Mindmapping the Groundswell

Groundswell, mapped using MindMeisterHere’s a mindmap of the book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. To be precise, here’s an image generated from the mindmap. You can click on it to see a larger image.

I recommend going to the map itself, which includes includes richer content such as notes and links. To create and host the map, I used MindMeister. I also tried Bubbl.us and Gliffy, having consulted Mashable’s mindmapping tools post.

The thing that tipped me toward Mindmeiester was the ease of adding icons. I’ve used them to emphasize the POST framework, and to link steps in the framework to chapters of the book. I was at first thinking of using lines to connect each of the four steps to corresponding chapters, but I realized that would turn the map into a mess of crossed lines. While that would have been a faithful representation of my mind, it wouldn’t have much help to you, the user.

By the way, I looked only at mindmapping tools that were web-based and free, or freemium. After choosing MindMeister, I continued to discover features I liked: offline access via Gears; OpenID; ease of undoing silly things; and the people behind it seem to be based in Vienna and Munich, two cities in which I had a lot of fun when I was based in Europe.

This is version 1 of my Groundswell mindmap. (I don’t claim to be the first to do a Groundswell mindmap; I believe that distinction belongs to Kaspar.) If you have suggestions for improvements, or any other comments, please go ahead and leave them here.