I'm really interested to see this product go live. Page has lots of links to other mindmap videos.

Like a slew of other executives, Martin has taken to blogging and using Twitter and social media to share details from his work and life, reach out to potential collaborators, and spitball ideas publicly. Whether he intends it to be or not, Martin is part of a movement, with players like Sun Microsystems president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet chairman Mark Cuban, Best Buy chief marketing officer Barry Judge, and Kodak's CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett.

Each of these executives is doing his part to transform corporate culture from one of secrecy to a wired, early 21st century brand of transparency and two-way communication. Far from cultivating an air of mystique around themselves or their companies, they're reaching out—occasionally lashing out—in ways that would've seemed risky or downright insane to executives a generation ago.

There wasn't enough use of tools like this in the workplaces I knew; too much secrecy and command and control. I'd like to see adoption grow in all organizations. 

I remember seeing a related post recently at Denise Graveline's blog, emphasis mine:

Seems to me that employees and members do too.

The ten key characteristics
The research produced 246 descriptions of what makes a great presentation. These descriptions have been analysed and produced ten key characteristics of great conference presentations.

1. Content. It does not matter how clever you are, you still have to have something interesting to say. If people are going to give the speaker 20-25 minutes of their life, they want more than entertainment, they want to hear something useful, something they did not know before.
2. Voice. The presenter needs to actively use their voice. One comment in particular highlights the extent to which voice is central to the process, “It’s partly his voice - he never speaks too quickly, and his tone is modulated and smooth without feeling put on - but it’s more that you feel that he’s speaking to you personally, not just reciting a bunch of jargon from a PowerPoint slide.” In a presentation the best way to emphasise a point is not to use caps, not to use bold, not to underline, but to use the presenter’s voice.
3. Audience. The focus of the presentation has to be the audience, not the data and not the presenter. Key comments include “their understanding of their audience”, “being interactive with their audience”, and “engage the audience (not one-way traffic)”. Like a considerate lover, we need to concentrate on “How was it for you?”
4. Story. For the last few years everybody who is anybody has been saying that storytelling is the key to better presentations, and there is clearly a lot of support for this view. Attendees are looking for narrative themes, analogies and anecdotes. They don’t want to see data, they want to hear what the data means and what its implications are.
5. Style. One of the hardest concepts to isolate is style. People know they want style, but they vary in what they mean and how they describe it. For example “Style, speaking to the audience, PAUSING for emphasis, no notes, entertaining with some levity, self deprecation” and “Relaxed and informal style, but also confident, upbeat, lively”. The variation in the descriptions of what ‘style’ means makes it harder to define it. However, it is clear that style is not something that just happens, it is the presence of a personalised approach, something which goes beyond just competence, something which adds that others would not have added.
6. Ability. The word ability occurs frequently in the responses, linked to a variety of topics. Presenters need to realise that it is not enough to make an effort, presenters need to develop the skills to be able to deliver against these standards.
7. Argument. The use of the words argue and argument, for example “The way he or she argues the content” and “Argument, passion, and slides” show that people are looking for presenters to be more than a neutral reporter, they are looking for a case to be put forward with coherence and passion.
8. Confidence. Confidence is to some extent related to ability, but it also expresses the way that ability is used in the communication process. For example: “Confidence, thorough knowledge of what they are going to present, they don’t just read out slides, they summarise well and point out things which are not obvious from slides”. If the audience has confidence in the presenter, then he or she does not need to hear about every step, enabling the focus to be on the findings and not the process.
9. Engaging. Audiences want to be actively engaged. This is one of the biggest changes that has happened over the last 30 years. It is almost as if audiences are suffering attention deficit syndrome. If presenters do not engage audiences the message will not be heard, and will be of little value.
10. Humour. Many responses talked about humour. Audiences aren’t looking for non-stop laughs, but they are looking for humour to be used as part of the audience-focused engagement process.

From a long piece (oriented towards market research) on what makes a great presentation.

Prig offered Pig the first chance at dessert,
So Pig reached out and speared the bigger part.

"Now that," cried Prig, "is extremely rude of you!"
Pig, with his mouth full, said, "Wha, wha' wou' 'ou do?"

"I would have taken the littler bit," said Prig.
"Stop kvetching, then it's what you've got," said Pig.

           So virtue is its own reward, you see.
           And that is all it's ever going to be.

This time of year, I nearly come to terms with entropy. The grass has stopped growing, and so has the wild mint and spotted touch-me-knot. The snow hasn’t begun to fall. Most of the firewood is stacked, as is the hay. The thistle-down has blown, milkweed ditto. The leaves are down. That’s about as organized as it gets around here.

For a few weeks in midautumn, I feel as though I can see the farm plain. I get a clear picture of what needs doing, and I rediscover the simple pleasure of doing those things one at a time. A rubber feed pan needs moving from the chicken yard to the barn. I walk it down, and it stays put. In summer, every object on this place gravitates freely from place to place. Every morning, I get up and everything is everywhere else. That feeling goes away when fall comes. Fall is the season of staying put, except for the leaves.

There was a wet, sloppy, dousing of snow the other night, heavy as a deep depression. The dogs and I looked at it regretfully, as if the darkness were growing even thicker as the snow fell. But that, too, is the beauty of this time of year. Darkness can only get so dark, so deep. What it does get is longer, and yet even that’s good news. We’ve already been there in the past — in the long dark of December, the deep chill of January. This is not some galaxy we’ve never visited before.

As the snow melted the next morning, I found myself wondering how it all feels to the striped-bark maple I planted a decade ago. Its leaves were among the first to fall, but now its twigs are stark with dull ruby buds. They are poised for a season I can’t quite imagine yet. It’s tempting to believe that all of that maple’s strength has swollen precariously in those buds, but it hasn’t. It’s deep underground, rooted in the equilibrium of earth itself.

Horticulturists say that a good wind just firms up a young tree’s root hold, and that’s how I’ll think of this season. Here in the clarity of fall — before the weather gathers and snow climbs up and down the storm — I look for ways of increasing the order in life, firming a root hold I too seldom feel.

I appreciate Verlyn Klinkenborg as a successor to Hal Borland. It starts with observation and knowledge and ends in beauty and repose. If he could write for the paper every day, I'd be happy to read it.