One of the Madgex value words is Passionate, and this got me to thinking what am I the most passionate about in my working life and it has to be learning. And by that I mean both learning myself and encouraging and enabling learning amongst team members and colleagues.

In Eat that frog - which I'm currently reading - there is a lovely quote

"Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field"

One of the things I try and do is read a lot, mostly in the form of blogs where I find useful titbits of information, or clues, or things to go and find out more about, but also books relating to more static skills. My google reader list now includes more leadership and time management focussed blogs as well due to my recent role change. I've also cashed in some of my ILP time to follow the Web Standards Curriculum to ensure that I have a full understanding of the implications of web standards.

This also leads to me keeping a keen eye on what is going on event-wise within the community - both locally, here in Brighton, and further afield (well near London main-line stations if I'm honest) - that could form an introduction to new techniques, technologies and methodologies. I've just started sending out a weekly email to Madgex containing all of my finds, so that others can benefit from shared learning experiences. My key resources for this are upcoming searches for Brighton & Hove, geek, .Net, Barcamp, sql, developer along with MSDN events, VBUG events and Skills Matter events.

I'm planning to go to Remix UK in September, which I'm hoping will be a great way to catch up with new technologies and new methodologies. I've been to a WebDD, a DDD and SQLBits community conferences before so it will be great to see how Remix differs.