How to choose a mentor on drupal.org

Question

Sorry for the off topic question, it may seem in wrong direction as it is not relevant to coding and other stuff.

The problem is that I am developing a module called Amazon send to kindle. It is right now in sandbox module. I am getting problem, as i am not able to share on amazon kindle.

I need a guidance from some expert users, to help and guide me in the development. Drupal.org allows us to select the mentors, but i don't know how should i approch other user to be my mentor.

Is there any official way to ask users to be my mentor ?

Answer 1

There is a posting from Dries Buytaert titled Drupal mentors needed, where he basically asks senior people to become mentors ("Find, motivate, guide and empower people to take on a role within the Drupal community"). So if Dries is the official voice of the Drupal community (and I suppose he is), you're supposed to hang around until some aspiring mentor finds you :-(. Unfortunately, this very rarely gives the prospective student access to a mentor.

There has been some attempts from other community members to improve on this situation. For instance, there is the Drupal mentor group. with first and last posts in October 2010 (and one spam post from 2012). You could try to introduce yourself there, but the group seems to be dead.

There is also Drupal Kitchen. There is a handful of people signed on to the site as tutors, but to me, this site looks like yet another failed effort.

If you want to learn how to contribute to the core, there is core contribution mentoring. It uses @drupalmentoring (twitter) to set up office hours and sprints for mentoring aspiring core contributors. This may be educational, but is very much oriented towards the core contribution workflow, and not suitable for learning about Drupal in general-

Here is what I suggest: Start by getting a user account on Drupal.org and Groups.Drupal.org (unless you've already done so). In Groups.Drupal.org, look for groups in your geographic area. Join those groups and try to find someone local to communicate with, and look for local meet-ups and sprints you can attend.

Also, use this site (Drupal Answers), the forums on Drupal.org, and IRC to ask specific questions about the problems you have developing. You will not get a specific mentor, but you will usually get relevant help from the community.

However, in my experience, when developing a module, the best way to get the attention from senior members of the community ("mentors") is to join the Review bonus program. This requires some effort on your part, since you're supposed to mentor others (by reviewing their modules) - but you learn a lot from doing so! Do not be afraid of being a novice reviewer. You'll get feedback from the other reviewers about your reviews. It is OK to make mistakes, and you'll learn from them.

Answer 2

That part of the profile is for giving credits to the community members who have influenced your contributions to Drupal. For example, people who mentored you in the issue queue, IRC, user groups, sprints, Core contribution mentoring hours, etc. This is mentioned in as a description on the edit profile page on drupal.org.
Which clearly means that this place is not to ask somebody to be your mentor, but to give credits to those who have already mentored you in some way.

I would suggest you to raise your questions here, on IRC, or during one of the regional sprints and see if you could get help.

You can find the list of IRC channels and "how to"s at : http://drupal.org/irc

Answer 3

It's important to distinguish between "mentoring" and simply needing guidance on a specific problem. Mentoring implies that there is an ongoing relationship over time that helps a person develop various facets or skills. However your question suggests that you simply need an answer to a specific problem. If that's the case you should just post your question here, or if it's complex, try and break it down into several questions.

If it really is mentoring you are looking for, in other words you want someone to really care about your long term development, you'll probably need to demonstrate that you are going to be worth the mentor's time and energy. Mentors like to mentor people with the potential to become mentors themselves or are at least willing and able to give back to the community.

I would suggest that finding a mentor is a long term project that involves building up your karma by making regular contributions to the community, preferably in an area where potential mentors will notice. By being positive, enthusiastic and helpful you'll find that potential mentors will respond in kind.