5 tools for effective technology monitoring

In our world and profession, where everything evolves very quickly, our ability to adapt in order to stay up to date becomes a key factor.

What if we could do it in a fun way?

Today, we're going to talk about the crucial skill for naturally improving your skills: staying informed (veille).

The goal

The main goal of good technology watch is to make sure that information repeated regularly becomes natural.

Remember when you decided to become a web developer...

Before that decision, you had no idea how many skills were required to create a website. At that moment, the more you read, the more you gradually shift from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence.

This is the goal of a technology watch practiced regularly over time: to make you realize what you don't know, and to sort out what you should know!

The trickiest part being setting it up efficiently, but above all sustainably.

Through the visual repetition of certain terms, you'll judge that some are worth digging into to reach your goal (and others not).

Then comes the phase of isolating terms/concepts and doing in-depth research based on your watch!

5 tools for effective tech watch

You don't necessarily need a specific tool to maintain a technology watch, but some tools will make the task easier, or sometimes simply integrate the watch into your daily life without you even noticing!

So I'm sharing the 4 tools I use every day

An extension: Daily.dev

The extension https://daily.dev/ is simply the gamified technology watch tool par excellence.

In one year, I went from doing no watch at all to a nearly daily watch effortlessly.

The extension opens every time you open a new tab, its access is designed to minimize the friction between thought and action, and it works!

Here's an example of my daily.dev tracking after one year of use:

Small downside: Most of the content is in English, but that also reflects our professional field!

An app: Feedly

While daily.dev shows you the most successful articles, sometimes you want to follow a few blogs in particular, because you're attached to their writing style, their ability to explain things simply, etc...

For that, RSS feeds are perfect. As soon as an article comes out, it arrives in your aggregator, and you can consume it directly in the app. Personally I use Feedly, which is simple, free, and available both in web version and mobile version!

Regarding RSS feeds, the simplest and free tool I can recommend is Feedly.

On launch, we have a list of different sources, choose one by pressing the "follow" button. It will then suggest you create a folder (3 maximum in the free version), preferably naming it in relation to your watch.

And you can even add Code-Garage, to have its regular content in your daily feed,

Just search for it in the search bar and type "Code-Garage".

After adding a few blogs, here's the result:

Three social networks: Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram

We don't necessarily know it, but Twitter has a huge community of developers who share content and start very interesting discussions!

I therefore recommend creating a new account on Twitter, making it a presentable profile (which can also help you build your network) and following accounts strictly related to your dev/tech focus.

For example web developers, devops, recruiters, content creators, your colleagues, etc...

But if you don't want to create a new specialized profile, you can also join or even create your own Twitter list! This will let you have several news feeds on the same account, a nice feature.

For example I created mine here, which you can join!

Instagram is the same, but more visual. By repeatedly seeing carousels of basic concepts. We integrate them quickly!

Never underestimate social networks, like any technological tool, everything depends on how it's used.

Here's also a list of mostly English-language content on Instagram:

As a bonus: Dev.to

Nowadays, with translators like Deepl or even those built into browsers, we no longer have an excuse for not consuming content in English, whatever your level.

At the beginning, don't be afraid to translate entire paragraphs and over time, you'll assimilate it, and eventually it will only be needed for a few complex words.

But if I had to give one ultimate piece of advice, it's to switch to English-language content as often as possible. By the way, here are a few popular posts on dev.to: