5 Reasons to join Biggerplate Unplugged - Utrecht (NL)

If you are an actor in the mind mapping domain or just interested by the subject, here are 5 reasons why Biggerplate Unplugged - Utrecht (NL) is the place to be on October 9th, 2013.When your name sticks to mind mapping, when people insist to meet you in person and when you are as passionate by the subject as I am, you can’t miss an event such Biggerplate Unplugged - Utrecht. Therefore, I will cross the northern border of Belgium and I will visit my friends in The Netherlands on Wednesday, October 9, 2013. If you are an actor in the domain or just interested by the topic, it’s the place to be. We will meet there to listen to expert speakers, join roundtable discussions, and grasp the opportunity to turn online connections into real world collaboration.

I will remember for a long time the Biggerplate Unplugged - Paris where I had the chance to officially announce the launch of non-profit organization "Dessine-moi une idée". I could explain to the audience why it is so important to introduce the mind mapping technique in education, from an early age. I met great people there and experienced a fantastic day. I shared all my memories in a unique and creative mind map.

This time, I'm a visitor but it should not prevent me to present the Utrecht conference to you from a personal perspective, with a mind pap of course. Beyond the details about the venue, I wanted to share with you five good reasons to join:

1. It’s all about mind mapping. The "Unplugged" events from Biggerplate provide a unique focal point for individuals and organizations
2. You will meet great people. There are not many other places in the world where so many major players get together to talk about mind mapping.
3. You will stay informed of the latest trends, developments and innovations.
4. You will have a chance to grow in the domain and shape with others the future of mind mapping;
5. It’s a unique chance to trigger partnerships and start new collaborations.

Here is the mind map, an interactive one, created with iMindMap and ThingLink. It summarizes the 5 reasons to join and give you access to additional resources about the event.

5 Reasons to join Biggerplate Unplugged - Utrecht - Creative and interactive mind map

Click to enlarge

You can download here the iMindMap file on Biggerplate pateform.

Several sessions are planned during the day. I will be particularly attentive and participative to the two "World Cafe" sessions. In the first one, Hans Terhurne (Creamatics) will lead an exploration of the barriers that mind mapping and mind mappers encounter in organizations. I'm doing myself a lot of researches on the subject in education and I'm impatient to hear what attendees have to say to explain the phenomenon. Contrary to appearances, mind mapping is more complex than it seems. It’s time to make it clear to novice and explain the technique with a full understanding of the (cognitive) process it implies. Experts and trainers should be careful when they presume that it’s easy and obvious for anybody to become efficient with mind maps because it’s obvious and easy for them.

In this second interactive session, John Albers (BrainFun Coaching) will guide an exploration of the possible ways to increase the use of mind mapping within the Netherlands, and enable more people to use it. Make mind mapping more popular and widely used in a specific domain is not an easy task. I'm visiting school one by one, classroom after classroom, in order to demonstrate the benefits of mind mapping in learning and I’m well placed to know how challenging it is to convince people massively. It’s a great alternative for learning but it is not recognized by authorities and it suffers from a lack of scientific or empirical proofs.

I will also be very happy to meet and listen to my peer Hans Buskes (MasterMindMaps) who is one of the best mind mappers I've ever met. The reason is simply because when Hans produces a mind map, he seeks for correctness, completeness and wants it to be understood (you’d better to be a Bob Dylan’s fan for some of them). It seems to be obvious rules but many mind map creators don’t make this extra effort and their mind maps are generating noise on the channel of intelligence, reducing the chance to find good content, making readers losing their time or worse, lead them to mistakes. I'm concerned about the quality of mind maps that are shared on the Biggerplate platform and on the Internet. I hope we will have the opportunity to talk about the problem during the event.

At Biggerplate Unplugged - Utrecht, you will meet even more people, speakers or not. You will participate in a dozen sessions about great topics such as visual thinking, cloud-based solution, collaborative approach, mind mapping in the enterprise … You will have the opportunity to talk to the mind mapping software industry representatives from MindMeister and Mindjet, two important actors. And who knows, you could make some interesting encounters and start unexpected collaborations.

I'm excited to meet you in Utrecht for a great event, a day of fun and mind mapping. There are still places available, you can book your ticket here.

In the meantime,

Be creative,

Be open minded,

Be connected.