on the mastering of new technologies

Dorothea wrote a post to which my only reply can be "Amen, Sister!" She references a great post by Steve Lawson.

I also feel that I'm at the upper end of the technological middle ground. I'm a journeyman scripter and not really a programmer. I still have digital content production chops. My XML markup skills and metadata fu are strong. I can tell you a lot about the inner working of Fedora. I can haul out my atrophying JavaScript, SQL, and Perl skills, and dredge up my minimal PHP skills. I fondly remember my ColdFusion days, and my days employing Lingo in Director to create Shockwave apps.

I'm not really up on the tools that are all the rage these days -- Python, Ruby, Django, or even Java. I've been so focussed on managing projects that I've lost some of my technological edge. Where do I go to regain/retain it? Especially since I am no longer following a path where I spend any time writing any forms of code. I am often asked why I don't go to code4lib -- it's not exactly that I feel over my head, but I'm just not doing the hands-on thing anymore and I don't think there's much I can contribute to a conversation about Python libraries or Lucene optimization.

I'm a fan of DLF Forums. I learn a lot about what tools folks at other institutions are using. But I don't always learn enough about why they use them and what those tools are especially good for. Something I can take back to my own projects and say "Hey, let's consider this solution because it's a great fit for XYZ."

There are things I need to learn about at a pretty deep technical level, but I may never personally apply them. Where do I go for that?

And circling around to another of Dorothea's topics ... I am still too often one of the few women in the room. A recent event I attended had 40 men and 4 women. But then, I am often just the sort of woman who thinks she's not technical enough to attend such events. Perhaps I need to face my own wariness about events like code4lib and just go. And/or stand up alongside others of my kind and start another type of event.