Introduction “Collections” on Biggerplate!
Curate mind mapping content for yourself and others!
Among numerous highlights of ReadWriteMap earlier this week was the launch of a brand new “Collections” feature for our PRO members, which was demonstrated live (with only one minor failure…) in the opening session:
As mentioned in the presentation, I think this is one of the most exciting new additions to Biggerplate in several years, and I’m delighted to see several members already leveraging this new feature…
Check out Hilary’s new Collection on Leadership Mind Maps, Chuck’s new Content Marketing Collection, or Bart’s Collection for Getting Things Done (GTD)!
As the above examples show, it is quick and easy for Biggerplate PRO members to create Collections on a topic of interest, and then add mind maps and webinars to the Collection. All Collections are public, and the goal is to enable our members to help identify and showcase mind maps and webinars that they find interesting!
Here’s a quick overview of the new feature, and how it can help our members to find, and share the best mind mapping content!
What is Collections?
The new feature allows Biggerplate PRO members to create Collections on a topic of interest, and then add mind maps and webinars to that Collection. The mind maps added to a Collection could be their own, or mind maps created by others that they find particularly useful and relevant to the topic. The webinars come from the extensive and ever-growing PRO webinar archive, which help to show practical uses of mind mapping in relation to the selected topic. Every collection has its own page and URL, so that you can share a Collection with others that might be interested.
For example, we’ve created a ReadWriteMap 2020 Collection that contains all of the webinars from our recent virtual event, and also contains mind maps used (or referenced) during the different webinar sessions.
All Collections are public, and it is quick and easy to add (and remove) content from a Collection, ensuring they can be easily updated when you find new content on Biggerplate that fits into your Collection!
Biggerplate PRO members can create an unlimited number of Collections, and Basic (free) members also get a single ‘Favourites’ Collection included with their membership.
Why did we built it?
As mentioned in my ReadWriteMap presentation (in the video above), as Biggerplate has grown over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure that great mind maps do not get buried and lost in the sheer size of the mind map library, never to be seen again! The same is also true of our PRO webinars, where amazing webinars may get fewer views than they deserve, simply because people don’t know to go looking for them, or don’t discover them easily enough through the webinar library.
In early 2019 I discovered an amazing book called Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess, which seemed to speak directly to this increasing challenge we were facing. Curation it seemed, was the answer we needed, and then the question turned to how?
Among many valuable insights, the key message I took from the book is that the best curation in the modern era is based on the combination (and careful balancing) of both technological and human curation. Citing examples from Netflix, Amazon, the British Museum and more, the author shows how relying solely on technology risks missing the human nuances that make personal recommendations so powerful. On the flip side, asking real humans to keep up with the sheer volume of content created on a daily basis on platforms like Amazon, Netflix, or even Biggerplate.com, is near impossible. As such, the best solutions leverage technology for the heavy lifting (data processing), and humans for the… well… human touch!
This technology + human strategy has informed a lot of our work in 2020, with an over-arching theme of ‘Curation’ driving several projects over the last 6 months in particular. Improving the visibility and usage of ‘tags’ throughout the site, and upgrading the search functionality (to now include webinars) were key technological foundations to get in place earlier in the year, always with an eye on the big curation project for later in the year… Collections!
The new Collections feature enables curation at scale, by harnessing the energy, subject expertise, and language skills of our global member community…
For big, broad, popular topics such as Project Management or Productivity, Collections provide members with an opportunity to narrow the focus, perhaps creating a “Best of” Collection for a topic (e.g. “Best Project Management Mind Maps”), or maybe a software-specific collection for that same topic (e.g. “MindManager for Project Management”) that more specifically fits their interests and preferences.
At the other end of the spectrum, one of the most interesting uses we see for Collections is in relation to more niche, specialist topic areas where our members have subject matter expertise. Want to create a Collection about a particular period in history, or even a specific battle, or historic figure within a particular period in history… well now you can! Want to create a collection of mind maps specifically for people interested in coding with Python…? That’s possible too, but only because you the member have that subject expertise (because we don’t)!
Furthermore, with a community as global as ours, a hugely exciting part of the Collections feature is the ability for people to create Collections in French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Japanese, Indonesian, or any other language they speak! We have mind maps in a HUGE number of different languages, and now there’s a great way to curate maps around a topic, and in a specific languages!
Even if you are simply creating a collection for your own benefit (e.g. “My Favourites” or “Mind Maps to Help me Study”), the fact that all Collections are public means that this curation effort still has the potential to help others discover mind maps and webinars that they may otherwise have missed!
Give it a try!
Collections is a very simple feature to start using, and so the best thing to do is go give it a try! You can find (and create) Collections from within “My Account” when you’re logged in to Biggerplate. If you’re not a PRO member, you still have a single “Favourites” Collection included with your membership, enabling you to explore this new feature. Remember, PRO members can create unlimited Collections!
Over the coming months, you’ll see Collections become ever richer in themselves with additional features coming soon. As the number of Collections reaches a sufficient level, you’ll also start to see Collections becoming more visible throughout the Biggerplate site, aiding both search and discovery on the website.
So, now would be a great time to get collecting…!
