How do you keep track of what the industry is up to?

Question

A discussion elsewhere made me realize that I don't do a particularly good job of following the software industry. My exposure to new trends or technologies is haphazard at best, often limited to a "Hey, that sounds interesting" when I see people discussing something I'm not familiar with on SO. To abuse a metaphor, I'm quite familiar with the tree where I work, but I know too bloody little about the rest of the forest.

How do other folks keep abreast of what's going on in the software industry? Are there any sites/blogs/podcasts/whatever that you find particularly valuable for keeping you informed of potentially useful new technologies or industry-wide trends?

(My apologies in advance if this is a duplicate; this feels like something that ought to have been asked before, but alas, my search-fu has failed me.)

Answer 1

I lurk the official and unofficial IRC channels of the languages I use. Often a discussion will arise around a library or framework I've never heard of, and I will go Googling to find out more.

Answer 2

I like DZone.com for that. I find out about new libraries and tools based on what other developers are blogging about.

Answer 3

I follow Reddit, specifically the programming subreddit. It gets a wide variety of links, ranging from mainstream languages like PHP, C++, Java, and Ruby, to less widely-used stuff like Haskell, Factor, and D.

Answer 4

Some things that work for me:

• I talk with coworkers and overhear conversations at the office (or in our Yammer which I find a great free tool for internal communications). Provided that you have smart and open-minded colleagues, this is one of the best ways. :-)
• I follow interesting tech people on Twitter. Recently I've come to consider this a pretty efficient method – you can keep abreast quite nicely without investing too much time. ^{(Personally I follow people like Martin Fowler, Joshua Bloch, Kevin Bourrillion, Jeff Atwood, Mikko Hyppönen, and Henrik Kniberg to name a few from towards the (tech) "celebrity" end of the spectrum. However, the most interesting news for me often come through (ex-)coworkers or other acquaintances such as @sarkkine, @kaivirkki or @splattne.)} The key is to find a bunch of people whose posts are the most interesting and relevant to you. This might take a while, and during that time Twitter and you may seem like an utter mismatch. :-)
• I follow some tech blogs. (Although, in truth, I haven't been active at this at all recently. If an interesting blog post appears, I'll probably hear about it on Twitter or Yammer anyway. :-) Check this question for a good list of software dev blogs.

Answer 5

If you want to keep up with the industry first you have to decide "which Industry" you want to keep up with: security, embedded, enterprise solutions... the amount of work alone in every field might be overwhelming. There are almost 40 ACM interest groups, although you could also take the IEEE Computer Society since it is more industry oriented.

That being said, my favorite sources to keep updated are:

IEEE Software
IEEE Spectrum
Slashdot