MindMeister works a lot like MindManager, with the features I've come to see as essential for a good mind-mapping experience:

• rapid creation of new nodes and node "children". (Hitting return creates a node; tab creates children of the node you're on.)
• automatic linking of nodes. When you create a node, it's automatically linked to what's already on the map (as opposed to a tool like OmniGraffle, in which you manually link nodes.)
• support for visual elements to illustrate/highlight

• control over color and font of elements
• attach files or hyperlinks to any node
• intuitive and visually pleasing interface
• drag-and-drop editing so you can quickly reorganize your thoughts

• share maps with colleagues
• track edits to your mind map via e-mail or Twitter
• publish maps to your blog or elsewhere online
• use offline (via Google Gears)
• Skype integration to chat with your collaborators
• change tracking to see who added what

See who added what when viewing a shared map.

• optional automatic link maker (links the selected node to the most relevant web page for that term)
• enterprise version to brand MindMeister for use with clients
• browser extensions and widgets that make it easy to add to your default mind map
• and of  course, an a.p.i. (developers, start your engines.)
• export to FreeMind, Mindjet and other formats (premium only)
• prompt, non-bureaucratic customer service (i.e. when i asked them for my free upgrade after Rob paid for his premium service, they didn't hassle me about the process whereby I'd referred him)

But what makes MindMeister rock my world is the fact that it lets two or more people work on a mind map at the same time. No locking and unlocking the document; no waiting a minute while your collaborator's changes show up. If you and a colleague are editing the same map concurrently, you'll see each other's changes in about five or ten seconds.  This makes the experience of collaboration a lot less like Google Docs (which we use regularly, in exchanging drafts of a document) and a lot more like SubEthaEdit (which we use constantly, to collaboratively write or note-take in real time).

MindMeister goes to work for Social Signal

As an almost real-time collaboration tool, MindMeister unlocks a whole new way of working together. You're not limited to linear structures (like task lists, documents and even wikis). You can take notes, jot down ideas or capture information -- then dynamically and collaboratively reorganize it. Where document sharing (at its best, i.e. real time in SubEthaEdit) can feel like writing together, with MindMeister you can actually do your thinking together.

We've been using MindMeister for a little over a month, and already we've used it to:

• plan and outline writing projects
• wireframe the navigation structure for a website
• outline a community engagement plan
• diagram an organization chart and decision tree
• map out deliverables for a complex project
• figure out the relationship among multiple overlapping technical terms
• map out responsibilities on a complex project

But if you really want to understand what MindMeister can do for you, you've got to see it in action. So here is the very latest mind map we've created -- a map of where mind mapping fits into the big picture of collaboration tools that we use here at Social Signal.

(Click and drag on the map to move it around so that you can see the whole thing. The tools with the hearts are the ones I personally use every week, if not every day. Click here to see the map in all its glory on the MindMeister site.)

Share your thoughts for a chance to win a free year of MindMeister premium

Are you using MindMeister yourself? Curious about -- or experienced with -- some of the other tools on the Social Signal map of online collaboration tools? Have another approach to collaboration that you prefer? Tell us your ideas about mind mapping and online collaboration, and you could win a free year of premium MindMeister service, which lets you maintain more than 6 maps, download your maps to your local machine, attach files to your topics, and is 100% ad-free.

Share your thoughts by:

• leaving a comment on this blog post
• responding on your own blog or site, linking back to this post
• creating your own MindMeister map  (please link to it by leaving a comment below)
• any other nifty collaborative online way that you want (just let us know what it is!)

That's ironic, because the web itself is a very right-brain medium: hyperlinks let you flow from site to site in the same kind of random, intuitive and creative way that your right hemisphere works.

The latest addition to the Social Signal toolbox is a terrific online application that engages your right brain very effectively: MindMeister.

MindMeister is an online mind mapping application that lets you collaborate in producing visual representations of information or ideas. A mind map typically looks like a tree or network: you put your title or central idea in the middle of a piece of (real or virtual paper), and then you draw branching lines outward to capture related ideas and most crucially, relationships among ideas.

In this two-part blog post I'll introduce you to mind mapping and to MindMeister. Part 1 (you are here) introduces mind mapping and some of the options for digital mind mapping. Part 2 looks at MindMeister's features, and how we use MindMeister for collaboration at Social Signal. Part 2 also includes a MindMeister-generated map of a range of online collaboration tools at Social Signal, so even if mind mapping doesn't seem like it's for you, you may want to check out some of the other tools on our map.

Birth of a mind mapper

The king of mind maps is Tony Buzan, who has written more than a dozen books about mind mapping and its various uses for improving memory, study habits, et cetera. Buzan argues that mind mapping

harnesses the full range of cortical skills - word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness - in a single, uniquely powerful manner. In so doing, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain.

I became quite a dedicated mind mapper while in grad school, using mind maps to take most of my notes on course readings, chart entire sub-fields of political science, and outline my own papers and thinking. That was back in the olden days, so I did my mind maps on paper, which had the advantages of being very immediate and making it easy to implement Buzan's recommendations to engage visual thinking with lots of colour and imagery.

This is part of a paper-based mind map I created while studying for my general exams in political science in 1997. It summarized the major debates and authors in the field of political culture. (This is just a snippet -- click here to open the entire map in a new window.)

But it had some significant disadvantages: there was no easy way to edit or move around elements within a mind map, and I usually arrived at my afternoon seminars with my forearms covered in a rainbow of ink (from letting them rest on top of all the coloured pens I had open while mapping).

Thanks to the popularity of Buzan's work, we now have lots of software options for ink-free mind mapping. I've tried out a lot of these over the years, and have found that different tools work well for different kinds of mind maps.

Mind mapping goes digital

If you're creating a map to diagram an organization or information structure you're actually going to implement, you need a lot of control over layout options, so something like OmniGraffle is great. (That's what we usually use for information architecture work, i.e. planning out the navigation structure of a web site.) If you're creating a map to organize your thinking, it's better to use something that automatically creates relationships among elements and lets you work very quickly: after years of searching, I was recently delighted to discover MindManager, which I now use regularly.

I've also tried using Personal Brain, which I discovered through Jerry Michalski: it has the potential to become your primary tool for information management, since it can grow to virtually infinite size (Jerry has thousands of items in his brain), and can even replace your finder or file browser. In addition to letting you map topics, Personal Brain lets you attach notes and URLs to each item in your brain, so you could actually use it to replace your current system for managing bookmarks.

I took it for a spin over a few weeks in February, but it feels like the kind of tool you'd need to work with for quite a while before understanding its full potential or assessing its fit for your personal workflow, and my trial license ran out before I was ready to commit to it.  If Personal Brain establishes del.icio.us integration, so I can keep del.icio.us links synched to a brain, I'll be tempted to try it again.

As a committed mind mapper and a devotee of social web applications, it was inevitable that I'd want to get a little peanut butter in my chocolate. Rob and I do a lot of our writing and thinking together, and most of our creative tools are eventually subjected to the "but can we do it together?" test. Thanks to my recent love-in with MindManager, it occurred to me to Google the phrase "collaborative mind mapping" and voilà, I found the extremely fabulous and user-friendly MindMeister.

Technology is obsoleting copyright law. Encourages people to use Creative Commons for all their work.

» bonus tip: When publishing with Creative Commons, use the attribution noncommercial license, which means that any non-profit can republish your content, as long as they credit you as the original author (or photographer). But businesses won’t be allowed to take your content and make money with it.

Promote ownership of your brand

Let people remix your content. Give them creative assets to work with.

Let go of control. Don’t make the mistake the music industry made — trying to loc down their content, and alienating their fans.

Document everything

If it didn’t happen on the Internet, it didn’t happen.

The power of open source

Open source software development is inherently tied to social change. They are building things for the common grood while working around traditional power models.

A great member question: your supporters can select a 2nd choice on the preferential ballot. What can you tell them about your two opponents’ qualities and contributions to guide their decision?

I was sorry that none of the three responded with specific praise for the others’ virtues. It was such a nice opportunity to transcend the “fight” paradigm.

This year's NetSquared showcased the very best of what's possible when development know-how meets community vision: the twenty-one projects that were showcased in the Mashup Challenge demonstrated a wide range of ways that content or tools can help drawn people to a site.

But drawing people to your site is just the first step. How do you motivate them to actually participate, to contribute their own time, ideas and content? In other words, how do you bring your site to life?

My presentation at NetSquared drew on four kinds of resources to help answer that question:

1. Questions to ask before launching your online community.

Rob has written a great introduction to the questions you need to ask yourself before launching an online community (PDF). Some highlights:

• What's in it for your users...and how do they know?
• How do you want people to behave toward each other?
• How will users know their contributions are valued?

2. The ingredients for a community engagement plan.

We often help organizations answer this question by creating engagement plans. If you want to roll your own, we'd suggest including

• key messages
• audiences (with relevance, messages and channels for each)
• incentives for participation (contests, recognition, points, etc.)
• outreach best practices
• blogger outreach plans and sample outreach e-mails
• media outreach plans
• sample e-mails for outreach to e-mail lists
• sample e-mails for outreach to friends and colleagues
• recommended outreach collateral (e.g. stickers, brochures) with creative
• plan and texts for internal channel outreach (e.g. main web site)
• timeline for first 3-6 months of post-launch activity
• animation guidelines
• do's and don'ts for site management
• FAQ responses to questions about the project
• pre-prepared texts for responding to emergent challenges (e.g. criticisms)

• an effective invitation
• the role of rules
• incentives
• community ownership
• effective animation
• gateway participation
• balancing quantity and quality

Moravcsik's article focused particularly on the creation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which, unlike the UNDHR, was designed to be an enforceable document that would give individuals the legal standing to pursue human rights issues in an international court of law. What the ECHR advanced was the idea of personal, individual-level responsibility for human rights advocacy; what it lost was the boldness and breadth of vision of the UDHR.

The EHHR project recognizes that online networks provide a way to have your human rights cake, and eat it too. EHHR is focusing on each of the core themes of the UN Declaration, a sweeping document that addresses basic rights in areas from religion to employement, and from freedom of expression to healthcare. But by asking people around the world to sign on personally -- over the web -- as supporters of that Declaration, it's reawakening the idea that each and every one of us has a role to play in supporting human rights.

And that role doesn't need to be limited to a courtroom. One of the key partners on the EHHR project is Witness, an online NGO that uses video and web technology to tackle human rights abuses around the world. Through EHHR and Witness's user-driven site, The Hub, anyone in the world can be an active advocate for human rights -- a personal witness -- by contributing a video or online story.

EHHR and Witness are just two pieces of a large and growing online ecosystem for supporting human rights worldwide. Global Voices Online gathers bloggers from around the world, including many who are writing under adverse -- even life-threatening -- conditions in their home countries. Ushahidi and the Tunisian Prison Map are putting human rights abuses in Kenya and Tunisia on the map (literally). The Martus project provides digital security tools to protect the effectiveness and safety of people working on the front lines of human rights protection.

The growing online human rights ecosystem of which EHHR is a part didn't exist when Moravcsik wrote his article. At the time, the courts were the best option -- really, the only meaningful option -- for individuals to engage in the public sphere of human rights. What made that interesting to Moravcsik was the way that human rights agreements allowed governments to dig themselves into structural commitments to human rights, with citizens serving as the hypothetical watchdogs.

Today there's a whole new set of tools to give those hypothetical watchdogs real teeth. But now, citizens don't have to wait to be invited into that role, nor do they have to find their way into a courtroom. They just have to pick up a cell phone, a camera, or a keyboard, and they can hold human rights violations accountable in the court of global public opinion.

The technologies are all there....all that's missing is the recognition of meaningful personal accountability for human rights. That's what EHHR puts back in the picture, by asking and every one of us to sign a personal commitment to the bold vision the UN set forth sixty years ago.

Of course, when the Declaration was written, most UN members would not have envisioned a world in which access to global communications could be virtually universal. Now that we have it, it's time to make human rights universal, too.

What bake sales once were to PTAs, online storefronts are to today's non-profits. We're used to thinking about participants in non-profit web sites as members or supporters, people we are trying to reach with a message or mobilize around a campaign. But your online community members can also be customers -- customers who may be delighted to spend their dollars in a way that supports their values and your work.

Here are some of the forms that online product sales can take:

1. Schwag: Your site can earn money by selling promotional items (t-shirts, mugs, posters, bumper stickers, yo-yos) with your organization's name or a related message. (I'm waiting for someone to buy me an Obama Mama t-shirt.) This is a great way to get your message out and earn money at the same time. While you can earn more money by mass producing these items for sale, you can limit your risk (or test the waters) by using a print-to-order service like Goodstorm (a printing service set up to support non-profits, and recently acquired by Zazzle) or Café Press.
   
2. Educational materials: If your organization engages in education or issue awareness work, your web site can be a great way to sell or distribute educational materials like books, DVDs or CDs. Think carefully about how to weigh your revenue goals against your desire to get the message out: selling your products at high prices may limit their circulation. On the other hand, shipping stuff for free may make it hard for you to fund development or distribution.
3. Media downloads: Selling educational or cultural products electronically is a terrific way to earn revenue while limiting distribution costs. If your organization has produced a book, magazine, poster, DVD or CD, could you sell it in electronic form? Once you create an electronic version of any of these products, the marginal cost of each additional sale is zero: selling a thousand copies of your Christmas concert in MP3 form costs no more than selling ten. Again, think about the trade-off between revenue and mission: distributing media products electronically for free (or very cheap) is also a great way to get out your message.
4. Social enterprise: If your organization supports community enterprise, you can sell the products of that enterprise on your site. Tilonia.com is an online store specifically created to sell the products of the Barefoot College.
5. Mission-aligned products: Even if you're not directly involved in a community enterprise, you can still find mission-aligned products to sell on your site. For example, an organization promoting responsible forestry could sell recycled paper products. You can stock a warehouse and ship products yourself, or you can partner with a retailer or social enterprise, and earn transaction fees from each sale that is processed by or referred from your site.
6. Affiliate sales: If you don't want to deal with the costs of production, fulfillment and credit card processing -- or you want to test your visitors' appetite for on-site purchasing before you make an investment -- consider setting up affiliate sales. The Amazon Associates program is a great, unobtrusive way of generating revenue from books or other products you happen to mention on your site; linking those recommendations to an Amazon account earns you dollars and makes the follow-up process easier for your readers. The BookSense affiliate program is similar, but sends your visitors' business to independent booksellers. For a wider range of potential advertisers, check out Commission Junction, which runs affiliate programs for many major retailers.

Before you setup your virtual storefront, here are some issues to consider:

• Do our visitors like to shop online? Unless your site visitors include a meaningful number of people who already buy products online, they're probably not going to start with you.
  
• What products do our visitors want? If you're already selling products,you know which t-shirts or community products are most popular with your members and supporters. If you've never sold products before, do some market testing before you commit to production or sales.
• How much will it cost us to set up our sales capacity? There are lots of e-commerce options, including Paypal, that make it easy to set up storefronts and complete credit card transactions. Be prepared to invest some money to make your storefront look good, and to make it easy for people to shop. Invest in airtight security for credit card transactions -- ideally avoiding any in-house handling of credit card numbers.
• How much will it cost us to fulfill our orders? Look for products that have low marginal costs to produce or ship. Information products (like document, music or video downloads) are ideal because once you produce your first unit, every additional unit sold is virtually 100% profit. If you're producing physical products look carefully at the costs of both product design and fulfillment, and figure out the price point and sales volume that optimizes your profit margins.
• Can we outsource production or fulfillment in a way that aligns with our mission? Outsourcing the production of your product or fulfillment of your orders can save you time and money, and keep your organization focused on its core mission. But be sure that you outsource in a way that supports your mission and values. Find out about the wages and labor conditions of your contractors; if you wouldn't feel comfortable seeing that information disclosed with your organization's name attached to it, look for another option. Better yet, look for contractors who actively reflect what you stand for: if you're a women's organization, look for women-owned businesses. If you're a development organization, look for partners in countries where you work.

I'll venture to say that most non-profits have at least a couple of good options for products they can produce and sell online. If you have loyal members or active supporters, you have a message that people want to hear. Figure out whether that message fits better on a t-shirt or in an e-book, and you're on your way.

But believe me, if you asked them to write a document, the mathematician and the librarian would come out ahead. Why?

Brackets.

You know, like

(2+2) X (18/3)

Or like

("climate change" OR sustainability) AND (water OR H20)

But here I am, the lonely web strategist, struggling to write a document that repeatedly uses the phrase, "external engagement and social media strategy advice and support". I know what I mean, but will the client?

What I really need is Boolean syntax. Why shouldn't I be able to write in the form,

(((external engagement AND social media) strategy)) advice AND support

See, isn't that MUCH clearer now?

If your site attracts a lot of visitors -- or even a niche community of visitors that advertisers want to reach -- you can place advertising on your site to generate revenue. There are three types of advertising to consider:

1. An ad service. Ad services handle all the work of finding advertisers, and place ads onto your site based on your content or keywords. In return, they take a (usually large) percentage of ad revenue. The most widely-used service is Google Adsense, which places advertising on your site based on keywords; this means you may have some ads appear on your site that don't fit with your message (for example, a web page about endangered fish may end up displaying ads for fish recipes) but you can veto ads as you identify problems. Other services focus on building specific communities of content based on quality; for example, Federated Media is an ad network for high-traffic bloggers. Some ad services place plaintext ads; others place images; Google itself gives the option of text or images.
   
2. Your own ad system. If you want more control over the ads that appear on your site, you can sell ad space yourself. You can sell ads on a "per impression" (advertisers pay for how many times their ads get shown) or a "per click" (advertisers pay for how many times people actually click through to their ads) basis. You can sell ads that show up anywhere or everywhere on your site ("run of site" advertising) or you can sell ads on specific pages (for example, a youth-oriented brand may want to place ads specifically on your youth services page). You can place multiple ads on a single page, and you can charge higher rates for more prominent pages or spaces -- for example, the top banner ad on your home page will likely command the highest price on your site. Selling your own ads means you can keep all the revenue you generate, but be aware of both cost of sales (you'll need someone to sell those ads) and technical costs (for payment processing and setting up a system for placing your ads).
   
3. Sponsorships. As a non-profit organization, you may prefer advertiser "sponsorship" to traditional advertising. A sponsor (or set of sponsors) typically supports the entire site, though it is also possible to have specific sponsors support specific programs or areas of the site, particularly if they are highly specialized or resource-intensive. You could have one organization as the supporting sponsor of your main site, and another organization as the sponsor of an online community for a specific group of users (e.g. a community of young mothers). Sponsors will typically be credited as the sponsor of a site with a (potentially quite prominent) display of their name, logo, and possibly a tag line, but rarely place a full message on the site as they would with an ad (although in some cases sponsorship could include advertising). Sponsorship can feel less commercialized than an ad (which some organizations feel uncomfortable placing on their sites) and may have tax advantages for the sponsor, compared with advertising.

Advertising is one of the most obvious ways for a non-profit to earn revenue from its web presence -- and if you use a service like Adsense, one of the easiest ways, too. But many non-profits are wisely cautious about placing ads on their site. Typical concerns include:

• possible conflict with non-profit tax status
• appearance of being overly commercialized
• driving traffic away from the non-profit's own site
• introducing off-message ads or content

Before you decide whether advertising is the right fit for you, consider:

• How much revenue do you stand to earn? If you a have a low-traffic site, the upside of advertising is limited.
• How will ads affect the perception of your site and organization? Ads feel particularly inappropriate on sites with a deeply personal or difficult message. Imagine how you'd feel if you saw an ad on a campaign page about Darfur.
• What form of advertising would earn the most revenue? Consider whether to go with "per click" ads (which pay only if your visitors follow the links) or "per impression" ads (which pay simply for appearing).
• How can you test advertising options? Ads aren't all or nothing. Consider placing ads on a few pages on your site, and asking for feedback before you proceed.
• How will advertising affect other possibilities for revenue generation? Be sure to look at the other options we cover in this series. It might be that an option like premium service would yield more income -- and your premium service could be an ad-free version.
  

Resources to help you learn more:

Using Google Adsense to generate income for your church or non-profit organization

A look at some Adsense alternatives

The Drudge Report’s link to the YouTube iteration of the CBS News piece [broadcasting Hillary Clinton's arrival in Bosnia, with no evidence to support her recollection of dodging sniper fire] transformed it into a cultural phenomenon reaching far beyond a third-place network news program’s nightly audience. It had more YouTube views than the inflammatory Wright sermons, more than even the promotional video of Britney Spears making her latest “comeback” on a TV sitcom. It was as this digital avalanche crashed down that Mrs. Clinton, backed into a corner, started offering the alibi of “sleep deprivation” and then tried to reignite the racial fires around Mr. Wright.

The Clinton campaign’s cluelessness about the Web has been apparent from the start, and not just in its lagging fund-raising. Witness the canned Hillary Web “chats” and “Hillcasts,” the soupy Web contest to choose a campaign song (the winner, an Air Canada advertising jingle sung by Celine Dion, was quickly dumped), and the little-watched electronic national town-hall meeting on the eve of Super Tuesday. Web surfers have rejected these stunts as the old-school infomercials they so blatantly are.

Senator Obama, for all his campaign’s Internet prowess, made his own media mistake by not getting ahead of the inevitable emergence of commercially available Wright videos on both cable TV and the Web. But he got lucky. YouTube videos of a candidate in full tilt or full humiliation, we’re learning, can outdraw videos of a candidate’s fire-breathing pastor. Both the CBS News piece on Mrs. Clinton in Bosnia and the full video of Mr. Obama’s speech on race have drawn more views than the most popular clips of a raging Mr. Wright.