Keep Your Technological Skills Up To Date

Keeping our technical skills up to date can be a unsettling task, but it is extremely important for those of us in the tech industry, where fast-moving changes impact work daily.

Here are some tips I have compiled for making sure tech skill set stays relevant.

1. Set time aside

Reserve time during your day to take a deep dive into something new. Whether it is a new piece of software, a new dev. tool, new framework, or new operating system, take the time to poke around and get your hands dirty with whatever it is. This, above all else, will keep our skills sharp, our knowledge fresh, and all of us on the cutting edge of what is going on in your side of

2. Find innovators in your space, and follow them

Follow blogs, subscribe to newsletters, and follow industry leaders on Twitter. If you're not sure where to start, ask others in your field who they follow. And if your organization subscribes to any analyst reports, see if you can get access to them.

Not only will you learn about new technologies and trends, you'll get a sense of which ones are generating the most interest in your industry. This will help you focus; if you can only go deep on a topic or two, or your organization can only send you to one training per year, knowing what people are excited about will help you narrow down your options.

3. Attend tech conferences and trade shows

Before COVID Industry events were often be the biggest source of insights and learning for tech pros, whether the event is linked to a vendor or centered on general technology. Increasingly, smaller, informal meet-ups are also a great way to stay connected with your community of peers and glean new tech skills. VMware VMUGS are a great example of this sort of meet up.

Conferences are also a great opportunity to network with peers, have questions answered, and find out how other people are solving the problems that you have.

If you do not have the resources to attend in person, you can often listen to recorded presentations from home. You can speed through the sections that are less interesting and focus on what is relevant

4. Tap your network

Talk to friends and colleagues about what they are working on, and ask a lot of questions about what they've learned. If you do not have a network starting building one as it’s never too late. Not only are they great to have to bounce ideas off of but, should the needed ever exist you can reach out when looking for a new job. I personally try as much as possible to help anyone one with a question or problem. I’ll keep in contact with people I’ve met  and consider them my professional network; people who are brilliant in various specialties that I can contact when I'm looking for guidance in their particular area of expertise. Whenever I need to learn more about a certain topic I invite them for a beer or these days exchange messages or over ZOOM.

Social media is another way to stay connected to your network and on top of technology trends, following hashtags specific to your focus area and joining LinkedIn groups.

5. Seek online courses and credentials

Companies like Udemy, Coursera, CBT Nuggets, ITU Online or LinkedIn offer low-cost or free courses to help keep tech skills fresh

There are plenty of online classes that can help you not only keep current on technical topics, but even achieve technical and industry certifications.

Taking an online course through a university can also be beneficial in that it involves collaboration and learning as a collective. This is especially important as our jobs now involve more teamwork through a computer screen with people telecommuting or holding meetings through video chat.

6. Join a professional organization

Professional organizations, such as ISACA and ISSA, periodically run training weeks or incorporate training into their chapter activities. These not only provide access to training materials, they often give access to local mentors or experienced practitioners, providing great learning and networking.

7. Read

It may sound simple, but reading technology news and blogs every day is one of the best ways to keep up to date on the latest trends and skills needed in tech.

Find a few bloggers that are relevant to your area of expertise and follow them.

Most major vendors operate on at least a quarterly release cycle, and for many, staying out of the loop on what's new will leave you lost. There are plenty of people dedicated to keeping blogs up to date with 'quick hits on release notes, and there are always major press releases from the vendors themselves. Use RSS feeds for this.

8. Experiment with personal projects

I firmly believe you can often learn the most by trying things out for yourself. You'll realize that once you have a chance to work on side projects for yourself, what used to seem like magic becomes demystified.

10. Diversify your knowledge

Networks of the future will include very diverse endpoints. You're not going to be working in one vendor's solution. You'll work across multi-vendor solutions even more than you are today. The complexity you are dealing with is immense. Most employers want people who are able to work across a number of different domains, interfaces, operating systems and platforms.

It's easier to do this today, with several self-paced options available online. You should pay attention at vendor conferences and new product announcements, to better determine where to put your training time and dollars.

I've learned after decades in the industry that the smart people accept and adapt to change, while foolish people resist it, usually resulting in losing their jobs.

 What do you do to stay current in your job/role ?