So, just like in site building, when we use existing third party modules, it is useful to add on to current knowledge with pieces that already exist.

Bryan from Acquia keeps pusshing this ladders concept, and it actually makes a lot of sense, check out the Drupal Ladder website here

While I have found that it is not the be all end all for Drupal development, at least it gives a fair gage of where you stand as a developer.

Personally, I am on -  Getting started in the issue queue

Robert Laszlo and I had an awesome time presenting at Capital Camp 2012 - http://capitalcamp.org/content/overcoming-hurdles-drupal-commerce
Ryan Szrama was in the audience and he encouraged me to post videos online that show our three solutions to managing product displays, tagging an order as bulk and creating a views based dashboard.
I will post them here shortly and will have a downloadable feature module to try out.

I went the issue sprint at APCO on July 5th. Admittedly, I had been out of the Drupal scene for a while. I have been literally getting our new house in order. It was a bit intimidating going

When I got there, most of the people were friendly and everyone wanted to help.

I work in a shop that runs 3 or more environments for each web project. I had a little system running that lets the team know exactly what system they were on. At Drupalcon Denver, Randy Fay pointed me to an excellent module that will tell you what server you are on.

It's called Environment Indicator

This module will be extremely important to us.