Maven Mapper's

There have been some very interesting discussions taking place on the very old Yahoo Group established to discuss MindManager a mindmapping software program designed by Mindjet.

The group includes early adopters, trainers, resellers, and users that share ideas and best practices for the use of the program.  Some of the users in the group (including myself) have grown increasingly frustrated over the lack of progress in the development of MindManager software. 

The software was extremely innovative when it rolled out versions 3, 4 and 5, but innovation has lagged through recent versions 6 and 7.  Improvements have been made, but the software is no longer pushing the envelope.  MindManager is a mindmapping tool that helps people to think visually and manage knowledge visually and rapidly, reducing meeting times and enabling better communication and problem solving skills among groups stuck behind conference tables in the meeting rooms of corporate America. 

Mindmanager currently holds a lead over most mind mapping software programs that is hard to beat, for now.  But other free programs and open source movements are rapidly catching up and MindManager has done little recently to maintain its lead.

One of the most unrealistic statements in the group highlights some of the problems at Mindjet.  People representing the company claim that they are having a hard time keeping up with the information coming out of the group.

The irony here is two fold:

1. If they used MindManager to track the conversation it would not be difficult to track
2. If they built a tool that enabled MindManager to parse forums or even created a mindmap forum (generation) tool, the program would be invaluable as a knowledge management and research tool to millions of people around the world.