberg says. "They need to see how our proposals relate to them in the real world: 'What did I say I wanted? How are you going to help me get there? If I have multiple choices to make, how do I decide?'
"I began by focusing on what the company was looking for and how my partner's solution was going to give it to them—really breaking it down in a very logical way," Goldberg says. "By the end of lunch, I showed my partner the map and he said, 'Gee that makes a lot of sense.' The next day, he took the map to the company and won not just a $10,000 piece of new business—but a contract for ongoing service and maintenance."

Brainstorming with the Tablet PC
Another customer for whom dataDOC was providing network services asked Goldberg to help it improve a key piece of PC software.
"I brought the management team together in a conference room and, using a wireless connection to my Tablet PC, projected a MindManager map on the wall. We mapped out the company's challenges and what the software needed to do to help it meet them—but wasn't doing. Everyone was amazed at the way I could simultaneously walk around the table, interact with people and use MindManager to build a very clear view of what the company was facing.
"We came out of the meeting with an order for a custom piece of software. They came out of it seeing how many major challenges they were really facing. In fact, after the meeting the CEO and the president took me aside and expressed extreme gratitude at being able to see their business challenges so clearly. I couldn't have shown that to them with a standard process flow map."

Peeling the Onion
Since the information in MindManager maps is revealed in layers, Goldberg can choose how much information to reveal. "If a client wants to see if we have restructured their network and the new network configuration and PCs that are on it, they can navigate to that section of map and find the hyperlinked document that describes all that. If they want just the broad contours, we stick to high-level branches.
"The point," he says, "is that it's all there on one document. I don't have to have three separate documents: one for the client, one for sales and one for the technical folks. I can manage an entire project off of one map."
And he likes the way the maps can be exported to HTML. "Sometimes I'll just send the CEO a zipped file with the whole HTML right in there. They unzip the file, launch right into HTML and can easily navigate very complex project plans to their hearts' content."

Closing the Sale
Goldberg says that anytime his team can take a tool that works for them and make it work in more places, both dataDOC and its customers profit. Walking around a facility and talking to the line staff, either showing the map he's building to them or adding their input to it, helps him make sure he is getting the right information and organizing it in a way that makes sense to the customer. And he appreciates the ability to leave his notes in handwriting or to convert them to type.
"Ultimately," he adds, "the value we get [from MindManager] is far more than the ability to map our projects, business plans and thoughts. The real value is ability to help us think and present that information in a clear, concise, and saleable way.
"MindManager allows us to think clearly and then to present that thinking in a way that shows we know what we're doing and where we're going," Goldberg says. "You can almost hear the clients thinking, 'Oh, that makes sense, no two ways about it; that's the way we need to go."

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