How can you improve our general knowledge and keep up-to-date with whats going on in the Industry?

You can do this by looking on their website, or searching on google which industry your looking at, to gather information, either on the company or on the industry.

You can do this by looking in magazines just for IT, maybe the industry would set up specific venues, just for IT so they can invite people to their events. You can subscribe on twitter and youtube when they release videos and tweets about their Industry.