Simon is a hands-on software architect and a senior consultant at 
You need to get out
Community is key; be a part of it
I had an e-mail sent to me at work today asking for information on which technologies are "hot topics" for our customers at the moment. For one reason for another, the number of responses received to date was far less than you would have expected. One of the reasons for this, I think, is that many people are focussed on a single project at a time and actually have little visibility of what's going on elsewhere within the enterprise. But it doesn't have to be this way. Some of what I've said before in How do you maintain your coding skills? and Keeping up are again applicable in this scenario, but ultimately you just need to get out to understand what's happening in the wider industry.
Alan Hoffler wrote about The kiss of death last week, the moral of which is that staying within your comfort zone is bad. I couldn't agree more - you need to be stretched if you're to keep on top of your game. So how does this relate to understanding what the wider industry is doing? Well you need to stretch yourself and get out of your comfort zone. Get out there and get along to local user groups, conferences, etc. If you have a predominantly Java background, go and find a non-Java event that you can go and learn something from and get a broader view of the industry trends. I'm quite fortunate to work for a consulting company because I get to see what our customers are doing. But there's lots of stuff that I never get to see, and that's why events like our Coding the Architecture London User Group (next one is on Wednesday) really pay off - they provide an opportunity to talk to other people about other stuff outside of your day-to-day work.
Community is key; be a part of it.
