Where Do You Like to Mind Map?
This evening I’m working on or from a mind map on a lake in North Carolina. I work from Lake Wylie in my own wifi cove with a covered fishing dock. A high top bar serves dual purposes for serving drinks and serving as my desk. I recently installed a pull down projector screen on the dock, and have moved my portable projector outside tonight to work from a mind map that I created with MindManager a few days ago.
The unique setting tonight with a thousand frogs chiming in their opinions about topic changes juxtaposed with the setting where the map was created made me pause. I created the mindmap last week in the Nevada desert in Laughlin. I worked with my friend Joe Klein on a brainstorm evolved into a business plan upgrade. We worked from his home in Laughlin where I used the projector to display the map from his dining room table onto the vertical blinds that cover the sliding glass doors to his patio and hot tub.
The mindmap in the picture is of course the default map with MindManager 8, the map I’m working on in reality is top secret!
Going from the desert to a lake in North Carolina is definitely two examples of the extreme. In the past I’ve worked on planes, in conference rooms, at a soccer field and a McDonalds. Brainstorming, a function that is one of MindManager’s strengths, is definitely the type of activity that can work well when you place the participants outside the box. Its not required, but can produce some interesting results. So where is it that you mindmap? Do you use that location exclusively? Do you mix it up and if so do you mix it up on purpose or just by chance?
I ask the question mostly because I’m curious and partly because I’m curious if the location drives better results or hinders results (like when the sun glares down on a screen outside, or when the mosquitoes get to thick on your projector screen or when the sun melts the silicon in your laptop back into sand particles in the desert). 
[...] Where Do You Like to Mind Map? Brett Bumeter asks, where do you likt to map? Oh, I could go on and on with this one but some of my best maps were created on airplanes. Nothing beats unplugging from the day-to-day and letting my mind free to create amazing maps! [...]
Just about anywhere. I use MindManager on a Tablet PC. I take notes at meetings and events ranging from boardrooms & conference rooms to pavement bars and music festivals. http://www.cabre.co.uk/croplog06/
The Tablet PC and a few batteries certainly frees you up. I have mapped in the garden and out on the downs.
I can get quite a bit done on the train to London, a 1 hour journey. Sometimes this is done standing up or sitting on the floor the whole way.
Used in LOTS of places … but on the METRA commute into Chicago is notable as the time just flies by while those ideas flow onto the screen.
Thanks Andrew, I have yet to try a Tablet myself. These days I have a 13? laptop on steroids, but the freedom you describe definitely sounds appealing. I can and have used a laptop to map in some similar circumstances but definitely not all of those.