"(f) attend conferences, hackathons. time consuming and may be costly and not sure how effective it is." Watching videos of presentations or listening to them

"(f) attend conferences, hackathons. time consuming and may be costly and not sure how effective it is." Watching videos of presentations or listening to them during the commute (if possible, given the topic) will work. Optimistically a video from 2010 that was pure confusion at the time might be crystal clear when heard today. I don't currently work at a strong dev culture place with many devs, but at a previous employer we'd brown-bag lunch and watch presentations together, and sometimes the company would provide food or we'd all chip in for pizza. Its a fun way to spend a rainy lunch hour. You need to set up a rotation of who picks the topic or everyone will go crazy. Do not let management pick the videos or you'll all be stuck watching OSHA videos, until everyone stops attending anyway. Corporate videos were the worst, con videos were generally pretty interesting.