Read a book...Ideas come to your head.

I read a chapter of partners.com. Do you ever experience getting ideas flowing through your head while reading a book. The ideas are not necessarily related to what you are reading but the act of reading opens up a reservoir in your mind of loosely related topics.

I wrote a bunch of ideas on a piece of paper for a white paper about Decision Support Systems architecture. I'll try to outline a paper and produce something a mixed group can understand and see the importance of.

On another note, I went to another Philly Java Users Group meeting. I'm only a dabbler in Java but I go to the meetings because I have a genuine interest on the topic. I feel listening about the technology at a high level is beneficial. If I see an interest in a topic, I may play around with some tools and techniques. I look at it this way... If I had to do it, I could be a lead Java programmer. 70% of the job is just having good software engineering fundamentals.