I've been working in the IT industry for over 12 years and consider myself to be reasonably tech savvy. But, how does one stay up to date with the latest happenings in the IT world? And how does one increase his/her profile in the industry? I've come up with my own Top Ten List (not in any specific order) -
Networking - Being in the company of smart people is one of the best ways to learn new things. Surround yourself with really smart people and some of the smartness will surely rub on to you. Whether these smart people would like to be around you is an altogether different thing :)
Reading technical books - Reading books is the old fashioned way (and one of the best!) of keeping in touch with the latest and greatest technology stuff. Pop into a bookstore and look at actual chapter contents to see which ones you like before you buy. Also, look in sites like amazon.com for good book reviews. Try to maintain a monthly or annual target on the number of books you read and make sure you read on a wide range of subjects, not just what you work on.
Attend a course/Get a certification - Getting a certification not only looks good on your Resume, but preparing for it allows you to learn a lot more stuff that you may not have otherwise used/considered in your applications. It is really useful for interviews as well. If you are not inclined to get a certification, try to at least attend training courses on new topics.
Join user groups - Find out what user groups meet regularly in your city/area and start attending these meetings. In most cases, these user group meetings are free. You can learn a lot of things including industry trends, new product information and get to meet Industry experts.
Research the internet - Just do a google on the topic of interest and start reading whitepapers, discussions, articles and opinions. Reading other people's blogs is also an interesting way to find out about new stuff. The internet is a great source for good resources as long as you know how and where to find it. Install a RSS aggregator in your computer and set it up to get RSS feeds to sites that you constantly look up (assuming they support RSS feeds, that is).
Help people out with internet postings - You can find a lot of discussions and problems that people face in Internet newsgroups. Try helping them out with their problems and you may start learning new things.
Write an article or a book - Writing books or technical articles is a great way to increase your profile. You will learn quite a lot while researching for your article or book. If you are new to writing, and would like to start small, then start out by maintaining your own blog. There are quite a few sites around the internet that lets users blog for free.
Contribute to open source - Why not contribute to open source projects on the web? You not only learn quite a bit, you increase your profile within the tech community.
Tech talks - Organise people within your company to start giving tech talks every week, fortnight or month. Let people take turns in presenting a technical topic - it will help them research a particular subject and the audience benefits by listening in on a new topic.
Attend seminars, tech fests, product launches etc - Although not all free, attending seminars, trade shows, product launches & such, will help you to keep up to date with the hottest offerings, coolest trends and latest technologies in the IT industry.
