Why I Built FerventMind

For ten years I prepared the messages I taught as mind maps, about a thousand of them. (I wrote about how that started in I Thought Mind Maps Were Chaos. I Was Wrong..) When iThoughts, the app I used, went away, my maps were safe, because other apps quickly learned to import them. What I couldn't find was a tool that fit.

Nothing Fit Quite Right

I've tried so many mind-mapping apps since then. Some had performance problems. Some leaned hard toward certain styles of map. Some struggled with tall maps, and mine are tall: I keep every note on one side so that on the iPad I only scroll down, never side to side. Each app was close. None was quite right. (More on that in So Sad to Lose iThoughts.)

Then I Built Two Other Apps

In the meantime I had built two apps for my own use: Prayer Mentions, a prayer app, and FerventWord, a Bible reading app.

After building those, a thought took hold. Maybe I could make my own mind-mapping tool. One that works exactly the way I prepare a message, with a few features I had always wanted.

The Features I Always Wanted

The time, and a recording, while I teach. When I teach, I want to see the time, and I want to record it. My older maps still have a red topic at the very top that says RECORD, a reminder to start recording before I said a word, left over from before my own app could help. FerventMind's Presenter Mode shows the map one branch at a time, with the time, a countdown and speaker notes, and it can record you while you present.

Apple Pencil, without the mess. I wanted to build out a map with Apple Pencil, but I didn't want a draw-anything-anywhere app. In FerventMind's Pencil Mode on iPad, each topic becomes an index card you write on. Your handwriting stays on the card, the map keeps its structure, and the iPad reads your writing so the map can still be searched and exported.

Tall maps that keep my place. Tall maps are just how my approach worked out. Some apps don't scroll very well, and while I was preaching it was easy to lose my spot. iThoughts never had that problem, so FerventMind had to be just as steady: scroll straight down through a tall map and stay right where I am.

My Old Maps Came Along

FerventMind opens iThoughts maps, and it can copy a whole iThoughts library into FerventMind at once, keeping its folders. The messages I taught from 2013 to 2023 sit right beside the ones I make now. The map in I Thought Mind Maps Were Chaos. I Was Wrong. was made in FerventMind.

Even If I Only Use It Myself

I built FerventMind for me. Even if I'm the only one who ever uses it, it will be worth the effort.

But if you prepare messages, lessons or talks, or you just think better on a map, and you've been looking for a tool that fits, maybe it will fit you too.