To build a Mind Map is to build a visual association of ideas --words and key phrases that express your important thought around a core idea or ideas. We use this as a large group exercise to Scan participants' thoughts and build a context for later work. It works like this: start with a core idea--write it on the WorkWall, large, and circle it. This is your hub. Ask participants to share what ideas they associate with it. Scribe each as a word or short phrase around the hub. Link similar comments, or comments-on-comments, with a line or arrow, and allow these branches to build out from our hub. If appropriate, introduce other "hubs" to explore a set of related ideas.

The key to a good Mind Map is, of course, the selection of the hub ideas. As a Scan exercise, this is usually related to a group's identity or mission. It allows a group to Scan and share its thinking without forcing participants to declare "we are this" and "we are not this." It's often much easier to say, "that leads me to think of this (because I think that's an important part of who we are)."

We use Mind Mapping informally, as described. It was developed by Tony Buzan and his Brain Foundation as a technique to improve memory and creativity by using both left brain (analytical thinking) and right brain (holistic, visual thinking). Buzan invites the user to develop additional conventions to make Mind Mapping a more complete system of note taking and thinking--providing special meaning to different types of arrows, branching arrangements, shapes, geometric figures, colors, etc.