I've been thinking about how best to capture and organize thoughts at the ESRI UC. At conferences I typically take pages of notes that I sometimes look at afterward. Even if I don't refer to the notes, taking them is important because hearing something, then writing it down tends to fix it in my memory.

But I love having digital notes that I can copy and paste and move around in order to organize. Since I'm a visual learner and thinker and communicator, mind mapping applications work very well for recording thoughts and making connections. I typically use MindMeister, a web-based mind mapping tool. I've created a mind map for the user conference, which you can view below.

Because I'm always interested in what other people are doing and thinking, I've opened up the mind map so that it is a WikiMap. What does this mean? It means that anyone can edit the map, recording their thoughts and observations. I invite you to edit the map, adding your notes and ideas. To do so, click the pencil icon, which will open a map up for editing.

The hope is that we capture the thoughts and experiences of a number of conference-goers, and a cool record of the event emerges.

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I just bought the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA netbook from Amazon (http://bit.ly/bPTtq). I have no idea how to say "Eee" so I'm glad to be writing this, and not talking. The idea of buying a netbook came from @gletham, who tweeted about buying one for the ESRI UC. "That makes a lot of sense," I thought. Because I hadn't quite settled on how I would blog the UC.

My initial thought was to post to Posterous via my iPhone. This would have worked well if I were simply blogging. But I also plan on following the Twitter stream and contributing to it, so I need more screen real estate. It'll be great to sit in sessions and be able to track what is happening in others. I tend to jump from talk to talk, trying to squeeze in as much content as possible. The Twitter stream will greatly assist.

I'm meeting my netbook in San Diego. Amazon will ship to the hotel in Little Italy, with a scheduled arrival date of Monday. I'm hoping and praying that my shiny new netbook shows up Saturday so I can have it in hand for the plenary session. ESRI is setting up an area for attendees tweeting and blogging the plenary: http://tinyurl.com/myon3o. Pray for me. Thanks.

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