You! We are currently in "beta" mode, meaning that the application is undergoing continuous testing and refinement. During this time, we welcome participants of all ages in this trial process with the understanding that things are evolving, and may hold a few surprises! Request an invite if you'd like to explore and build with us - feedback is always welcome.
While the interface may not seem familiar at first, we've designed it to be both intuitive and empowering after a bit of practice. There are only a handful of basic functions, like adding topics and drawing "synapse" connections, that are needed get you going! A handy cheat sheet is available on the canvas for reference while mapping, and we have an online manual and tutorials to grasp more advanced functionality. Also check out our video tutorials to see it in action. But overall - the best way to learn is to start mapping, and to connect with other mappers in our online community.
Firstly, check out our featured maps! At a basic level, metamaps are great for laying out complex ideas and scenarios. We're seeing maps of creative brainstorms, product design, personal research and learning, project management, and narrative storylines. Some users have been capturing live workshop event documentation, or organizing study groups. We're using it ourselves to organize collaboration and develop strategies for the project. We'd love to see what else you can come up with.
The Metamaps.cc project was launched as an emergent collaboration between designer Gavin Keech, architect Ishan Shapiro, and web developer Connor Turland over the years 2010-12, with input and inspiration from many other peers and projects. Its design draws from the fields of computational cognition, collective intelligence, and human-computer interaction. We continue to design and develop optimal, novel ways to connect people and ideas through visual information.
First and foremost, metamaps bring people together into a shared knowledge environment. Topics and maps "in the commons" invite collaborative editing and shared insight. As new content and connections are made throughout the system, all users benefit from collective intelligence. Other distinguishing factors on the platform include a focus on real-time collaboration, a flexible visual categorization system via metacode icons, no built-in structural biases, and an intuitive search tool to find content. As the project evolves, we will be building in powerful network and graph analysis techniques which ae not currently offered in other mind mapping apps.
One of the core principles of our work is the enhancement of the pool of commons resources such as open source technology and shared knowledge. Our basic application framework is licensed as GPL open source on Github for anyone to build on, and this public platform is freely accessible online.
Reading here is a great first step. We also suggest browsing our blog, visiting the Google+ community, or getting in touch by submitting feedback through the site. We occasionally host online and in person meetups where you can interact with other mappers and see how people are using the platform. The story continues to unfold, and we'd be glad for you to take part.
We welcome contributions in many forms. One of the easiest and best things you can do is to keep on mapping your ideas into the commons on the platform! If you're a developer interested in advancing the technology, contact us and take a look around our Github. Designers and others with professional skills can get in touch about opportunities for freelance collaboration through our innovative Open Value Network organizational structure for business development opportunities. Financial contributions are greatly appreciated in support of our work, and can be made by supporting us on Flattr or donating BitCoin. All financial contributions are transparently recorded in our value accounting.
The Metamaps.cc project has been bootstrapped through our own pockets, lots of time, and more recently, a couple of small grants which are going into supporting our small team to bring it to the next level. Some of us have used Metamaps.cc as a tool for our own freelance consulting practice, and we are looking at creating hosted and customized instances for different clients as one potential business model. We realize that in order to get the free and open public platform to where we want it to be, we have to be able to support ourselves to continue doing this work.
New features and functions are continually added to the platform as we seek to optimize the experience there for all users. If you find that something is calling out for addition or improvement, send us a note via feedback form or in the online community. The more detail and context you can provide, the better!
Yes! Send us the link via feedback form or flag us on social media. We're always curious what mappers are able to do with the platform, and we'd love to pass great examples around so that others can see.
If your map / topic was set to Commons permission for editing, than any other logged-in user on the site will be able to make changes. We consider this a feature, not a bug, which encourages collaborative maps and an evolving collective knowledge garden. You can easily avoid unwanted changes by setting your permissions to Public, which others may still view and copy to another version if they wish. Courtesy, care, and the benefit of the doubt will go a long ways towards maintaining a happy, healthy, and productive communal atmosphere on Metamaps.cc