Your IMINDI Think Tanks and Discussions

Let's start with the larger upper window on the right which says at the top "Think Tanks". A Think Tank is just a container of thoughts. Some might be yours alone, and others can be shared. Each has a general or specific goal to explore. They can be made public or private, open or invited, or deleted. Once you click on a specific Think Tank, the viewscreen and the box below will show you which Discussions are included in that Think Tank. A Think Tank can have any number of Discussions.

Once you sign up for your own IMINDI account you will prompted to define some Think Tanks. IMINDI will also prompt you for a new Discussion to occupy your Think Tank(s). A Discussion is any focused exploration of thoughts; literally a walk through mind. Later, you can add new Discussions into your Think Tanks at any time by clicking the "New Discussion" button in the middle box at the right hand side of the page.

When you click on one of the Discussions in one of your Think Tanks, or create a new Discussion by clicking New Discussion and adding a new thought (any concept or idea)--the central viewscreen will show the Mind Map of that specific Discussion.

To get started recording your thoughts simply begin adding one to five word thoughts (a text string--IMINDI will not currently accept longer strings) which you associate in any way with the central term in the middle oval of the viewscreen. To add a thought to one of the branches you have already made, simply click on the word or thought you want to branch from, and it will become the central term for adding thoughts automatically. In this way you can navigate around the radiant network you are building.

An alternative way to build a Discussion is to use the List function. This is a tab format where each tab or indent equals two spaces followed by an asterisk. This is a convenient way to generate a Mind Map using a tabulated list. The number of indents a line has indicates its branch structure from the thoughts above it. For example, the central thought of the Discussion will be the first line with no indent. It is also a convenient way to edit thoughts in a Discussion.

Your Discussion is automatically saved and so you can resume your Discussion at any time. A Discussion on IMINDI is always there to start adding new thoughts.

You can edit a particular thought or the title of a Discussion at any time by putting the cursor over the thought or Discussion title word in the description above the map, and simply changing the word.