The firm told me the candidate had learned how to develop in Notes about four years ago, and she's made a living of it ever since, without furthering her skill set in any meaningful way. Yes, she was a solid developer, said the company, but she couldn't cut it at their firm where they function at state-of-the-art levels. You don't have to be "state-of-the-art" to be successful, but I would hate to have someone describe me, as a candidate, as having "learned nothing new in four years."

Staying of top of their careers is a priority for most ambitious people. But staying on top is a rather vague idea. Let's define staying on top. Does it mean a trip to Lotusphere or DevCon? Perhaps it simply means reading DominoPower faithfully. Every week you should try to do something to increase your knowledge of Notes. That doesn't necessarily mean something big. You only remember a portion of what you learn at the big events anyway. I'm talking about supplementing formal training and certification by using several of the free, quick resources at your fingertips. This way you learn in comfortable, incremental stages.

While there are a great number of Web sites and technical journals offering ways to grow, in this article I focus on free, user-friendly resources to help you stay on top of Notes news and technical tips by profiling Notes-related magazines, search engines and technical journals.

Magazines
Let's start by looking at magazines.

DominoPower Magazine
First we'll begin at home. Let's make certain you're taking full advantage of the free resources here at DominoPower. Make sure you've signed up for DominoPower Tips. This is a free service that delivers a fun and useful Lotus Notes or Domino tip right to your email box every week, as well as a monthly new issue announcement. DominoPower Tips is not an open discussion list, so you don't have to worry about getting loads of extraneous mail. Sign up for this service at the bottom of the DominoPower homepage at http://www.dominopower.com.

Many of our readers have personal or professional Web pages and start their days by checking them out. You can now include the latest DominoPower news headlines and article titles on your site. This will add value to your site by showing your support for DominoPower and by providing the latest information to your site's visitors. We do this by making available special "stub" files you can incorporate into your Web site. Any time DominoPower is updated, these stub files are updated as well, so you can post the very latest information at all times. For more information visit http://www.dominopower.com/linkinfo/syndication.html.