Map-It and M2T

Map-It is a tool that supports preparation, execution and analysis of meetings (face-to-face and remote). Synchronous and asynchronous interactions are possible through the collaborative elaboration of "discussion maps" that capture user interactions. Map-It allows the use of meeting templates, in-advance individual preparations, share of artifacts, planning and follow-up of actions, automatic generation of meeting minutes in various formats. Through M2T, a rich internet application, it also provides analytical tools for exploring meeting practices and their integration in larger-scope activities, by connecting them to other KP-Lab concepts, visualisations and tools (e.g. KPE’s Content Views, ToDo, Agenda)

The tool

You might want to go straight to the Map-It and M2T help pages here.

Map-It allows the participants in a meeting to devote much of their attention to the discussion itself while at same time collaboratively generate discussion maps, having each participant devoting small efforts to the creation of the maps. In fact, a large part of the information submitted to the map is prepared by the participants beforehand or is generated automatically by the system. One characteristic embedded in the tool is the automatic creation of the “minutes” (protocol) of the meeting, with the consequent saving in costly resources. This way, Map-It facilitates effective and efficient virtual and f2f discussions in any environment – learning, working, entertainment, etc.

Map-It enable the users to work it one of two modes:

(1) On-line collaborative mode in which each person creates and submits his/her own contribution to the discussion map as the conversation progresses; and
(2) Note-taking mode where one of the participant is assigned the role of the "secretary", write and submit all participants’ contributions to the discussion map.

Face-to-face and distant meetings, or a mix of these are supported.

See main principles synthetised in a picture here.

The Map-It tool enhances the meeting experience by proposing innovative facilities for sustaining best practices. These are particularly relevant for working environments and, accordingly, it is planned that Map-It be commercially offered to corporate customers for supporting “organizational knowledge creation” taking place in physical or virtual meetings. By adopting Map-It, therefore, a company will be able to organize, conduct and document comprehensively meetings and effectively manage the associated knowledge in a novel and cost-effective way.

See a full picture of the various modes of representation for Map-It meetings by following this link.

Prospective users - a view on exploitation

Map-It will provide added value to educational and non-educational organizations. For the former, the utilization of Map-It will likely represent an upgrade to any existing meeting-support tool enabling better knowledge practices both in educational and non-educational environments. For the latter, the tool brings a significant enhancement to teleconferencing systems, protocol/minutes generation, learning/training applications, documentation of corporate meetings (f2f or virtual); etc. The borderline between these seemingly distinct application areas may be blurred in some contexts. Communication tools and the ability to produce a condensed and easily accessible record of a discussion are not less useful in learning than in work environments. School and workplace utilization, however, are not identical from a methodological, pedagogical and other perspectives, and, consequently, we envision substantial differences in the way both “markets” will be approached in practice.

The tool and knowledge creation

Map-it provides support for collaborative creation of knowledge in real time discussion. Map-It enables users to engage in a spoken conversation and at the same time to construct a shared visual representation of their conversation. The visual representation of the conversation is a graphical map representing the contributions made by the participants and the relations among them. Comprehensive documentation and Knowledge elicitation is facilitated by the following functions:

1. In-advance preparation of drafts and related materials to facilitate the oral and written conversation with more data;
2. a visual map constructed collaboratively by all participants serving as a boundary object for reference and reflection;
3. meeting minutes of the oral and written conversation produced automatically (both in pdf. word document and google doc) enabling reflection of past activity toward the preparation of future activities.
4. Analytical tools for exploring meeting practices and their integration in larger-scope activities, by connecting them to other KP-Lab concepts, visualisations and tools

The M2T function that connects Map-It to KPE facilitates the retrieval of the groups' knowledge that was created during the discussions within the over-all groups' work. At this stance participants are able to carry out simple queries related to specific ontologies such as decision, tasks and assignments.

Map-It is currently developing a component of voice recording. When this will be functional, every contribution to the map will have an attached voice segment of the correspondent oral contribution. This function will produce a rich resource on which participants could reflect and analyze during and after the meeting, as a shared knowledge created in the conversation.

Help pages

Map-It help pages

Knowledge protection

Map-It, althouth freely available, is not yet really "free software" in the sense of the FSF (Free Software Foundation) definitions - see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html, and is still Copyright © 2006-2009 AKKA Informatique et Systèmes (AKKA-IS). Map-It v3. 2 (July 2009), as last release of the tool in this project :( will come with a CeCILL license (see http://www.cecill.info/index.en.html).