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...and I don't mean formally introduced and handed a business card.
We're having a debate in the office about a technology. Let's call it Technology X. Technology X solves a bunch of issues with its main competitors: Technology Y and Technology Z. However, it's about as exciting as laundry detergent.
So given that it's hard work learning new technologies, and given there's roughly 5,639 new versions of any given technology coming out daily, and given that we're all way too busy trying to actually get work done, how do you introduce a new way of doing the same thing to a developer? Especially when it can truly save that developer a lot of time (and money)
Do you:
- Write an article about technology X and hope someone reads it?
- Have a webinar and hope someone has 30-60 mins to have you on their second monitor while they have lunch?
- Write an article about Technology Y and Z, and then introduce Technology X and show how it solves the issues with Y and Z
- Make a post in an online forum. (and risk the wrath of the Spam button - this one is obviously a tricky one)
- Scout the question and answer forums and when you see a question best answered with "Use Technology X", jump in
- Make some posts on your Facebook page, your Google+ page, or Tweet about it
- Post a blog and just hope others searching the same issues you've found that Technology X solves find it
- Sky writing
- Something else
Getting our attention is hard. I tend to follow a new technology lead if I can almost immediately "get" why it's useful to me, but I also have about a nano-second I'm willing to commit to something unknown that sounds like something else already around.
So what works best for you? How do you prefer to hear about new stuff?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: ven there's roughly 5,639 new versions of any given technology coming out daily
and THIS is your problem.
Yes, yours - coz information/technology overload is and issue in the IT education/info field.
Bryce
p.s - personally? --- I'm in a smoky bar (or was before the greenie leftie pinko commie subversives had smoking banned in bars) knocking back a government approved beer (coz the pinkos lefties commie subversives haven't had *that* banned yet) One of my mates nudges me and points out the babe in the corner who has been checking me out - I'd missed it coz I'm a pretty oblivious kinda guy - wrapped up in my own compiler as some might say.
So some stage later I sashay over to the bar (because its "my round" - remember that phrase Chris - its an important one) and and bump into her. Say Hi and its right about then then I find out she's all annoyingly bright and perky and bubbly and wont STFU - dumb as a doorknob - awww crap she's an Apple product.
MCAD
---
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I'm picturing you sashaying up to a babe in the corner of the room after you've had a few.
That would be worth paying money to watch.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: That would be worth paying money to watch.
watching you pay would be worth the price of admission 
Bryce
MCAD
---
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We're developers; when we need something, we develop it ourselves. That way we get exactly what we need. Rather than something else that someone else thinks we might need -- that provides only the most basic least-common-denominator functionality.
I'm not interested in any of Technology X, Y, or Z.
I have no patience for so-called "developers" who run off to the 'net to look for solutions to every little challenge they face.
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I understand that you do your development by drawing on a cave wall.
We all use technologies developed by others, the only issue being the mix of make vs. buy. My personal guidelines are as follows:
- Language or compiler updates should be researched only at the beginning of a project or at major version numbers.
- New libraries or updates to existing libraries should be researched when a large feature is to be implemented.
- Small features should be implemented in-house, unless a library chosen for other reasons provides the exact required functionality.
- Know your Standard libraries - never write code that duplicates a function/class provided by the library!
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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This is the dumbest thing I have heard all day.
I truly hope you were joking.
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Chris Maunder wrote: ...and I don't mean formally introduced and handed a business card.
Dang. That was going to be my line. Now I have to think of something. 
TTFN - Kent
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Personally I do read lot of blogs and sometimes I write that seems to me important to share it. When I say read tech blogs usually work related tech blogs as well as techs[^]that are not direct related but introduced currently or that will be introduced in the future.
If I see a new tech has been mentioned or blogged frequently, I sometimes tend to adopt the technology depends of the project at hand and how significantly important adopting it. This is mean to say every tech has it's suitable place to solve a solution and shouldn't be adopted as it comes.
So I tend to agree in #3 if reading included and sometimes #1.
Wonde Tadesse
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I would personally try to convince others to Tech X. Like those kids on door sellings cookies? I would start off by greeting person (making them comfort. Most developers do not feel social! I don't). Then, I would start a chat about their problems in development... Level of irritation of a programmer shows how much hard he tries to solve a logic. If he gets annoyed too often he is not a good programmer (or perhaps, opposite? As I have seen many great programmers who don't get annoyed too soon).
Once all of these have been done. I can easily decide whether I should waste my time on him or not! Simple. Why waste time teaching something to a person who doesn't even want to learn it (or has interest in it).
Anyways, that first option is perfect. I would write an article. Interested people would read it. 
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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It takes one hell of a lot to break that non second barrier 
I believe there are 2 types of developers, those who have a comfortable and deep knowledge of their day to day tools, and those who are constantly looking for "the latest" tool/tech/trend. Getting the attention of the first is almost impossible, keeping the attention of the second is just as difficult. There is a third group who will vacuum up the new tech, play with it and then write articles about it, these are the people you need to engage. Thankfully I live in the first group so bugger off!
I think getting some well respected person/organisation to expound the benefits would be about the only way I think you could get through to the first group.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Kind of like -- Jack of all trades, master of none.
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+ Search for bloggers who blog(ged) about Tech Y and Z, present them Tech X and hope they'll blog about it.
+ Ask online and print media if they're interested to present it (if that's not what you meant by 1).
+ In case I'm Chris Maunder, ask in the Lounge who would be willing to write an article about it and/or blog about it and to tell their colleagues 
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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I have to have a need for something, and then I will start researching, and I prefer reading articles for that, either that or download an e-book and read it on my tablet.
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I like being introduced to new technology at a resort hotel in Hawaii.
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I prefer to put a dollar on the edge of the stage and have it find me later.
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- See a jaw-dropping two minute video highlighting the important wows of this technology.
- Follow up with a few short video series (7-10 mins each), to go a little beyond "Hello World".
- Read articles, if I'm serious to pursue.
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A combination of 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.
They aren't exactly either-or situations
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Dinner and a nice bottle of wine, followed by a good chat with a glass [or seven] of brandy.
veni bibi saltavi
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Then you start to work?
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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Simon_Whale wrote: work
What's that?
veni bibi saltavi
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Simon_Whale wrote: Then you start to work?
..on the Gin!
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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Do you want to know how I like to introduced to a new technology, or how I like to introduce new technologies? Your OP seems to be asking both, but sticking to the subject line, I like to be dropped in the deep end (you can probably call this a depth-first traversal), under pressure. Like I have been this last week on an Angular project, where I had previously only read a very tiny bit about Angular.
Left to my own devices, the perfectionist in me tries to learn everything properly first, where when I really must deliver, I might even skip trying to read and analyse code, and just jump in and run it to see how it works, and what effects my changes make.
I then take a more in depth, breadth-first, traversal in my own time, picking maybe one cross cutting aspect of the new tech, and explore that speculatively.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. - Oscar Wilde
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Lying down.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Sky writing works for me.
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly
"I have sexdaily. I mean dyslexia. Fcuk!"
Driven to the arms of Heineken by the wife
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