Loïc Faugeron Technical Blog

Technology scouting 08/01/2014

Deprecated: This article has been re-written - see Read it Later

As a curious person I'm constantly trying to learn new practices and to discover tools which might help me, by collecting information via technology scouting and then reading it.

In this article, I will present how to do so effectively.

Collecting information

Whenever you find an interesting link, send it to Pocket so you can read it later.

Blogs

To find interesting links subscribe to blog RSS feeds using If This Then That: it will send new entries directly to pocket.

Here are some blogs I personnally follow (caution, they're not really sorted):

Twitter

You can also use Twitter:

  1. create a private list which will serve as a pool
  2. add any author which might post interresting messages
  3. after a week or so, add the author to a public list

The lists only show messages (not retweets) and conversations between people you follow. They also allow you to create categories.

If you want, you can have a look at my own public lists.

Github

Last but not least, Github can also be a great source of discoveries: by following someone which stars or watch a lot of projects you will have them listed on your homepage.

Here's my advice: Pascal Borreli contributes to many repositories, you should start to follow him.

Reading it

Collecting resources is a thing, getting it read is another one. Just like Mathias Verraes advised it, you should get an e-reader: you can send the pages you gathered on Pocket and then read them everywhere.

Pocket allows you to remove the articles you found not so interresting after all, it also allows you to archive the good ones and to favorite the great ones.

Speaking of reading and e-readers, books are another good way of discovering new things. Do not underestimate them. Here's a list of books I'd recommend:

Conclusion

The point is: current tools won't last and there's a lot of practices you're not aware of. If you want to improve yourself and keep up with other developers, you have to try your best to discover new practices (which might be rather old actually) and new trending tools.

I hope you found this article enjoyable and helpful.