Publications/magazines for aspiring IT professional

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Hopefully this is an okay forum to post this question. My current career in Geographic Information Systems has been slowly trending towards a more IT role. I find myself constantly needing to troubleshoot my own desktop and networking problems, as well as maintain a couple of GIS-specific network resources. Essentially I've steered down an IT path and so far I'm not complaining. IT seems to have a wider potential for future salary caps as well as marketability across a broader geographical area than GIS does (i.e. IT is needed virtually everywhere).

Case in point, I'm interested in pursuing some certs (A+ and Net+ are already done), but more specifically to this post, I'm looking for some media outlets that can broaden my understanding of IT as a career path in general. The IT deptartment where I work has a subscription to Information Week and occassionally I find the current issue in the bathroom. It has had several articles that, for me, were very informative.

I'm considering a subscription to Information Week and I'm interested in adding one or two others as well.

What are some recommended IT magazines or professional publications? I've also heard of Certification Magazine....any good?

Thanks for your help.

 

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There are loads of IT publications out there with many more on the web - and you usually don't need to be taking out paid subscriptions.

However, I would question the "value" that you seem to be placing on these career-wise.

You would probably be better off concentrating on sites such as Technet for articles, white papers etc. but don't neglect studies for your chosen path in the first instance.

 

The only one I currrently get is VSj which is free and athough better than most I still don't read it.

Didn't you know print is dead ?

DrDobbs used to be good about 10+ years ago, death of print has pretty much killed it. They seem part of a network with informationweek called TechWeb. The old print media networks are slowly dieing, they are losing their advertising revenue and subscribers to the web.

The internet and blogging has totally changed the balance of power, plus companies like microsoft provide technet and msdn and their own forums.

My experience is nobody with any real work to do ever reads the trade journals, they are normally written by journos that don't know much. I wouldn't waste my time with Information Week.

You could join the BCS or IET. You could join local IT related user groups. You can join forums like this. You could take a nightclass or the a course with the OU.

If you like InformationWeek you could try computing which is a simiar rag or the website TheRegister, or Slashdot. Very little real content in most of em though, its all promotions, court cases, mergers and aquisistions etc. You sure your interest is in IT ? You don't want to be a lawyer ?

I'm currently working on a GIS system also.

 

I wasn't trying to send a message of favoring print vs online media at all. I'm trying to gather information if that wasn't obvious enough. The "value" I'm placing in this publications is yet to be determined because I haven't read any yet. I'm not expecting to be teleported to a higher level of IT enlightenment just because I subscribe to some mags. Right now I'm not in a strictly IT career, but if nothing changes that's where I'll be in a few years. In the meantime I'm just looking to broaden my perspective and thought some pubs would be a good place to start.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll follow up on them.

 

ComputerWeekly used to be print based.

Probably better known now for their cwjobs site now.

Theres probably a reason for that, maybe they ran out of paper...

Found this on google :-

http://www.tradepub.com/