[garysieling]

If you have time, side projects for research can be a really helpful venue. In a work environment, there are always areas of the product/business you don't work on, and having your own project forces you to learn how the entire process works - I'm thinking of software - so things like web app deployment, design, taking credit cards, etc are often done by different teams.

A project that is visible gives you material for talks at meetups/conferences or articles for bigger blogs, which is a good way to meet people and get better at soft skills.

For people who have a experience / existing knowledge, watching conference talks can be a good way to add on new knowledge (e.g. my machine learning knowledge from school is getting dated, but seeing new tools / techniques in a talk is enough to figure out what to research).

Here's a big list of conference talks that I've been working on as a project - http://findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology