One of my favourite questions to ask when interviewing potential staff is, what do you do to keep up to date and continue to learn? I like this because there is no right or wrong answer, but it does show that the candidate is engaged with the work and has a method to drive continuous learning. Occasionally the candidate lists their techniques and then asks me what do I do? So I thought this would be a good opportunity to write down my current CPD process.
I try to listen to a podcast a day, these tend to be short 15-30 minutes long and fit easily into the daily commute or the wait before breakfast in the hotel. A few of my current favourite podcasts are listed below:
- Darknet Diaries
- The CyberWire
- MS Cloud IT Pro
- Symantec Cyber Security Brief
- Azure Friday
- Hanselminuites with Scott Hanselman
I also try to watch 1 or 2 webinars a week, I have found BrightTalk provide a great selection of these covering most aspects of the IT world, especially cyber security, but I also watch a number of vendor specific webinars.
In addition I try to complete a couple of Pluralsight training courses every month, I have found this is perhaps one of the most polished learning tools available and definitely worth the subscription fee.
Conferences and industry events are another great source of information, however these tend to be much more about the personal element and networking with informal conversations provide much more insight than most of the presentations, especially as I have almost always seen the content previously via either a webinar or podcast