I showed up to a company wide strategy offsite with an iPad and whipped out a mind mapping tool. For the first ten minutes I could see my boss vibrating because he thought I was fucking around.
By the end of the meeting he wanted a copy, and for me to CC his boss and a couple of his peers.
Best ones I’ve used are MindNode and XMind. I actually used MindNode for personal stuff and XMind for work, but now I’ve been gravitating towards XMind alone because it also runs on Linux (besides Mac and Windows) and I can sync my mindmaps to the iPad with SyncThing.
XMind does have a couple of irritating bugs on Fedora around keyboard input (I can’t move focus with the cursor keys, it creates a new node) but it might be specific to my setup. Their support/developers don’t seem to care much, though.
Why would a mind mapping tool cause such a reaction? Are diagrams considered not serious where you work? Was the tool heavily ornamental/stylized? Or was it seen as writing down things that are obvious?
He was sitting right next to me. He was just a control freak, who also projected on other people. His ego took out a whole office. Best layoff I ever had.
By the end of the meeting he wanted a copy, and for me to CC his boss and a couple of his peers.