Pace in the world of development is lightning fast, and even the quickest need to fight to keep up with evolving trends and technologies. When expectations run permanently high, the pressure can be exhausting. Developers are both excited and terrified. For the companies they work for, the questions are daunting: How do we push our teams to deliver superior products and ensure that our company remains a rich environment where innovation flourishes?
There’s no single answer to “What new tech does my team need to know?” so instead, we are going beyond Medium and Twitter to show you four key resources where you can discover the next big trends in the developer community.
1. Listen. Take a cue from the record-breaking hit, Startup. Internet radio is the medium of choice for many of the world’s most original and progressive thinkers. Tech podcasts are taking shape as the destination for insights into cutting-edge fields, including AI, the Internet of Things and self-driving cars.
Our Recommendations:
ProductHunt Radio – Each week makers, investors and thought leaders, such as Kevin Kelly of Wired, join the conversation to share the latest, most innovative products coming out of the startup community and where they see technology moving next.
Talking Machines – If your team is looking for inspiration, this bimonthly podcast is your window into the world of machine learning with expert-led conversations on topics ranging from big data’s impact on business to the implications of privacy on analytics.
2. Follow the action in the open source community. “Seeing where the action is in the open source industry can show where the tech industry is going,” said Brad Grzesiak, CEO of a software development consulting firm. Developers paying attention can be the first to catch the rise of new technology forerunners, like JavaScript application frameworks, Angular and Ember, putting their teams on the fast track to more efficient and productive development cycles.
Before your team takes the leap to a new framework, keep an eye on the maturity scale of an open source project to mitigate risk. As a technology matures, you can increasingly rely on it to be supported in the future.
Our Recommendations:
GitHub: The largest code host in existence, GithHub continues to be the ultimate intersection of programming, collaboration and inspiration.
Stack Overflow: This online forum is a hub of inter-developer engagement, a great resource for problem solving, and an important destination for networking dynamically across the developer community.
Quora: An “ask-anything” wormhole, the question and answer threads provide insight into what other developer teams are considering next.
3. Network, hack and learn in-person. The events you decide to attend depend on how the skills of your team align with your business needs. If your developers are responsible for a strategic push to mobile, do they understand how to create fluid, performant and interactive apps across platforms? Real world events like conferences, meetups and hackathons are important resources for staying ahead of the latest technologies, feature launches and most exciting projects in your industry.
Our Recommendations:
Meetups: Before committing to a high-profile and expensive conference, talk with your team. They may find more value in attending a local meetup with a specialized focus. Frameworks with an active following, like Python and Ember, sponsor events that offer more practical talks and the chance for your team to contribute to the conversation in a more hands-on way.
AnDevCon: The largest and most practical conference for Android developers, AnDevCon offers mobile app development training, embedded Android secrets and app development tutorials and classes.
WWDC: Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is the only opportunity to work in hands-on labs with Apple engineers. Expensive and difficult to get into, Apple makes live-streaming available for many of the sessions.
4. Rethink training. The best way to drive innovation and growth is to invest in your team’s skills. Consider how your engineers learn today–on the job. They self-organize, work cross-functionally and deliver working products quickly. Day-long lectures or video presentations are not consistent with their collaborative and fast-moving culture.
Instead, enable them to learn in a flexible and comprehensive environment. Training tools that truly transform the skills of your team will be hands-on, with real world applications and a community to access for support.
Our recommendation:
Udacity’s Nanodegrees – The project-based approach to learning, created alongside Silicon Valley experts like Google, Facebook and Cloudera, empowers your team to master the right skills in the latest mobile, web, cloud and data science technology. The result is an upskilled team, armed with the training necessary to keep your organization outpacing the competition and on the cutting-edge of technology.
The most successful companies understand two important things about their developers: (1) they are happiest when they are shipping and (2) they are most productive when they have the training and resources to keep them on the cutting-edge of their fields. If you want to build a culture that pushes itself beyond your competition, leverage the latest, most relevant tech to motivate and inspire your developer team.