Tips required for continous improvement

[piyu]

I have been working in Core Java 5 domain for past 2 years now. My
work does not involve a lot of Java skills to be applied. I wanted to
keep a check on my existing skills and learn other popular stuff in
the industry. So I would appreciate if anyone could help me with:

1. How to know what all is popular in industry these days (in core
Java).
2. I wanted to write some dummy projects to learn new features of Java
5 or 6, from where to get ideas?
3. In what all open source projects can I contribute.

Any other tips are welcome.
Thanks
-Piyush

PS: I have posted same query on Joel forum to address wider audience.
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.711221.0

 

[John B. Matthews]

I have been working in Core Java 5 domain for past 2 years now. My
work does not involve a lot of Java skills to be applied. I wanted to
keep a check on my existing skills and learn other popular stuff in
the industry. So I would appreciate if anyone could help me with:

1. How to know what all is popular in industry these days (in core
Java).
2. I wanted to write some dummy projects to learn new features of
Java 5 or 6, from where to get ideas?
3. In what all open source projects can I contribute.

Any other tips are welcome.

Find a project that interests you, download it, build it, modify it,
offer patches:

<http://code.google.com/>
<http://sourceforge.net/>

Or start from scratch:

<http://mindprod.com/project/projects.html>