Do you sometimes feel like being aware of the latest trends in the tech industry is taking you way longer than it should? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one: an employee loses over 25min a day looking for relevant information on the internet. Here are some best practices for a quick and complete technological watch.
DON’T OVERLOOK THE BASICS, BUT ORGANIZE YOUR WATCH
Prepare your sources: go to the websites you usually read for your technological watch, and register to their newsletter and RSS feed. If you lack the inspiration for your sources, here are a few specialized websites and blogs you might find interesting:
Tech Crunch
Programmez !
Presse Citron
Journal du Net
Techrepublic
Comment ça marche…
La Frenchtech
Gather it all in one place: enough with the 10 tabs open on your browser, several tools allow you to gather information in a single platform! For instance, you can use Netvibes, or Feedly, both of them are very easy to handle.
SOCIAL MEDIA: AN INFORMATION GOLDMINE
For a few years now, people passionate about new technologies have started creating communities on social media, particularly on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can follow different types of accounts depending on how general or specific your search is.
To find the accounts you might want to follow, you can use tools such as Buzzsumo or Socialbro, they will let you search influencers / websites / articles by keyword or theme, and sort them by popularity (number of followers for example).
WHAT ABOUT DEVELOPMENT?
If you want to increase your coding skills and learn (or have a better understanding of) new technologies, the websites to go to are Github and StackOverflow. On these open source websites, you will find solutions to debug your code, explanations on a stack, or even access projects that the contributors decided to share with the community.
If your goal is to develop your coding skills, you can access online courses on websites like OpenClassrooms and Codeacademy. In addition to the lessons, they provide tutorials and e-books to improve your knowledge.
USE DIFFERENT FORMATS TO MAKE IT MORE FUN!
Enjoy all the formats available to make your watch even more complete!
The video format is fun and synthetic, and more and more people are using it every day. You can follow Youtube channels such as TedX conferences, or podcasts of tutorials. For example, Monsieur Bidouille talks about open source software and objects.
Meet-ups and talks about digital are also a good way to participate to presentations on a precise theme, made by experts. During these events, you have the opportunity to meet the said experts and to enjoy a chat between passionate people: a really nice way to develop your network!
Set some objectives for your watch, gather information through the tools we just presented, and don’t forget to use different formats! Good luck!
