Your on your way Greg
Yeah Greg,
Mind mapping does become an excellent personal guide to exploring creativity and problem solving at the base level.
The memory retention associated with Mind mapping is phenomenal to say the least.
Visio is an excellent program but, it's certainly not a Mind mapping program. I would advise you to Google search for Mind mapping programs and you'll get all the objective information that you need regarding programs that you can use for your chosen field or profession.
My subjective angle on Mind mapping programs has allowed me to narrow the best and most user friendly programs down to two (2) excellent PC programs.
Mind genius and Visual mind
Mind genius is by far the most professional and graphically polished of all of the mindmapping software packages out there. The learning curve associated with Mind genius is the longest of the two programs that I personaly use yet, I am of the opinion that, Mind genius is by far, the most user friendly and powerfull Mind mapping program around these days.
Visual Mind is another excellent I use and a very undermined Mind mapping software package that has recently been going through some major changes. I am fortunate enough to be one of the non programer developers of this program and, thus my objectivity is clouded.
Both programs enable a user to Create, Develop, Manage, Save and distribute mapped information as a mapped format or they can equally export the map to Microsoft Word, Power point, Outlook and project, also saving maps as an image file and then exporting to PDF format. In other words the mapping software packages that I speak of, allow you to choose the format of distribution that suits you, your colleagues, employees, personal and business associates. The choice is becoming very wide regarding the Mind mapping programs that are available.
I have reviewed as a Ford employee a few Mind mapping programs to date and the two programs mentioned are in my opinion, the best on the market to date.
I say "to date" as, there's always something new on the market that will ehance the users ability to be in charge of the "Knowledge economy".
Beware though, there are some Mindmapping packages that are just way too time consuming to be ever considered as being a part of any organizational IT initiative, "Time and training equates to manpower and hourly costs".
Wallace.