I love new tools and toys, and ML is a great one in both camps. Even though I am running trailing-edge Internet Explorer, ML was a champ — I have never been able to so easily report out the results of a meeting in such a cool format.

 

Background on the engagement: 50 Director- and VP-level folk from a division of a large US bank; a three-day gathering; four half-day sessions: two devoted to World Cafe-style rotating conversations, two devoted to LEGO SERIOUS PLAY; three report-outs, two large-group de-briefs. Lots of photos of work-walls, lots of photos of LEGO models, mind-maps of Big Ideas, audio files of LEGO stories — generated about 70 MB of raw “stuff”, and I uploaded probably 65% of it to ML.

The setup of people and the agenda was possibly the most useful piece of ML — the client design team loved being able to move people from breakout to breakout to get just the right mix. Uploading an Excel file with the participants’ names, emails, etc. was easy and slick — something that can be said for a lot of the ML interface. Putting the foundation pieces in place ahead of the event revealed some potential land-mines, and made populating the report-out content much more efficient and organized than my typical late-night, bleary-eyed, recreate-the-wheel-every-time efforts.

The different ways to report content — images, files, pages — are robust and easy to use. Jason from Gradient Labs told me that the interface inspiration is Google, and I think ML would make Sergey Brin & Co. proud — it’s elegant, uncluttered and WAY slick. Parts of it are maybe too uncluttered: some of the iconography is not as self-explanatory as it might be, but a useful Help function is always available in the right-hand frame.

In the midst of all its general greatness, Tags are potentially the most amazing piece of ML. If you can avoid the temptation to check in on your Tag cloud until you are finished uploading images, files and pages with the proper amount of meta-data, what emerges out of the cloud will instantly show you the terms and threads that were most prevalent. And the mondo-cool feature I love to show off is the Images Index, with its thumbnail collection. Pretty slick on its own, but then ML adds in the list of Tags to the right: when you mouse over a tag, the Images with that tag are highlighted. *huge* WOW! factor!

I have already gone on and on, and I got more, but MissingLink asked me to do a “short” blog entry…

Working with these guys has been amazing, and it is clear from its ease of use that ML has some seriously heavy lifting behind the browser. Its clear content organization, elegant interface and robust reporting make it a must-have tool for facilitators & consultants who want to do less and accomplish more (seriously, my reporting time was cut by a third) while adding value to their clients with a cutting-edge, professional and *living* record of their work.

Wish list: an offline version of MissingLink so I can finish this thing on the plane home…!