These days, diversifying your development knowledge can provide the edge you need to land your dream job, but how do you develop new skills when you are primarily developing with Drupal in your job?

The answer: Compete in developer competitions.

I have found that developer competitions are a great way to motivate myself to learn new frameworks. They also push me to think creatively about problem solving. What’s more, I’ve found that making the time to explore other frameworks has improved the way I work with Drupal and develop creative Drupal solutions.

The best way to learn something new, is to do it. Even better, why not try to win something!

Explore with me the highs and lows of learning the micro-framework Slim PHP, the mapping framework Leaflet.js, integrating with MongoDB, and the Mustache templating framework while trying to win a developer competition.

I'll talk about my planning process, how I came up with the idea for my app, my testing process, some pitfalls that I unfortunately fell through, and the analytics I used to assess whether my users were following the assumptions I made when designing the application. In addition I will discuss how these experiences have helped me look at Drupal with a new perspective and how diversifying my developer skill set has improved my development with Drupal.

I'll also share some resources I found to help me learn to use the tools for my app and the next steps for my next developer competition entry.