Keeping in the loop with all things drupal, web and business

Keeping up with what is happening in your sector is necessary in any industry, in one as rapidly changing as open source web technology, it is vital. This task is made even more difficult by the sheer amount and variety of information available to process. I tend to follow a number of channels for different purposes, below is a list of the what keeps me in the loop.

Blogs and RSS

In this industry, blogs are far and away the best way to find out what influential people are thinking and doing. If you are selective about which blogs you follow you can lower the signal to noise ratio quite considerably. I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds because it just works and it works well. My favourite feeds are below but you can find the full list in this xml file.

Business

• Feld Thoughts (http://www.feld.com/wp/)
• Duct Tape Marketing (http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/)
• Mercer & Hole SME tax matters (http://smeplus.mercerhole.co.uk/)

Open Source

• CNET Open Road (http://news.cnet.com/openroad)
• Open Source Initiative aggregator (http://opensource.org)
• Computer World Open Source Zone (http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/)

Drupal

• Planet Drupal aggregator (http://drupal.org/planet)
• Chapter Three Drupal blog (http://www.chapterthree.com/blog)
• Dries' blog (http://buytaert.net/)
• CMS Report on Drupal (http://cmsreport.com/taxonomy/term/2/0)

Web and Tech

• FT on IT (http://www.ft.com/companies/technology)
• Silicon Valley Watcher (http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/)
• TechCrunch (http://techcrunch.com/)
• A list Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/)
• Smashing Magazine (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/)

Twitter

Twitter is a strange beast, 99% of it is just white noise but that 1% is pure gold dust. I tend to use it as a tool to increase my serendipity. I follow people who are working in the same or related industries, I do not read every tweet but do a lot of scanning. As a result I get a good overview of what is going on.

A list of the people I follow can be found here: http://twitter.com/ncameron/following.

I also use the saved search functionality of Tweetie, this lets me regularly check up on search terms such as "drupal London", "drupal UK", "open source London" and a few others.

Podcasts

For me podcasts are probably the most enjoyable way of keeping up to date. Over the last couple of years the production and quality has increased massively.

• TWiT (http://twit.tv/twit)
• FLOSS (http://twit.tv/FLOSS)
• This Week in Start Ups (http://thisweekinstartups.com)
• The Lullabot Podcast (http://www.lullabot.com/podcast)
• (on a tangent) No Agenda (http://noagenda.mevio.com/)

Current Affairs

The final component of my info stack, are the good old fashioned news outlets. Paper still has a treasured place in my life. Since I stare at a screen for 12 hrs a day Monday to Friday, I grab any chance I can to read something that is not on the screen.

• The Economist (every week without fail) (http://www.economistdirect.com/)
• The FT Weekend (I have a deep love for the FT as a newspaper, high quality journalism and analysis combined with the most objective viewpoint of the UK media) (http://www.ft.com/home/uk)
• CIO Magazine (http://www.cio.co.uk/magazine/subscriptions/)

So there you go, I feel quite tired just looking at it all. But if it was not for listening to TWiT I would have never had heard of Drupal. Here at C&W we are always on the look out for other emerging technologies such as Drupal c. 2005, keeping up with all the above sources is the most effective way of doing this.

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Photo credit: Judy Li