Jamie Nast is the author of "Idea Mapping" published by John Wiley & Sons. The book is available in the Business/Economics section of bookstores. Jamie has trained over 15,000 people world-wide to be more creative, more productive and better learners.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Idea Mapping Workshop - Palm Beach, Florida

It's that time again! Join Jamie Nast on April 21-22, 2008 for a fun-filled two days of learning at The Palm Beach Hotel which is conveniently located 2 blocks from the beach and surrounded by restaurants.

This Spring's class is part of a larger 5-day instructor certification course. There are veteran instructors returning for review, and new candidates (who have already taken this 2-day workshop) coming from companies like Franklin Templeton and as far away as Macedonia. This means that 2-day Idea Mapping participants will have the advantage of being surround by a wealth of knowledge. It's not confirmed yet, but Vanda North may be joining us as well!)

Advanced registration is required and is limited to 20 people. Payment must be received by March 21, 2008 in order to get materials ordered and shipped to the hotel in time for the course. For a course abstract and registration information click here. Looking forward to seeing you in the
Florida sunshine!

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Idea Map #88 and Hint #18 - Converting a Linear Document to an Idea Map

In December of 2007 I had the privilege of teaching a 1-day workshop for an organization in Tallahassee, FL called Communities in Schools of Florida (CISFL). Matt McKibben is the Program Services Director, and was a participant in that event. This idea map is the first of three that Matt will be sharing in this blog.

Hint #18 is to starting practicing your mapping skills by converting a linear document into a map. There are several advantages to this. One - you don't have to think about content, two - you get get a 1-page visual of a multi-page document, and three - this may lead you either re-organize the document or see connections that were not apparent previously.

Matt took their State Director's Report that is given to the CIS State Board Members and converted it to a map. This condensed 2-page report reflects the work that the State Office has done over the last quarter. However Matt's map includes much more information than the 2-page report. I look forward to sharing more of Matt's work over the next few weeks.

You can see a clearer pdf version of this map on my website under "Client Maps". If you click on any column it will sort alphabetically and you can then search by author or title (State Director's Report) of the map.

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Friday, February 15, 2008

Idea Map #86 - The Secret Behind "The Secret"

Creating idea maps in the moment (I call them "real-time" maps) is one of the most advanced skills, and no one does this better than Debbie Showler. Debbie is a Certified Idea Mapping Instructor from Whitby, Ontario. On February 6, 2008 the Oprah Show did a rerun of a show called, "The Secret Behind the Secret". During the show Debbie captured all the information in this map. It is monochromatic because of the speed at which the information was coming at her. Here are her thoughts around this map:

“This map started with the thought of capturing the key points from the Oprah show so I could share them with a friend. I was starting the map when Oprah was sharing her experience of the recent ‘Bubbleman’ Show. That became the central image – just bubbles. The first branch became who was on the show that day – Oprah, Louise Hay, Martha Beck and Cheryl Richardson. (I actually only got their first names and filled in the branches as the information was provided again later.) Oprah’s sub-branches were filled in with the experience of ‘wanting bubbles’. She went back to her desk after the Bubbleman Show and saw a Tiffany’s bubble-maker and bubbles on her desk -- only to find out that they had been there all the time and just hadn’t noticed them!

The next main branch are the thoughts that Louise Hay had on the law of attraction. I added her book titles and the affirmations as the show aired. This is when one of the Bubbles in the central image looked like the ‘O’ of Oprah, so I thought I would add that to the central image to remember this was from the Oprah Show.

Martha Beck (next branch down) was discussing the ‘Love List’ that was included in the February ‘O Magazine’. She was explaining that the list can’t be created from a shallow or fear-based place, but rather from a ‘Core of Peace’. She also shared her experience of being pregnant with a baby diagnosed with Downs Syndrome and how that adversity/ring of fire was used to create the core of peace. Then Cheryl (next new main branch) added her comments around our increasing our level of consciousness for healing – physical or emotional.

The show moved into sharing some viewer’s stories and that was the next branch. I didn’t get their names and that’s why the branches are blank, but circled them later so I could go online and find them if I wanted to. The first guest spoke of her story with the stove and then keeping the contact around. She mentioned about how the vision board kept the goals clear and in front of you. The next guest spoke of going from snow to living somewhere she wanted by creating a ‘wall’ vision board and thinking plus feeling it. That discussion took me to add the “Think It” and “Feel It” to the Martha Beck branch. It was at this point that I wanted to keep track of who was saying what. I thought of putting a star above Louise’s name, a different burst beside Martha’s name and then a spark over Cheryl’s name. You will see off of the next branch is where the show asked about the power of the Vision Board and where ‘Focus’ is what Louise felt it gave people, while Martha felt it was ‘Selective Attention’ and Cheryl added that it was an excuse for people to sit and really think about what they wanted. The thought on the branch above only has a star because that was Louise Hay talking about the need for forgiveness. "Kelly" is circled as she was the next story they introduced. She spoke of her miserable life until she explored The Secret and when she focused on what she wanted, what she had, and what she was grateful for, her life changed.

The next guest story spoke of her business and how she improved its health by starting to visualize the emails coming in. She also mentioned her attitude/response to her husband loosing his job. Instead of heading for a ‘dark place’ she mentioned celebrating with a bottle of wine (thus wine glasses!). The final audience guest (Marie) was the next sub-branch. Her question was what happens when one side of the relationship believes and the other doesn’t. The response was that you can’t convince them and then Cheryl invited him (Joe) to write 3 things on a post-it that he wants to have. Then wait. Louise added the affirmation of “I love you Joe”. The final branch at the top wrapped up the show and mentioned the new book in the Oprah Book Club – A New Earth. Oprah mentioned a class that’s free on oprah.com reviewing and discussion the latest book. You’ll see ‘pg 103’ as one viewer mentioned the content of that page changed her thinking.

I thought it was interesting that I gave Louise Hay a ‘star’ as a symbol to find out later in the show that she has written a book called “Finding Your North Star” and also “Steering by Starlight”. The bubbles were fun and turned into Oprah in the central image. The bubbles experience also made it’s way throughout the show. I took what I wanted from the show . I created this description from the map.

Go live with your maps folks! They may be monochromatic, but I can fill it in with colour. You can capture an hour-long show in front of your eyes to share, reference or just love. If you saw the show, then I wonder what your map would look like? Here’s to ‘The Secret’!"

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Portrait Drawing #5

In my 2-day courses titled "Idea Mapping: A Learning Workshop", participants are taught a learning model and then apply that model to learning a variety of new skills. Drawing a portrait of a human face is one of those skills. For more on the purpose of this activity see the June 27,2007 posting where I share the first portrait drawing. Search this blog for "portrait drawing" to see more.

Michael Panebianco, a captain at Southwest Airlines, attended a workshop in December 2007. This self-proclaimed nonartist drew this beautiful portrait of Anthony Hopkins, and was kind enough to share it. Mike has also contributed several idea maps to this blog around aviation emergency procedures in the September 4 and September 6, 2007 postings.

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Monday, February 11, 2008

Idea Maps #79-85 - VizThink Breakout Session

On Friday February 1, 2008 I blogged about the VizThink Conference in San Francisco for which I was fortunate to be a speaker. This posting is soley dedicated to the breakout session that Susi Watson and I did together on January 28, 2008.

I'll describe these maps from top to bottom. The first map is the agenda for the 90-minute session. Susi pre-drew the central image, and the rest she created live while participants also created their agenda maps.

After several activities which taught how idea maps are created, we shared a number of uses for idea maps from corparations and individuals around the globe. This "Uses" map housed all of our examples.

Next we did a group activity around the question, "What Would Make Your 2008 Great"? In groups of 4-5, participants individually brainstormed around that question and then merged all of their ideas onto a large map. Maps from 3 groups are included here. Finally while looking for commonality across all of the maps, Susi (along with input from the group) created a high-level MindManager template for anyone to begin thinking about what would make 2008 GREAT!







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Saturday, February 09, 2008

It's Not About the Coffee - Podcast 1 of 4

I met Jim Canterucci (author of Personal Brilliance) back in July of 2007. See my August 22, 2007 posting for Jim's idea map and more info on him. Each Sunday he puts up a podcast. For this month he's doing a series of 4 interviews with Howard Behar, the former President of Starbucks. This idea map is one that I created as a summary of the February 3, 2008 interview.
Listen to this podcast or others by clicking here or you can check out Jim's blog.

You can see a clearer pdf version of this map on my website under "Additional Maps". If you click on any column it will sort alphabetically and you can then search by author or title of the map.

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Idea Map #77 - Getting to Yes

Luciano Passuello has created an idea map of the book Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton. This is Luciano's 4th contribution to this blog. You can see a clearer pdf version of this map on my website. If you click on any column it will sort alphabetically and you can then search by author or title.

To see his idea map of the book The Now Habit see the December 21, 2007 posting. For One Small Step Can Change Your Life see the December 11, 2007 posting, and for the book Never Eat Alone see the November 19, 2007 posting.

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Friday, February 01, 2008

Idea Map #76 - VizThink Breakout Sessions

I was fortunate to be one of the facilitators at the VizThink '08 Conference this week in San Francisco, CA. On Saturday I began to study the various session descriptions to see which ones I wanted to attend. I looked at a list of session titles which showed the time, location, and last name of the presenter. Then I would go to another page on their wiki to see the facilitators' photos (because we were meeting as a group Sunday night and I wanted to remember names), and then I would click through to their profile and session description.

This map (created in MindManager) put all that information into one place. Each main branch represents the time slot. Each sub-branch has the facilitator name, an image that represented their work or session, their photo, the session title & location, and a link to their web page or blog. If you want to see the LARGER and clearer pdf version click here. If you click on any column it will sort alphabetically and you can then search by author or title. Unfortunately the links were lost in the jpeg and pdf files, but you can see the live links here.

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