There has been a definite buzz surrounding the recent Biggerplate Unplugged Conference in London. Everyone who’s anyone in the Mind Mapping world was in attendance last week; bloggers, developers, practitioners. This event even provided a rare opportunity for industry leaders to come together to discuss their predictions for the future of Mind Mapping.
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If you know anything about Tony Buzan, you’ll know that he’s enjoyed a long and full reign as an acclaimed speaker and authority in the realm of the brain, learning and memory. Now for the first time, he has committed to paper the subject which has most captivated his audiences with his amazing new book The Most Important Graph in the World.
In this completely new work, Tony offers an eye-opening and energising theory for what lies at the heart of any kind of personal or business success – your memory.
20th January 2012, by Tony Buzan
The ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor Course at the St. David’s Hotel & Spa in Cardiff UK this January marked the beginning of an exciting and promising year for the growing troop of ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructors and representatives of the ThinkBuzan brand!
I have always been a conscientious, hard working student yet I dread exams. All the knowledge laboriously collected over the year seems to remain locked away and although it’s there I feel I can never quite consolidate it totally and confidently.
I was ‘diagnosed’ with dyslexia at the age of 10, which has added to my struggle. I am a medical student in my 4th year, studying in London. Last year I intercalated and studied for a BSC in Experimental Pathology. This is conventionally a three-year degree, which I took in a year – as you can imagine, a great deal of work. There was a lot to learn and I was keen, yet I was near despair as I felt it was impossible to consolidate and retain the year’s work.
July saw three world records being smashed at the fifth annual UK Schools Memory Championships held in prestigious Keyworth Centre in London, proudly sponsored by ThinkBuzan. The city of Sunderland dominated the top spots this year with five of the top ten competitors being from this area. The winner Mark Towers was the overall winner, recalling an amazing 155 words, 106 numbers, 21 fictional dates and 16 playing cards, giving him an overall score of 1448. Mark was also the first ever male to win, another achievement!
The School Memory Championships are always an extremely popular event and this year was no exception! The event engages students in the sport of memory, developing their mental skills and encouraging advancement in their studies.
If you haven’t already been notified in the software, its time to check for updates again!
The team have been hard at work preparing iMindMap 5.2 and it has very recently gone out via the update system (read our How-To-Guide on Updates to find out how to download this). We are excited to announce this update features the following:
Huge amount of 5.2 development effort went into allowing you to create and use custom Styles in your Mind Maps. In iMindMap V4 we had some basic AutoMap options, which looked like this…
It has been just over 1 month since I first posted a reply to the feedback on iMindMap 5 launch. During that time the entire team has worked tirelessly to deliver on a promise I made, that we are listening to you.
I think that point is worth making again, iMindMap 5 is not just a product we sell to you. It is a product where our customers will actively shape its future, and where we as a company can work with you to create the best thinking tool on the planet!
Our goal is simple, we want to increase the mental literacy of the world. It is no small goal and one we know we can only do by making positive steps. When we launched iMindMap 5 we committed to giving away iMindMap Basic for free. When I last posted, we updated the software with some very early fixes and committed to acting based directly on what you said. Now you can see the results.
Recently I sat down with our CEO Chris Griffiths to review the release of iMindMap 5, what people were saying and how it went. Along with the release of iMindMap 5 desktop, we also launched a wealth of other systems and services designed as a fundamental step change for ThinkBuzan as an organisation.
To start we have launched a totally free Mind Mapping Software product. Anyone can now benefit from using iMindMap, download the trial, after 7 days it downgrades to iMindMap basic and is free for life.
iMindMap Online is another new product for us and we have given accounts to anyone buying the desktop product so they can sync their Mind Maps to the cloud, access them and collaborate from anywhere.
A few weeks ago we launched our new support system at support.thinkbuzan.com designed to allow us to support our users even better by adding knowledge-bases, online ticket access and feedback systems so you can let us know how we are doing.
Finally feedback.thinkbuzan.com went live which allows users to feedback on ideas for the software, what they like, what they don’t like and vote up and down these ideas so the important ones rise to the top.
It’s that last system that really surprised us in a number of ways. It’s the first time we have held ourselves publicly accountable for our work. Please go check it out, we haven’t removed anything (apart from a bit of spam) and thats where the conversation started with Chris Griffiths.
It’s coming up to 4 weeks since we launched iMindMap 5 and we have already had over 460 votes, on 115 ideas, not to mention a lot of comments (every comment gets emailed to me and I read each and every one). Looking at the top ideas, the comments and votes, over the 3 forum categories, the simple fact is some people are happy & some aren’t, which led to our chat.
Now to be completely honest we have received a huge amount of praise for iMindMap 5, people love a lot about it but as Head of Development it’s the negative feedback that provides the most opportunity for me. Here we have a product that people are so passionate about, they care so much about and want it to work for them so much that they are willing to spend their time and effort communicating back to us what needs to change.
This is gold-dust.
I am very lucky to be a part of a software program that people are so passionate about, but, as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. We promised an aggressive upgrade plan, we promised to listen to our customers and now we must act on our promises.
Over the coming days we will be releasing minor updates in a 5.0.1 version along with a 5.0.2 version of iMindMap, designed to patch up some minor bugs that have been noticed. This will also feature linking to folders (not just files), pack and go of folders and improved PDF export resolution, all based directly on feedback we have received.
I am also pleased to announce we have started work on 5.1 that will feature large improvements, again based directly on your feedback, such as:
IMindMap 5 was the beginning of something new, not just a new piece of software but a new way for us to work with our customers, to be more open in our communication and reach our ultimate goal of producing the best thinking tool on the planet! 5.0 was a huge leap forward, we’re even giving the basic version away for free, but we can and will do more.
In the meantime please talk to us at feedback.thinkbuzan.com, we are most definitely listening.
Chris
The day we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived, and we are thrilled to announce that iMindMap 5 is now available!
The ThinkBuzan team has worked extremely hard to rebuild iMindMap completely from the ground up, and I would like to thank them all for their commitment and dedication – I feel very lucky to work with such a great team. Also, a big thank you goes to all of our Beta Testers, Trainers and Users, who provided invaluable feedback in developing iMindMap 5.
iMindMap 5 has lots of new features and a brand new interface, so there is plenty to explore. My favourite features include 3D View, which I love presenting with, and MultiMaps, as I find that I often have related Mind Maps which deserve their own space, but belong on the same page. If you have trialled iMindMap V4 in the past, you can start afresh and take iMindMap 5 for a test drive – come back and tell us your first reactions! Plus our cloud application, iMindMap Online, is also released today. I look forward to hearing your feedback!
And remember, it doesn’t end here. iMindMap 5 will offer our most aggressive update plan yet, and we expect to make improvements and enhancements regularly, so you will literally see the software evolve in front of your eyes.
As part of the iMindMap 5 launch, we have also released a brand new edition, iMindMap Basic, which is totally free! This is our way of getting everyone around the world to think and work differently for better results. It something we have wanted to do for a long time and are delighted that it is finally possible. But more on that on the blog later!
Check out this new video to hear Chris’ thoughts on how iMindMap has grown.