I think the biggest thing is that you grok the idea of being "t-shaped" and are taking the initiative to do something. Now, the hardest part is - I think - deciding what to make the vertical bar of your "T". It can probably be almost anything, but some things are going to be more valuable from a career standpoint than others. I chose "java" for that about 2000, after having been focused on C++ for a few years before that. That decision turned out well, but I feel like Java has largely run it's course now. I mean, it'll still be around for a while, but it's not "sexy" anymore.

So, what would I make the new "vertical bar" of my own "T"? I'm leaning towards two somewhat parallel tracks: And both of these involve things that were on my "horizontal bar" going back sometime anyway, it's just time to start emphasizing them more. One, is Semantic Web / Artificial Intelligence / Cognitive Computing stuff. And related, but not necessarily exactly the same is Big Data / Machine Learning / Analytics / BI stuff.

I expect skills in those areas are going to be valuable for some time to come. I started digging into the SemWeb stuff several years ago, actually, but I wish now that I'd started investing more into machine learning a few years earlier.

As far as how to do that? Well, read and experiment and build sample projects for yourself... the same things you'd do to learn any new skill. There are a number of good books and websites out there. I'm reading Machine Learning for Hackers now, and also playing around with things like Mahout, OpenNLP, Giraph, and Spark with GraphX and MLib. I'm also looking into learning R, as it's widely used in that analytics / machine learning world.