The world is moving. In our industry, it moving rather fast. Too easily, as individuals, we can be left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On most days at work, I find a preponderance of opportunities to learn. Some days, I’m just putting in lines of code. Those days are sluggish. I tend to get more excited and productive in work-seasons that I have the chance to learn new concepts or technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, I’ve worked at a large company, where I can find or meet a colleague that has advanced skill in something we wish to learn. Sometimes, I can use their code as a template for what I need to do. I can also get their help to get me started learning, where that person introduces me to core-concepts. If the sharing is good enough, it can translate into a shared code-base. It can also turn into code-review or pair-programming. It might be difficult to find people in this position, but the work of finding someone like this is worth it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes, finding a colleague with specific skill is not available. Certain technologies we need could be be too new. We might also want to learn while we’re between jobs. (Being between jobs is a perfect time to learn new things!) In these cases, we need to get creative. Let’s break down some ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing beats meeting people in person: people whose professional goals match your own. We can extend our professional network, learn about how others are solving problems, and learn about great new solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many conferences have add-ons for training. 10 years ago, I attended a conference that included also a boot-camp to learn Jenkins, a tool for building software. It meant a few additional days of travel and a little additional money, but the benefit of getting hands-on training was huge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some conferences are expensive, but take heart! In many cases, conferences are streamed live or available on video. Consider, for example, QCon, a software conference in San Francisco. All of their 2018 talks are available online<\/a>. This does prevent us from meeting other professionals, but the great core learnings are available. They can also be shared with our teammates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many urban areas have great meetups! Consider a meetup in Boston called TechBreakfast<\/a>. At this kind of meetup, we see both new software concepts and investors meeting in the same place. (Not to mention free breakfast) This is a huge win for all attendees. Is there a meetup like this in your town? If not, what kind of technology meetups are in your town?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us on software teams are no longer at university. We cannot easily enroll in a university class. Happily, we have many opportunities to take classes. It’s easy to find what we need! Many of these courses are cheap or available with a free-trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides these courses, many companies that promote technology also make helpful videos for their technology. Consider, the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are just a few that I found. Take a look on YouTube for what you need. Lots of folks make videos about technology, but the best documentation comes from the original authors of the technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning doesn’t have to be about taking courses or attending conferences. Learning happens when we face any kind of new challenge. What kinds of ways are you learning?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world is moving. In our industry, it moving rather fast. Too easily, as individuals, we can be left behind. On most days at work, I find a preponderance of opportunities to learn. Some days, I’m just putting in lines of code. Those days are sluggish. I tend to get more excited and productive in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Online Learning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n