Consider the following:
- I have a box that’s about 3′ wide, 3′ deep, and 6′ high.
- It’s a very heavy box.
- The box had a door on it.
- There is a handle on the door.
- When you open the door you find it’s cold inside the box.
- People usually keep food in this box.
- There’s a smaller compartment inside the box with ice and frozen food in it.
- When you open the door of the box a light comes on.
- The box is usually found in the kitchen in a house.
- This box has a tendency to collect stuff on top of it.
- People don’t often move this box often but when they do there’s usually lots of dust under it.
Somewhere along this list you discovered that what was being described was a refrigerator. Continue…
So maybe the last two posts haven’t convinced you that there’s something of great value in Comapping. Well then let me give it one more try!
In the window below there are two Wikipedia links and two links to .pdf documents. The keyword analysis and context generation to the right of those links was generate with a single mouse click. I’ve reviewed the analysis on several documents and I think it’s spot on. What’s the math telling you?
Here’s another reference: What can you do with Context Organizer?
Also, here’s a context page before and after for your comparison.
I didn’t find out about the Comapping Publish option until after the blog post yesterday. Here’s an example of a published map embedded in a web page, or more specifically a blog page.
Single click to navigate, double click to hyperlink.
I know the title is presumptuous though the application isn’t. The application simply delivers!
I found myself in an engagement working with a distributed team of individuals and having all the recurring nightmares of how painful that experience had been in the past. Being completely unwilling to go through the nightmares one more time I went searching for a better way, and to my delightful relief I found it. The answer is Comapping.
Before you utter the typical response, “Oh no, not another mind mapping tool!”, I would suggest you watch the videos on the web site. Yes, it does all the typical mindmapping functions though just imagine having a conference call with 10 people in a distributed environment and ending with a single record of all the thoughts and issues discussed during that call, and having all the thoughts and issues in the exact words of the individuals involved and structured in a way that makes them readily revisitable by all those involved. And not only are they revisitable they can be continually updated and evolved as appropriate by the individuals involved. And, Comapping keeps track of who changed what and will even send you an email telling you that the map has been changed since you were last there. Comapping allows up to 20 people to simultaneously update the mindmap in real-time while online, and each person gets to see everyone’s changes.
While the existing features are considered to make the product unique, it also exists as a web based utility meaning there’s no software to load. All one needs to do is purchase a subscription to the service, at what appears to be a most reasonable price of $25 a year, and less for group subscriptions.
While I have been continually amazed by Comapping they just added a new feature that is most amazing and for which I think experience is the only way to grasp the full utility of. The feature is called “Analyze”. Imagine being able to attach a URL to a node in a mindmap and then telling the software to analyze the content of the node and build you an outline of the content based on an analysis of the relevance of the content. Hard to grasp? I found it difficult to understand until I tinkered with it for a while. I’m still amazed! And you can attach a text, word or pdf document to a node and have it do the same analysis and build a content outline based on relevance directly into the mindmap.
Ok, so you find it hard to believe. I can understand why you might think that. Just go to Comapping and sign up for a trail subscription and see for yourself. You’ll be even more amazed if you develop a map with a couple other people a the same time.
Here’s another blog post regarding Comapping and Context Organizer, the basis for the amazing analyze function. Blog Post Link
A learning program is envisioned to be a coach supported endeavor to transition from one stage to another on Fig. 1. It is understood that in time there will be far more stages on the diagram than currently exist. What follows is a set of thoughts as to how a learning program might be set up and operated. You can place comments on the discussion page or the Enabling a Systems Thinking World (4) Learning Discussion.
After spending several days developing a learning program operation it turned out the only difference between what I had developed and the many learning programs I’ve participated in over the years was that the participants were distributed. Being more than slightly dissatisfied with the result I decided to take a lead from Monty Python, “And now for something completely different!” Continue…
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The future will happen. The question is whether the organization plans for, and endeavors to create the future, or ends up being created by the future. If all portions of the organization spend 100% of their time focusing on the day to day operations, when will there ever be time to focus on next week, next month, next year, and the years beyond? Continuing to focus on the present will ensure the organization will be the victim of the future. To create the future time and effort must be spent deciding and planning how the future is desired to be. Continue…
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There are numerous references that provide guidelines associated with various aspects of creating Systems Thinking Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs). Though what none of these references seems to provide is actual guidance as to how to go about identifying the elements, their relations and actually developing the model. In this article we’re going to use the four primitives, stock, flow, parameter, link, to develop a model, while pointing out the relevant questions and conventions employed along the way. The model will be developed as a Stock & Flow Diagram so as to distinguish between stocks and flows. As you will quickly see the distinction is critically important. The diagrams in this module were developed with Vensim PLE though pencil and paper work just fine. Continue..
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Rather than attempt to provide a short succinct definition of knowledge management, here’s an attempt to define it in terms of the set of interactions that comprise it. In other words, if you look at a set of interactions, you know that knowledge management is occurring if certain requirements are met. What follows, therefore, is a description of the process interactions associated with knowledge management. As it turns out, this allows the description to be completely technology independent, while at the same time providing the underlying technology requirements for an environment that enables knowledge management. Continue…
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Model, like so many words in the English language, has a multitude of meanings depending on the context in which it is used. In a systems context a very useful definition of model is:
We often deal with things, later I’ll call them systems, that are so complex as to be beyond the limits or our intuitive comprehension. As such, we construct models, simplifications of the real thing, which allow us to study that which we seek to understand. Continue…
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Years ago I was introduced to the writing of Gregory Bateson, and I liked him and his writing (It didn’t hurt he was married to Margaret Mead—I wonder if they had collaborative conversations?). I have always attributed to him the concept of Logical Levels. I call them levels of classes (or categories) of things, parts of categories, or levels of specificity to abstraction (and back again). (You could even say systems within systems.)
Through the years I have concluded two fundamental principles are the benefits of Systems Thinking (ST) and the concept of Logical Levels, as applied to any business negotiation: Continue…
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