Michael Deutch is a brand ambassador for MindManager software. After 12 years of working on the MindManager portfolio as VP of Product and, previously, Director of Product and Marketing Solutions, Michael’s extensive product experience makes him an ideal ambassador.

Although he will be out chasing adventures in his new life of semi-retirement, Michael will continue to stay engaged and active within the mind mapping community. He will be contributing regularly to the MindManager Blog, and our many other online platforms.

This is the final post of a 3-part monthly series that highlights the many different ways to share MindManager diagrams. Last month, we covered how to send, publish or print your MindManager diagrams, while the first post in the series dove into the different exports possible with MindManager for Windows.

In this post, we’ll cover two different methods for presenting your diagrams.

Walk through – Step through your diagram sequentially as you present it to your audience.
Slideshows – Create and deliver customized slideshows of parts or all of your diagram organized in a way that best conveys the information you wish to share.

The ease of capturing and organizing ideas and work is one of the core benefits of using MindManager. The process of organizing information is unique to each organizer, taking into account all that they’ve experienced in life before building their diagram, including all of the information they’ve read, their experiences, their hard-earned lessons, and everything else that has influenced their perspectives.

The challenge every presenter faces is how to share their amazing ideas with others who might have completely different experiences and would have organized the same content radically differently. How can you present information in a way that builds unity and alignment, encourages discussion and deepens understanding and insight?

The answer is within MindManager’s presentation views:

MindManager Walk Through Mode

The MindManager Walk Through mode steps viewers through your diagram one topic at a time in sequential order.

In the example below, I’ll use a map that’s actually about how to create and deliver amazing presentations.

The presentation can be initiated by using the F8 command or through the View ribbon menu under the Presentation options.

Once the walk through mode has been initiated, the file tab, quick access toolbar, ribbon menus, task pane windows, and workbook tabs are all hidden from view by default. Walk through options can adjust and fine-tune what is displayed if you wish to customize the experience further.

The Status Bar isn’t hidden but replaced with a new bar with the following controls:

Open Map lets you switch to any diagrams currently opened, or select one from your computer to present.
Options, as explained below, allow you to customize the walk through experience.
Start brings the focus back to the origination point in your diagram.
Previous / Next shifts the focus in the diagram to the next or previous topic.
+ / – adjusts the zoom level of your presentation.
End Walk through closes the walk through mode and returns you to the default MindManager state with access to all the menus, task panes, etc.

The options to customize your walk though experience include:

Displaying one or two levels of subtopics when a new topic is selected.
Visit all topics sequentially or jump to each branch of topics by displaying but not stopping on every single topic.
Collapse previous branches as you display the current branch in focus to minimize distractions.
Display or hide the ribbon menu within the view.
Fade all the other topics beside the branch in focus.
Highlight Topic and Highlight Topic Frames options highlight either the topic text or the topic frame when you rest your pointer over a topic.
Show / Hide option will either display or hide selected map elements to help you highlight key elements or hide distracting ones from the presentation.

Unlike presenting with PowerPoint or Keynote, both the walkthrough mode and the slide show modes allow you collaborate with your audience during the presentation. The value of this should not be underestimated as it allows the presenter to seamlessly capture input without disrupting the flow of the presentation. You can stop, ask questions and take notes directly in the diagram. Add a callout topic to capture a question. Or, add additional topics to capture input. Augment topics with notes. Readjust priorities or % complete, and more.

And, when you open the floor to questions, you can easily jump to other parts of the presentation by zimply clicking on any topic within the diagram. The previous / next buttons will continue digging into the details wherever you click within the diagram.

MindManager Slideshows

The Slideshow within MindManager allows you to present pre-determined sections of a diagram or divide the whole diagram into slides to present in the order of your choosing.

The Slideshow functionality is accessed in the View ribbon menu under the Presentation options.

There are options to manually select one or more topics to create slides or use the Auto Create Slides option to generate slides automatically. A ‘slide’ icon will appear next to each topic that has an associated slide.

The ‘Slides’ menu option opens a side pane where you can reorder the slides.

Clicking the slide icon on a topic or selecting the slide from the slide pane opens the slide view where you can resize the slide (controlling the zoom level of the content) and adjust which branches are expanded or closed.

Your slides can be printed, reset to their original settings, and pinned to lock down the slide boundaries maintaining the set zoom level. The slides can also be exported to Microsoft PowerPoint.

There’s also an option in the slide’s right-click context menu within the slide pane to delete the slide. The Presentation menu also has a command that lets you delete all slides at once. Note though, that If you delete a slide, the content still remains in the diagram.

To run the slide show, use the keyboard shortcut Shift + F9 command or through the View ribbon menu under the Presentation options. Similar to the WalkThrough presentation, the ribbon menus and other interface elements are hidden and a new status bar is in place that has commands to fit the current slide to the screen, restart the presentation on the first slide, skip to the next or previous slides, jump to the end of the presentation, zoom in and out, and to exit the presentation.

Within the presentation, you can continue to expand and collapse branches to reveal or hide content as needed. You can also collaborate with your audience, documenting questions within the diagram or topics, add topics to capture feedback or remove topics as needed.

Sharing with MindManager

Below is a diagram which summarizes our whole series on the various ways to share your ideas, plans and presentations with others.

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