When mind mapping, steer clear of Hitler & Fascism

In case you were wondering if you still have your self-respect

A couple of years ago I attended an email marketing conference for work. As you know, all conferences are a complete waste of time and exist only to make people think they are doing something exciting and new with their deadend careers.

Like hepatitis, conferences are to be avoided, unless work is paying that is. And who am I to turn down a day off with a fancy lunch?

A woman called Yvonne Adele was the MC. She has a media persona called Ms Megabyte and introduced herself Troy McClure style: ‘Hi I’m Yvonne Adele. You may remember me from such TV and radio ‘computing-made-easy’ spots as Ms Megabyte’. Sure lady, you’re real famous. I’ve seen you so many times on breakfast television.

Ms Megabyte pissed me off because she made me feel sorry for her, and I wanted an empathy-free day of complete self-centredness.

Anyway, it was Ms Megabyte’s job to force us to talk to each other and thereby not enjoy the conference. Also, to provide inane, self-helpish chats to bookend the day’s speakers.

One of her sessions was about ‘making ideas pop’ (the accompanying powerpoint used popcorn imagery). Our ‘assignment’ for this session was to think of a problem we wanted to solve and tell it to the person next to us.

So here’s Joe Conference sitting next to me – we greet awkwardly, I share my made up problem and then fake interest in his. Now Megabyte’s getting us to select a random word and do a mind-map, by ourselves, to trigger an idea to help solve our problems. I spotted a speaker in the room and made it my starting point.

Some background: At the time of the conference I had Pay TV, which meant that at any given time I had the choice of Locusts: the 8th Plague, Man About Town, or Shadow Man on the movie channel. As someone with high expectations for movies, and a bit of a history buff, I naturally gravitated toward the History Channel.

The History Channel has an official policy of not showing any thing that doesn’t relate directly to WW2 and Adolf Hitler. This explains the path my mind map took:

There is no such thing as a perfectly innocent mindmap

All fine and dandy. Until Megabyte gets us to share our mind-maps with the person next to us.

Joe Conference looks confused. He actually points at the word ‘fascism’ and says “what’s that?” I explain, “it’s Fascism, you know, Fascism, Hitler’s rallies, public speakers…” But explaining the logic of my mind map’s flow seemed to only make things worse. His happy little conference face started looking quite worried.

That’s when it dawns on me: I’m a raging Neo-Nazi. I am the grand Dragon of the KKK. And this guy is undoubtedly the grandchild of a holocaust survivor.

Fortunately, Ms Megabyte saves the day by introducing the next speaker. For the rest of the day, me and Joe Conference maintain an uneasy silence.

Conclusion – Mind Map Dos & Don’ts

When mind-mapping, and there is even the slightest possibility a stranger might see it, just stick to the basics: simple objects, non-political themes. Do not free your mind. Curtail and limit it. Your mind is a liability.