I’m involved in the following associations and professional groups which I have found to be a great source of information on network-related technologies. In these groups, there are always multiple discussions, presentations and email threads taking place on the current networking advances and proposals.

* IEEE – Communications and Computer Societies – The well-known society for driving many standards and very active on research and development papers and presentations.

* ONF – (Open Networking Foundation) – Open standards body born for purposes of standardizing SDN. It is driving and promoting standards such as: Openflow and OF-Config.

* NANOG – (North American Networks Operator’s Group)  – Nice gathering of mostly Network techies exchanging information on all topics related to Networks in North America.

* SEI – (Software Engineering Institute) – A great way to keep abreast of use cases and advances on Software Architecture and Development.

* Python.org – (Python Software Foundation) – Promoting the growth and adoption of Python programming.

The above sites and conferences can keep anyone well-informed and always busy.