Rebuilding Downtown Manhattan (2)This is one of my absolute favorite Idea Maps or Mind Maps I’ve ever seen … a needed tool at an incredibly critical moment in time.

An avid user of MindManager David Hill of Con Edison writes:  “A few months after 9/11 I was having coffee with my friend Lisa Frigand of Con Edison’s Economic Development department. She told me that she was on a committee involved with rebuilding Downtown Manhattan and that they were having a great deal of difficulty keeping straight all the groups involved with the project. I had introduced her to Mind Mapping a few years ago (by helping her mind map a project she was doing for our company’s CEO) and we came up with the idea of creating this  map. Lisa provided the information about all the groups involved and I put the map together. I also interviewed some of the people involved to get the correct data and relationships.”

The power of this map is that it shows something very complex in a way that makes it clear. This map was instrumental in assisting Con Edison in rebuilding Manhattan. David is also a key player for the USA Memory Championships hosted by Con Edison every March.

Update: Earlier this month The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) acquired David’s Rebuilding Downtown Manhattan mind map. A note from the museum said, “We all felt that the work was of such important historical interest that we should include it in the MoMA Study Collection. The Mind Map is of particular interest to us given that we hold to much material pertaining to 9/11 and the rebuilding of lower Manhattan.” The map was delivered the following week.