First show initiative that you are able to learn the technology that companies are using. If you have time, start learning these technologies on the side and put them on your LinkedIn. Pluralsight (paid service) allows you to link your completed courses to your LinkedIn as certificates of completion. If you are a coachable person and understand the basics of technology, you are a "good" candidate for a job. Good luck!
I can surely do that and even plan to, but I feel that the next guy can load his resume with a degree and cert's and beat me. Even if I'm better than him.
Plenty of people have the degree but don't have the right attitude. My experience is that "self taught" developers can be great to work with. If I was looking for a "data scientist" or somebody to write compilers, I would probably expect someone to have a degree, for an application programmer I'd prefer somebody with experience and pluck over somebody who just has a degree.
Honestly, I feel that webinars (the ones I've attended at least, mostly from work) can be executed better. Countless times have I have attended a webinar where there was at least on technical difficulty that occurs in which at least 5min of everyone's time is taken up unproductively. You would think that people would at least test or rehearse these things before hand, but I don't know. (As a Software QA Intern for a year and some months, I take pride in testing).
Other than those negatives, I have seen that webinars that are put on by big name companies such as Microsoft, are pretty amazing and interactive. I would like to attend more webinars from the likes of Microsoft. These webinars are interactive and there is an active chat where the presenters are able to show care for the virtual audience in real time.
If you have anymore specific questions, please don't hesitate to ask here or through PM.
