MY BEST TECH: Simon Raik-Allen

Simon Raik-Allen is the chief technology officer of MYOB, a job that requires a substantial amount of organisation. Raik-Allen says his favourite piece of technology allows him to keep track of all the files necessary to do his job, all in the one place – it’s a piece of software called “The Brain”.

“Since the start of my career I have searched for the best knowledge management tool for my needs. A tool that will cleverly organise my ideas, meeting notes, to do items, links, images, research, technical taxonomies, brainstorms and much more. I must have installed and tried every note-taking and mind-mapping tool known to man.”

“There is one that has stuck and that I keep coming back to month after month. It’s called The Brain. It’s basically a visual multi-hierarchical knowledge capture system. It sits on your desktop and you can create ‘thoughts’ by typing text into it and by dragging a file or link into it from your desktop or browser.”

“It’s nowhere near as flexible as other mind-mapping tools in its category but that’s actually what I like most about it – it’s powerful in a unique way.”

“The more you use it the more uses you find for it. These days, if I do anything on my computer of value, it will always end up in The Brain.”