As we move into our 20th year in business, it feels like 2026 has the potential to be one of the most “make or break” years we have faced in two decades… and we’ve had a fair few “make or break” years along the way! As such, it felt like a good time to resurrect my previous discipline of sharing some “big picture” thinking with our members, since this has always served us well in terms of gathering informed feedback, improving our ideas, and navigating our way forward. Given what we’ve seen in 2025, and what lies ahead in 2026, it seems like a very good time to harness the brain power and energy of our global community to ensure we can continue to deliver on our mission to help people go further with mind mapping. 

We always advocate “Top 3 Thinking” when mind mapping, and in your thinking generally, so I’ve applied the same principle here to share our Top 3 positives and negatives from 2025, followed by a summary of the top 3 ‘Strategic Bets’ we’re making in the year ahead. I hope our members will find this interesting and useful context for what you will see from us in 2026. 

As always, I’d value your thoughts, feedback and ideas, so please connect with me on Linkedin if you’d like to get in touch. 

2025 Review: Positives & Negatives

2025 was the year that long-bubbling trends accelerated and/or came to fruition for Biggerplate. While some of these issues reflect a wider macro picture (AI disruption), some are more specific to our little world, and have now reached a state that warrants a reaction and response outside of ‘business as usual’. It’s fair to say the “Top 3 Negatives” of 2025 had a greater influence in shaping our strategy for this year ahead, but importantly, these were things we’d already identified in 2024 and started to adjust for in 2025. As such, we’re not starting cold in 2026, but rather building on decisions and projects already in motion, as illustrated by the Top 3 Positives outlined below, and some of the “Strategic Bets” you’’ll see in evidence this year. 

Here are the Top 3 Positives & Negatives for Biggerplate in 2025:

Top 3 Positives

1. Mind Map Training: Complexity to Clarity

In 2024 we took the decision to move away from running such a busy schedule of mixed webinars and instead focus on a “Less But Better” approach for our online events. In 2025 we therefore focused on delivering our “Complexity to Clarity” mind map training via a 5 module webinar series. The 5 module training program wraps up everything we’ve learned and experienced in mind mapping over nearly 20 years of work, and covers the following 5 topics: 

Principles

Core principles of effective mind mapping whether mapping by hand, or using computer software, explaining the characteristics of a good mind map, and some best practice tips for the mapping process.

Complexity

How simple mind mapping techniques and a "Make to Know" mindset can help you engage with complex situations, get unstuck, and start moving forward.

Creativity

How mind mapping can support creative processes for individuals and groups, with focus on techniques for Better Brainstorming and Mind Map Templates to get creative ideas flowing.

Planning

How to take control of projects and planning, leveraging mind mapping techniques to help you build better project plans and turn ideas into action

Productivity

How to use mind mapping as your productivity "control centre" to prioritise and manage tasks and activities across multiple domains.

Engagement with the virtual training series far exceeded what we had expected and previously been able to achieve for our mixed webinar series, perhaps reflecting a desire among community members to go deeper into a focused set of topics, rather than have us cover so many topics at less depth. 

The success of the online program delivery in 2025 has played a key part in informing our focus and plans for 2026 when we intend to further increase our investment in training provision (more on this later). 

Join the next ‘Complexity to Clarity’ online training series starting in January 2026: view details

Join our public one day workshop in the historic city of Oxford on 11 April 2026: View Details

2. Unified Library: Mind Maps & Videos

In 2025 we neared the end of what has been a 2 year project to create a “Unified” library of mind maps and videos at Biggerplate, bringing these two core resource types into a shared architecture that will help members and website visitors to find more relevant resources more easily. 

The newly unified library replaces the previous structure of webinars, videos, mind maps and events that had grown organically (and messily) over the previous decade as we experimented with adding new resource types to the site. Having proven the importance of video (both Free and Premium) alongside mind map templates and examples, we now have a coherent single architecture serving both mind maps and videos, which means you can search across (and within) both formats, and that ‘related resources’ will now show both mind maps and videos, thereby increasing the chances that you’ll discover just what you need to go further with your mind mapping!

There is still much work to be done to improve our search and filtering functions, and the relevance of ‘recommended’ and ‘related’ resources, but this is much more achievable now that we have these two core resource types in a unified structure that can scale up further. 

3. New Articles Library

Building on our newly “unified library” of mind mapping resources (above), we launched our new “Articles” library at the very end of 2025, which you’re currently reading!

The new Articles library addresses a long-standing weakness at Biggerplate in providing long-form written information and insights about mind mapping. This weakness has existed ever since we abandoned our previous blog due to frustrations with the platform (Medium) serving up ‘related’ content alongside our articles that was at best unrelated and at worst, offputting or offensive. As ever with 3rd party platforms, we left ourselves at the mercy of their model and then had to live with the consequences… but no more! Our new Articles library gives us full control and allows us to serve up related mind maps and videos alongside articles (and vice versa) thanks to the Unified Library architecture. 

Importantly, I believe the new Articles library also gives us the means to bring greater depth to our work, by providing a publishing platform for those who think about mind mapping (and related fields) as much as we do. In a world where AI generated articles are cluttering up the ecosystem with low-quality keyword stuffed content, our intention is to create a platform for depth and quality. We can now provide a space where our Pro members can publish their thoughts and suggestions related to mind mapping in a space that’s made for it. For example, our first ‘guest’ article on “Mind Mapping in Alternative Dispute Resolution” has already been published by long-time Biggerplate member Rich Vitaris. Pro members from around the world are invited to get in touch if they would like to write and submit a guest article on Biggerplate!

I’m excited for us to have created a place for depth, opinions, and ideas from our members that may not win any short-term search engine or AI optimisation battles, but which might answer some burning question, or stimulate valuable thinking among our community. For us, that’s a better long-term bet that we’re willing to make.

Top 3 Negatives

1. AI Impacts on Website Traffic

2025 was the year when the full impact of “AI Overviews” in search results and the use of tools like Chat GPT to answer questions (rather than more traditional web searching) really hit home. Websites around the world reported huge drops in visitor numbers as their information was served up in neat AI summaries that negated the need to visit the source websites. While it can be comforting to know that your bleak visitor analytics are part of a wider global trend affecting millions of great websites, this doesn’t do much to help you pay the bills. 

Make no mistake, I believe  this is a great improvement for internet users. As an internet user myself, I love the AI overviews which save me time from clicking in and out of multiple sites trying to find the granule of information I need. However, for informational websites like Biggerplate, the negative impacts of “informational queries” being answered by AI summaries have been significant. Our core proposition since launching in 2008 has been knowledge (information and resources) to help people learn about mind mapping. As such, our site provides a huge wealth of knowledge for AI to scrape and serve up to a user, but without that user ever needing to know where it came from, let alone visiting us to explore further. 

The impacts of AI usage on website traffic therefore represents a challenge that cannot be ignored. Biggerplate member Mark Edwards described AI disruption as being more comparable to a change in the underlying currents of the ocean, rather than just another big wave. It is a fundamental change in how people access information, not just a passing fad of new tech. If your core proposition and mission is based on providing online resources for learning and knowledge, how should Biggerplate respond to AI essentially eating our lunch? It’s the question we’ve been asking since 2024; one of those “long bubbling trends” I mentioned earlier that really reached boiling point in 2025, and which is simply not going to reverse. It’s a change in the current, not just a big wave to ride out.  

2. Vendor Uncertainty

Another of those “long-bubbling trends” influencing our thinking and decision-making for 2026 and beyond is the increased uncertainty we feel in relation to many of the mind mapping software developers in the space. The post-pandemic years can best be summarised as a period of distraction, decline, and/or delusion among several of the longest-standing players in the mind mapping sector. While some have gone from strength to strength, many have made baffling product decisions (or no decisions at all), while others have pursued shiny new markets at the expense of their proven mind mapping tools and established user communities. A few seem to have stalled as companies, or in some cases shut down entirely, while new entrants seem to appear and disappear with blistering speed, often within the same year. 

The result for mind mapping software users (ie. 300,000+ Biggerplate members) has been frustration with and in some cases abandonment of mind mapping tools that have stagnated or in some cases become worse. There is only so long even the most enthusiastic software user will engage with bug reporting, feedback forms, and (ignored) user communities before they give up entirely and simply abandon the tool, or worse, mind mapping software in general. 

The result of this software vendor malaise for Biggerplate has been a declining ability to rely on long-standing software partnerships for either revenue, collaboration, or even just a bit of help to let their users know we exist. To illustrate, go check out your favourite mind mapping product website now, and see if you can see us mentioned or linked anywhere. Despite being one of the longest-surviving, most active, software neutral advocates for ALL mind mapping tools, most vendors have largely neglected to tell their users we exist. It seems that some vendors feel they’ve ‘outgrown’ what we can provide, while others have long hidden behind the feeble excuse that they can’t/won’t send their users to a site where their competitors are visible… not exactly demonstrating great confidence in their own product!

In 2024 it’s fair to say I finally ran out of patience with repeating the same cycles of having to explain and prove ourselves to some software vendors with every change of personnel, and generally getting so little in return. As such, in 2025 we began to reflect on the core dynamics between Biggerlate and the software vendor ecosystem, and whether longheld assumptions and positions might need to be challenged and/or changed. Those reflections deepened and broadened, leading us to start testing genuinely new thinking and possibilities that could fundamentally shift our longheld “software neutral” position in 2026. More on that later…!

3. Retiring Community

The final of the “long bubbling trends” we noticed a few years back that really seemed to bite in 2025 was that many of our most active and longstanding members were retiring from work. At first, this didn’t really present any impacts on us, and was simply something we enjoyed chatting about with those individuals as they shared their exciting plans for the next phase in their lives!

However, as more of those members retired (or semi-retired) in 2025 we started to notice that there was (and has been) an impact on certain aspects of Biggerplate, and that this impact is likely to be sustained for some time, as we know many more members who are heading towards that same milestone and change in circumstances within the next couple of years. 

When we launched Biggerplate in 2008, some of our earliest adopters were MindManager users in UK and US businesses, largely reflecting the fact that Mindjet (now Alludo) had some early success selling to the likes of Boeing, Oracle, and HP in the 2000s. Many of those who found our website back then were in the “early adopter category” for mind mapping software generally, exchanging ideas and use cases in a MindManager Yahoo User Group (yes that was what we all used), before becoming active members in our community and helping to shape what Biggerplate became. Many of these people were in their key career years, reaching levels of responsibility where they could influence others, and bring mind mapping to their teams and drive adoption. 

Fast forward to today (nearly 20 years later) and many of those early adopters of the late 2000s are now nearing the end of their working careers, and looking forward to a well-earned change of pace. But when they retire, what happens to that internal advocacy for mind mapping in large organisations by knowledgeable users? What happens when retired people are mapping less regularly, and therefore sharing less of their learning, knowledge, insights, and mind maps on Biggerplate? And, perhaps most importantly, are there mind mapping generations below them to pick up the baton and become the next drivers of resource sharing and activity at Biggerplate…? 

These questions started to become more pertinent in 2025, and while we took some (highly enjoyable) first steps to acknowledge this reality with a webinar on “Retirement Mind Mapping with Jim Franklin”, there are very real implications for Biggerplate if a core part of our community that we have relied on over the years becomes less active. This is not to say that we don’t have a large number of younger generations in our community, but rather, that they are less visible and active, most likely because we were not able to give them the same levels of personal attention that we were able to provide in the early years with a much smaller community. It calls for a re-focusing on our community at multiple levels, and in new ways in the year ahead. 

2026 Strategic Bets

Ever since an excellent 2023 webinar from Nick Duffill on mapping the differences between strategy and planning, we’ve used the term ‘Strategic Bets’ in our business planning, to reflect the fact that our decisions are essentially ‘bets’ that we hope are the right means to help us reach our desired objectives. We’re hoping that we choose the right areas for focus, but as the term ‘bet’ implies, it’s possible we could be wrong… as we have been many times before. 

Having shared the Top 3 Positives and Negatives of 2025, it’s worth repeating that the ‘Negatives’ undoubtedly had the biggest impact on our strategic thinking and planning for 2026. As such, you can view the “Strategic Bets” below as a direct response to the combined impacts of AI Website Disruption, Vendor Uncertainty, and Retiring Community trends outlined above. However, in the same way that none of the ‘Negative’ trends (and their impacts) exist in isolation, it is also intended that none of the ‘bets’ below will exist in isolation, but rather reflect a connected set of focus areas that we hope will add up to a greater total impact than the sum of their parts if executed effectively. 

1. Transition to Tools (Vitamins to Painkillers)

Some time a couple of years ago, Biggerplate member and mind mapping expert Sheng Huang asked on Linkedin whether your business is providing “Vitamins or Painkillers”... whether you are providing a beneficial but ultimately “nice to have” offering (vitamins), or essential “must have” solutions to a specific problem or desire that people have in a particular moment (painkillers). 

As I read Sheng’s post, it was one of those moments when you read something that succinctly sums up something complex and challenging that you’d been thinking, feeling, and discussing for a long time without ever quite landing on how best to describe it. And then there it is… the simplest, most eloquent description of your thinking, but written by someone else!

Vitamins are that thing we know is good for us, we know we should do, we always mean to do, but ultimately often forget or ignore, and without any real consequences. Painkillers are what we turn to when we have an immediate problem (pain) and ‘must have’ the solution right now, and so we’re willing to pay for it. When I read Sheng’s post, the phrase summarised the core of what we’d been wrestling with internally for some time: our paid memberships (Biggerplate Plus & Pro) are vitamins… not painkillers. 

While we have no doubts about the value of what’s included with our paid memberships (300+ premium videos, live webinars, e-learning courses, software discounts etc) the core proposition is essentially knowledge that can aid your learning and skills development, something that we all want to do, but can easily forget or ignore, without any discernable or immediate negative consequences… like vitamins. 

In reality, most people who upgrade their Biggerplate membership stay subscribed for years, because they feel the benefits of their knowledge deepening and skills improving. They’re taking their vitamins, and feeling the positive effects. However, there’s no doubt we’ve struggled over the years to convert enough people to our paid memberships, and increasingly we’ve come to see this as a Vitamins vs Painkillers problem. The core reason to upgrade right now is a “nice to have” membership for learning, not a “must have” solution for doing. 

So, in our effort to transition from Vitamins to Painkillers, in 2024 we started to ask what we could provide that would help people do something. We looked at what we know about mind mapping, and what we’ve helped individuals and organisations tackle over the years. We looked at what mind mapping software vendors are doing (and not doing) for their users. We looked at what topics and resources are most popular at Biggerplate. And in our search for a “painkiller” need, we constantly kept in mind why we exist: to help people go further with mind mapping. 

Increasingly we started to look specifically at the start-to-finish process of mind mapping, and what obstacles might exist in the beginning, middle and end of that process to prevent you from extracting maximum benefit from the effort. As we identified and explored these obstacles, we realised some were universal, meaning they existed whether you were a new or experienced user, and regardless of which mind mapping software you used. With this insight in mind, we then sketched out this universal mind mapping process (and the obstacles within), and looked at how well the various mind mapping software tools and functionality catered for these obstacles and the entire end-to-end process. 

Our conclusion was that current mind mapping software products do not universally provide for a universal end-to-end mind mapping process. While a small number could make a reasonable claim to cover things end-to-end, on the whole, many good (or even great) mind mapping products are not actually providing for each step of what we would consider to be a universal mind mapping process. As such, a user of Product A could be missing some simple functionality that could assist them in their mind mapping process, but it’s unlikely that the absence of this small function would be compelling enough for the user to switch from Product A to Product B. But what if you could access that functionality, regardless of whether you’re using mind mapping Product A, B, C, Q, or Z…? 

This led us to conceive of a Biggerplate “App Suite” consisting of simple tools that reflect the universal mind mapping process, and plugging gaps in functionality that mind mapping software products do not universally cover at present. We envisage a set of simple tools, included with Biggerplate memberships, for when you need to do something that your preferred software cannot. 

We came to call this our “Transition to Tools” bet, where we’re ‘betting’ that the creation of a Biggerplate App Suite helps us transition from providing just Vitamins (our amazing learning resources), to a world where we provide both Vitamins (for learning) and Painkillers (for doing). We’ll be releasing the first of these tools in the very near future, with a specific focus on Brainstorming. If you’d like to be notified once Biggerplate Brainstorm is available to try, you can sign up to receive an email (and introductory discount code) here: https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/A3F845C9E9BD4D272540EF23F30FEDED

The success (or failure) of this first app will dictate whether a more comprehensive app suite follows, so we hope you’ll support our efforts with your testing and feedback once the Brainstorm tool is live!

2. Tools + Training

The global covid pandemic did weird things to our business… like most others. On one side, upgrades and interest in our online resources (mind maps, videos, webinars, e-learning course) went up significantly as people went looking for solutions to their disrupted ways of working and learning. Along with that, some mind mapping software vendors (finally) started to bundle Biggerplate memberships with their software sales, providing their new users with an amazing range of learning resources to help them. In essence, it was a great combination of tools (provided by the vendor) and training (provided by our resources) to help people get started and go further with mind mapping software.

Unfortunately, the pandemic also simultaneously stopped our in-person training, consultancy, and facilitation services, removing a key part of our business activity almost overnight. While we continued to provide some training and consulting online throughout the period of lockdowns and uncertainty, the volume never matched our pre-pandemic levels, nor did it ever recover to those same levels in the months and years that followed the gradual return to ‘normal’. 

As such, post-pandemic, we opted to focus on the membership side of our business, rather than particularly trying to rebuild our training business. This was not casual indifference, but simply a reflection of our very small business trying to navigate the post-pandemic world, and deciding how to allocate very limited resources. We chose to largely ‘park’ our in-person training/consultancy services, and focus on our online memberships and website resources in order to survive. 

However, the combination of Tools (mind map software) plus Training (from us) was something we’d worked hard to build over many years, and something we know can be very powerful for new mind mapping software users in particular. Furthermore, we’ve missed being out in the real-world, meeting mind mappers in person, and working in the training room with people in-person. No matter how much online training improves accessibility, it can never match in-person training for the ability to explore participant interests and go in-depth with them on how to apply mind mapping to their world. 

As such, in a further ‘bet’ to counteract the impacts of AI on our online business, and reflecting a strong desire to ‘get back out there’ in 2026, our intention is to rebuild our training services, with a specific focus on our “Complexity to Clarity” program, in addition to software on-boarding for individuals and companies who have purchased specific products (namely MindManager, Xmind, MindMeister and Ayoa to start with). 

We’re also bringing back open (public) workshops, starting in the historic city of Oxford on 11 April 2026, and we hope to bring this flagship one day workshop to other cities around the world if there proves to be sufficient support and interest from our community.

Join our one day workshop in the historic city of Oxford on 11 April 2026: View Details

We believe the powerful combination of “Tools + Training” is something that Biggerplate is uniquely positioned to provide. Whether that’s training in how to use established mind mapping tools, or our own tools, we know we’ve got the expertise and community insights to have a positive impact in this area. 

3. Connect the Community

If there is one thing in common that AI cannot provide, and which mind mapping software vendors have failed to provide with any consistency, it is community. 

Over the last few years, we’ve seen prominent vendors shut down user communities within a few years of launching them, while other software user communities linger on but feel largely ignored by their creators, leaving many to wonder why they should bother to continue raising bugs, feature ideas or other issues if they are ignored indefinitely. 

While many software companies talk a good game about ‘community’, their efforts and initiatives are often perilously linked to an individual staff member, possibly a community manager or someone in a marketing team. As such, those initiatives often lose momentum or die when that team member moves on from the company. When we’ve highlighted ‘Vendor Uncertainty’ as one of our top 3 negatives of 2025, it seems unlikely this particular situation is going to change. 

Outside of software vendor communities, we’ve seen a sadly repeating cycle of independent efforts to create mind mapping communities that launch, lose momentum and eventually close. What’s left for anyone seeking community around mind mapping is a slightly overwhelming and repetitive Reddit group (where many contributions are software developers in (bad) disguise), or a motley collection of old, near-identical Linkedin groups, where the proliferation of self-promotional cross-posting by the same people/companies (and lack of moderation) renders them largely useless. 

But of course, we must not forget the software-neutral, independent home of mind mapping, where nearly 300,000 mind mappers have gathered… a small but focused community that has gathered people together both online and offline to discuss and explore the world of mind mapping tools and techniques since 2008. That is Biggerplate.com by the way. 

To shout about our own credentials when it comes to community is not necessary for those who know us, but the reality is that those credentials, and the community itself, are somewhat hidden on Biggerplate. For example, did you know that we have nearly 3000,000 members…? Did you know that many of our most active members have been with us for 10 years or more…? Did you know that we have active members from nearly every country on the planet? Did you know that our community members use a wide range of mind mapping tools in a VERY wide range of professional and personal contexts…? Probably not… and that’s the issue. Despite being long-established as the best (yes, I said it) mind mapping community around, we have failed to make the community side of Biggerplate visible on the platform, and (more importantly) we have failed to help our community members connect and communicate on the platform. 

This failure to make community visible and interaction possible is largely the result of a historic desire to avoid being misconstrued or mistaken for a niche “social media” site in years gone by, when nearly every website on the internet was claiming to be ‘social’ and most were failing dismally to live up to their own mistaken identities. Our priority and focus was always to provide a platform for practical learning resources to help you go further with mind mapping, rather than yet another place for low quality social media posting and posturing. What limited interaction functionality we did have on Biggerplate (e.g. leaving comments on mind maps) was little used, and often spammed, leading us to conclude it was better to have nothing than something offering such limited practical benefit to members. 

However, it’s worth noting that while cautious about introducing redundant ‘social’ components into our online world, by comparison, our offline community activities have historically been more extensive, at least in the pre-covid era. We hosted our Biggerplate Unplugged conferences for 5 years to bring together mind mapping software users around the world, nearly bankrupting ourselves in the process, but having a great time along the way in London, Paris, Utrecht, Berlin, San Francisco, and New York! These events were supported by smaller ‘Brunch Club’ meetups in Paris, Atlanta, New York, Brussels and Amsterdam to provide an opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing among local mind mapping communities.

In short, we know the value of community, both for ourselves, and for our members. For us, community connection (online or offline) acts as a vital radar for our operating environment, helping us stay informed about the real world uses for mind mapping (and related) techniques, and the general direction of travel in our sector. For our members, community connection can help them learn, solve problems, and deepen their skills based on insights from others, providing a richer, broader and deeper source of knowledge and expertise than we alone could ever provide. Importantly, community can give people a sense of belonging to something a bit bigger than themselves, or at the very least, reassure them that they’re not the only mind mapper out there… something many of our members say they feel in their organisations! 

With all this in mind, while the exact nature of our work and projects in this area is still up for discussion, our final ‘strategic bet’ for 2026 is to “Connect our Community”. This is in itself a meaningful strategic goal, but we also view it as a critical foundation for the success (or failure) of the previous two ‘bets’ outlined above. AI cannot provide or replicate the enjoyment that comes from meaningful connection with others who share your interest, and we know our software friends have struggled (and in some cases) given up on providing anything meaningful in this area. This leaves an important opportunity open and a role that I believe Biggerplate is best-placed to fill. As such, I look forward to connecting (or reconnecting) with many more mind mappers in the year ahead as we increase our community efforts both online… and offline. 

Conclusion

If you made it this far, I’m impressed. In writing this lengthy document, I’ve been clear in my own mind that it may serve less as reading material, and more as reference material in the weeks and months to come, when I can point back to this article to show that we outlined all our plans openly and with as much transparency as we are able to provide at this stage. In summary, this year, you can expect to see Biggerplate do (or at least try to do) the following:

1) Transition to providing tools for doing as we seek to develop ‘painkillers’ to go along with the ‘vitamins’ we already provide in abundance

2) Combine tools and training to give people and organisations the best chance of making mind mapping a meaningful and impactful part of their everyday toolkit

3) Build greater visibility for, and connections between our community members

Whether these ‘strategic bets’ will enable us to adapt to the changing currents caused by AI, counter-act the uncertainty around mind mapping software providers, and engage the next generation of mind mappers remains to be seen. However, I hope those who do read some (or even all) of this article will be encouraged to get in touch if you think you can help us, and/or if you have any questions, comments or feedback… this is what will make any one (or all) of those bets successful. 

Wishing all Biggerplate members and mind mappers worldwide every success in what promises to be a challenging and exciting year ahead! 

Liam Hughes

Founder: Biggerplate