How do you keep up with changing technologies?
wglb: I think it is incumbent on each of us, practitioners of this craft, to take responsibility for our own education in this field.Vendors of software have an interest in what you learn, as it helps their products work better.  And it can be useful to you as well.  But if you rely on vendors to set your horizons, it won't necessarily work to your enlightened self interest.Additionally, employers are not always going to have the same objective regarding what you learn.  A medium or large company is interested in getting their projects done on a likely slipping schedule.  They are not necessarily going to be aligned with your educational self-interest.One defense against this is to see what other vendors are offering.  If you are working on SQL Server learn what you can about how Oracle does things.  If you are working in .net, learn a bit about Java (although that is not exactly a vendor-driven environment in the same way).Another step is to look outside the vendor-influenced areas.  Look at how things are done in the open source world.  Understand some of the ideas behind the nosql movement.  What is hadoop? memcached?  For some of the technologies discussed on HN (which is certainly filled with talk of more recent technologies), dive into some of them a little.  Expand your comfort zone.If you have spent a lot of time in the OO world, check out some of the functional languages and why they might solve some problems more easily than the OO approach.And perhaps find an interesting open source project and read lots of code.I have been in the business several decades and am still learning new things constantly.  While this sounds like a lot, perhaps develop a habit or routine of doing a little of this each day.  If you have in your mind the goal of expanding your technical horizons, then you will see opportunities to learn.