A downside when working with small and medium-sized businesses is that you have to focus on practical more than theoretical. Deploying an architecture that is a known entity, using existing staff skills, with a relatively predictable cost and timeline is important. Small businesses are generally not in a position to fund true R & D for their products.
For this reason, I generally have a number of fun projects going on to keep abreast of new technologies. Currently, I’m engaged with:
- Alexa Voice Skills and Flash Briefings – with TV/Radio media groups as well as visually impaired
- IOT devices/security/management with Raspberry PI’s
For both of these I’m using many Amazon AWS features with coding being done in NodeJS, Python, and React primarily.