This month saw the publication of Neilsen Norman Group’s intranet design annual. Over the past 12 years, this annual snapshot has charted the evolution of intranets from the unloved stepchild of the web family to business-critical tool.

Intranetizen takes a look at some of the key findings in this year’s publication and finds the conclusions challenging.

New Year, new job? The start of the year can often bring a new professional challenge and maybe yours is a new venture into the world of intranets. If you’re the new head honcho of intranets at Anywhere Inc., or maybe you just want to take a long hard stare at the role you’ve been doing for a few years, here’s our top 7 tips for intranet managers.

Other Tips for New Intranet Managers are available and are also well worth a read.

Intranet Management can be a lonely occupation. Even in larger organisations, there’s rarely more than one or two people with Intranets as their sole responsibility, while in smaller companies it falls to internal comms or someone in the web team.

If you need others to learn from, bounce ideas off and share your intranet woe, you need to get out and about and network with your fellow intranet pros. By connecting with contemporaries, you can keep up to speed with developments in the tech world,  sneak a peek at intranets elsewhere (and nick all their best ideas), and find the occasional shoulder to cry on.

Here’s some ideas to get you started:

The Best of Intranetizen 2011 post does exactly what it says on the tin! Here are our Top 10 posts of the year.

We’ll be back later this month with posts on intranet trends in 2012, hints for new managers, a post on intranet networking and some thoughts about creating the perfect intranet team.