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I have been asked a number of times on how do I keep up with technology, being that Microsoft comes up with new products and features on an almost daily bases. Gone are the days when SQL Server would come out with a new version every 3-4 years and you would just go to a bootcamp for a couple of weeks and you were all caught up. That all changed with the cloud. While this is challenging, I find it is more fun, as I equate learning with having fun. But if you are a customer of Microsoft, you have a day job and don’t have the time to keep up with all the technology. That is why architects like me exist within Microsoft: to learn about a customers business and keep updated on the technologies to help the customer choose the best architectures and products for their use cases.

Of course the internet has made learning so much easier. Pre-internet I remember we had to read books and magazines, go to the library, call tech support, or know a handful of “experts” that we could call. Now, everything is just a click away, but what to focus on? Working for Microsoft, we get a lot of internal emails, decks, whitepapers, Yammer, Teams channels, etc, that the outside world does not get access to. But there is plenty of info outside of that which I use. So, I monitored my actions for the last few weeks and listed below everything I used:

• Database Weekly by SQLServerCentral.com
• SQLServerCentral daily newsletter
• Power BI Weekly Newsletter
• Azure Weekly Newsletter
• Brent Ozar Unlimited Monday Links
• SQLskills Insider newsletter
• Big Data Quarterly
• SQLBI Newsletter
• Data Mesh Learning Newsletter
• The IT Scoop by eWeek
• DBTA E-Edition
• Dataversity white papers
• Browse my LinkedIn home page for interesting posts
• Attend and/or present at many events/conferences (see Presentations | James Serra’s Blog)

Read these blogs:

James Serra’s Blog
Chris Webb’s BI Blog
Paul Randal
Brent Ozar
sqlbi
Paul Turley SQL Server BI Blog
Melissa Coates
Paul Andrew
Matthew Roche
Azure Data Blog

Watch these YouTube channels:

Guy in a Cube
Advancing Analytics
Curbal
Fun with Azure
Bryan Cafferky
RADACAD
Kasper on BI

I also have monthly 30-minute chats with about a dozen people (inside and outside of Microsoft) to keep up with what they are doing and what they have learned. No doubt it is challenging and time consuming to keep up. Especially within my role as a data and AI architect, which I feel is so big it should be split into three separate roles: data platform, AI, and Power BI. Fortunately learning is part of my day job at Microsoft, although I voluntarily read about technology some nights and weekends because it is fun to me and does not feel like “work”. I also like to play with new features and products via hands-on experience to understand it better so I can be more thorough if needed when educating customers. I like to simplify things and explain it at a high level for c-level people or end-users, or go deeper if I’m talking to technical people. But with so many products the best you can do is to know most products in your solution area at a high level, and go deep with 2-3 products, because we also have to learn about customers, industries, the competition, and the Microsoft organization (which radially changes almost every year). The one thing I have gotten better at over the years is “learning how to learn”. I’m able to filter out very quickly what is important and what is not and absorb it rapidly (like cramming for a test). This helps compensate for the fact my brain neurons don’t fire as fast!

I hope this blog is helpful in giving you some new sources of learning, and please comment below on other sources that you like that I have not listed.