Real Intranet Manager bloggers: a rare species

I'm struck by how few "real intranet manager" blogs exist out there. Intranet consultants' blogs abound, but the view from the inside is rare. I mean intranet managers who blog on the external web about their own intranets.

There are other very interesting bloggers who work on intranets in their organisations and who blog about net stuff, social media, technologies; etc. I follow a number of these bloggers on a regular basis.
However the gap I perceive is the story from the inside.

I am aware of:

Mark Morrell: An insight into how intranets are managed. (BT). Recent post followed by others on the same topic: Why are intranet applications so difficult to use?

Richard Dennison: Inside Out, a view from deep inside the intestines of a global company. (Also from BT). See BT social media adoption case study.

Allen Huish: Intranet Value. (BA) recent post: Having a great relationship with your IT department.

Can you help me build this list? The examples that interest me the most are those where the blogger talks about his/her own experiences as an intranet manager.

Why do you think this is rare? Can you send me examples I've missed? Intranet bloggers in languages other than English are very welcome. I wonder if we can find 10 in the entire world?

Comments

[Gale Langseth]

Well, there's me at Intraverted, even though I haven't been keeping it up much lately for reasons explained in the latest entry, but I'm doing my best to get things back on track.

[Jane]

Gale - It's great to hear from you.
I admire your personal courage and thank you from the depth of my heart for sharing your personal situation with us.
Please stay in touch through your blog, and also thanks for the SharePoint comments. I hope lots of intranet managers will take notice!
I'm placing the "real intranet manager blogger" links in a sidebar on my blog and will definitely put you on the list.

[Jesper BYlund]

Hi!
I'm managing the new blog "e24 Intranätgruppen". It is designed to help intranet managers in 33 swedish municipalities develop intranets. We also have irl meetings.
In swedish.

Jesper Bylund, City of Malmö, Sweden

[Jane McConnell]

Nice to hear from you Jesper.

Thanks for the link. I'll add it to my list that I will later publish as a sidebar on my blog.
Is your blog "multiauthor" - do the other intranet managers contribute also? Or is it primarily you?
What aspects of intranets do you deal with?

[Jesper Bylund]

My goal is to have all the managers contribute but for the moment I'm the only one blogging. But I have several of them commenting.

Sadly, municipal intranets in sweden are mostly in very basic stages: non existent or seen only as electronic personnel journals by the senior management. Most intranet managers are, at the same time, in charge of the external web page, and sometimes the only producer of all of the city's communication efforts.

Therefore, I want to boost morale, inspire, tell them about how we work in my organisation, and, in a way, to set an example. I'm lucky to be intranet manager in Malmö, Sweden's third largest city. We are a central team of six persons, in charge of the external web page and the intranet. My organisation has grasped the idea of the intranet as a tool for support of the core business. Therefore, I'm seeing a bright future for my intranet.

The blog will discuss all aspects of the intranet maintenance and development.

[Fabrice]

Hi,
I'm a real Intranet Manager for about 10 years now. My blog talks about this, and in general about every thing which could enhance collaboration inside companies.
Funny thing is that I use internaly what I learn while reading the web and Blogging, and my internal experiments provides me a lot of thinking which drive my writtings on my blog.
Best regards.

[Jane McConnell]

Hello Fabrice - thank you for your comment. Can you point me to some of your posts that concern your intranet directly? Maybe some best practices, lessons learned, or other comments about your own intranet? Thanks very much.

[Philippe Bancourt]

@fabrice, thanks for your comment, I have now your blog in my top rss. A lot of good stuff in, great work !

[Shawn Miller]

I'm a new Intranet Manager, using SharePoint, which I do not have a great deal of experience with. I'm also looking for these types of resources and considering starting a blog about all of my experiences. Thank you Jane for starting this post. What caught my attention right away was that the 3 examples you included in your post are using .wordpress or .blogspot pages. Does that mean their companies aren't utilizing blogging software? To me, that by itself says a great deal about many of the organizations today.

[Michael Hafner]

I'm running my blog not that much covering day to day business, but addressing some basic questions dealing with my work with online media and social media.
After all, I´m mainly working with intranets, and I'm the intranet manager of Erste Group Bank.

[Jane McConnell]

Hi Shawn - Please do start a blog about your experiences using SharePoint. I'm sure you'll have a lot of avid readers.
The software choices of the intranet managers for these external blogs probably does not reflect what their companies are using internally for blogs, but I don't know for sure. Maybe some will read your comment and clarify!

[Jane McConnell]

Hello Michael - You're now on the list of blogging intranet managers! Your company is a very large one. Is there a lot of internal blogging?

[Mark Morrell]

Jane,

To adapt the words of that old song by the Scaffold (yes, I am showing my age) "Thank you very much for raising my blog's profile, thank you very much, thank you very very much".

I hope more intranet managers take the plunge and blog about their experiences. I've found it very liberating to share issues and realise I'm not alone with them even if I can't solve them immediately.

'Real intranet manager' blogs balance nicely with yours. You can use your research and offer your expertise as a 'thought leader'. We can show how it is being applied.

A very small thing but it's 2 r's and 2 l's in morrell. I know where you got that spelling from you too! :-)

Happy 2009 to you.

Mark

[Shelley Cook]

Shawn, you sound identical to me. I just came on board as our intranet manager 1 month before launch. I'm completely learning SharePoint under fire, never having touched it before now. I'd be interested in reading what you have to say as well.

This is a great point. I find so much information and opinion coming from consultants but rarely Intranet managers. Maybe because we are often so swamped we don't have time to write it down? Poor excuse, I know.

[Andrew Fix]

What’s the rule around new year’s resolutions, as this is on my list. Do I have until the end of the month or something ?

Stay tuned, I will have one by the end of the month to share insights on managing the Shell Intranet, I can’t guarantee it will be any good, but will give it a shot.

Happy new year Jane, chat soon.

Andrew

[Jane McConnell]

Hey Andrew - that's great news. The Shell intranet is very interesting and (knowing you !!) I'm sure your blog will trigger lots of comments. Yes, you have till the end of January.

[Samuel Driessen]

Great idea to collect Intranet bloggers in one place. Thanks! Jan van Veen says he's going to start blogging too soon. I blog about intranet every now and then.

[Dorje McKinnon]

Throwing my name into the ring as well

http://dorjem.blogspot.com

I run an intranet for a part of a division of a large US corporate, from New Zealand.

I also setup and am involved in the Kiwi Intranets online community (everyone is with an interest in Intranets is welcome to be a member)

http://kiwi.onlinegroups.net/groups/kiwi_intranets/

DorjeM