I also agree with you that it’s quite difficult to keep track on the latest techs even just within the scope of computer vision. What I have done is to:

1. Discuss/Listen with/from colleagues.
2. Join/Follow the discussion group/people in social networks.
3. Find the papers which are on the top ranks of challenges, or from famous authors/associations.
4. Find the papers that with high citations on top of some well known SOTA, they probably also are SOTA.

But please also advise me if there are any better methods. Thanks :)