So hello everybody. I am very happy to see you here before we start. Let me just remind you once again that you can double click on the video and the share screen to maximize them.Also, feel free to use the chat on the right to talk to me and to ask me questions. I will try to follow it during my presentation. And again, in the end of it, I really love lively discussions. So I have saved like 5 to 10 minutes in the end of my talk for that. So I hope you don't have any browser or traffic issues. But in this case, I just um prepared some backup plan and on the chat, I have put some links that you can check on later as well as my slides. Feel free to follow them. If there's any problem for today, I have chosen a topic that is very important to me as I know from my own experience, how essential mentoring is for developing your skills and advancing your career. But first let me introduce myself. My name is Maria Dova and I'm from Bulgaria. I work as a Drupal developer at the German marketing company, Freedom Group. I'm also board member of our local Drupal Association in Bulgaria, a proud member of Coding Girls and a co-founder of Drupal Girls.

There's one common thing behind all these organizations and it is the love for Drupal and mentoring. Well, now I'm also women tech global ambassador. I help by organizing the Drupal track and I hope that you will watch and enjoy our amazing professions. So why Drupal? You have already heard me mentioning Drupal several times. But what is it? And why should you consider using it? I hope that um you haven't missed Rachel's amazing talk this morning. But just in case here is some of Drupal's main advantage and of course, you should use Drupal because it works. It's actually a powerful open source content management system. It means this means that you can use it to structure very well your um the content on your website.

But it's not only that it's a framework as well, which means that it gives you all the tools you need to write custom code as a backend developer. It's very important for me. So I really like Drupal for that. Also, Drupal is fast, it's reliable, it's secure. Yes, a big thing of security experts actually take care of all kinds of vulnerabilities and if something happens, they respond on time and they release some updates which you can apply. Drupal is also scalable. It handles well, both high and low traffic less or more content.

It's suitable for small businesses, global enterprises and everything in between. One of the most um interesting things about Drupal and why I like it so much is um that it's modular and flexible. It means that Drupal comes uh with a base with a code base um that you can extend when you need it. And in this way, you don't have anything that's unnecessary on your project, which is really amazing. Another benefit is that Drupal is Multilingual out of the box, which means that you can install it on your own language or you can make your website Multilingual later by adding more languages. Of course, nowadays, it's very important to have websites that function well on mobile devices.

So Drupal is of course mobile first last but not least it is built to be accessible for all. And this is something we are very proud of. But the main power behind Drupal is its community. As you can see in this picture, the Drupal community is really big. It's like uh 1 million users. It's um in include, it includes both uh developers and people who are not technical. And actually the Drupal community is the driving force that keeps Drupal going and thriving for me personally. Drupal community is like a family inside it. I have found the place where I fit in where I feel secure and safe and the members of the Drupal community help each other a lot. They provide guidance and assistance in solving issues and we contribute in so many different ways to drupal. You can do it via code via translations, documentation, by organizing events, promoting Drupal in all kinds of ways or mentoring. And by pen, mentoring, we come to the main topic, mentoring. What does it mean? Well, it's typically defined as a professional relationship in which an experienced specialist provides assistance to another person and helps him or her to develop better skills and knowledge, right? But it's not only that in fact, mentoring um and its main focus of course is training or passing on your expertise and experience in general. However, people are capable of learning by themselves as well. So why do you need mentor?

Well, no one can replace the presence of a mentor, the guy or the girl who can give you an advice at the right moment. Encourage you when you feel blue motivate you to keep fighting and guide you when you get lost or sometimes simply knowing there is someone out there who believes in you can be all the support that you need and the mental mental relationship. Yes, which is something very important.

It's indeed a special bond. It's a two way in terms of both communication and developing skills. Everyone involved shares ideas and experience and gains even more. The ments are however, not the only ones to learn. The mentors also add in their field of expertise to a greater extent.

And they develop leadership skills as we know, the best way to learn is to teach the relationship, however, should be open and honest. And it's something very important in order for this to function well, and to be mutually beneficial. I have had three mentors in my life and they are also my friends forever. Every time I feel sad or discouraged during my work. Yeah. This sometimes happen. I just remember a phrase or something that one of them has told me and it brings me back on track. Well, if you wonder how experienced you should be in order to become a mentor. In fact, it doesn't matter how experienced you are, whether you are junior or senior. In fact, mentors do have mentors. Everybody needs to recognize that um all of us can learn and benefit from the experience of other people. It's something essential, something very normal and it happens throughout our careers and uh all our lives, this is the most natural thing and can change our life entirely. Yeah.

So why is mentoring important? It's important because it's an activity which has multiple benefits for everyone involved. So let's let's check them out first. We'll start of course, with the main benefits. As the main should be the primary focus in on this relationship. Having a mentor can help you understand everything faster. It gives you the benefit of having someone you can rely on when you need help. Mentors can also help motivate you by supporting you in solving hard problems or provide you with a different perspective you haven't thought about.

You always have someone you can count on and that makes learning easier. The man mentee benefits uh on one side. And then we have the mentors benefits. The mental maintained relationship is indeed and mentor also can gain a lot from this relationship. Um It's a wonderful way to learn more to learn from your mentees and but has your skills as well to yourself. Um by teaching and supporting someone, you can enhance your own skills and knowledge. It's a good way to learn yourself or practice the basics. Again, also, you can always get a new perspective to see how a beginner would tackle problem. You might learn something from that as well. Mentoring helps us to improve our communication, our leadership skills because you need both of those skills in order to be able to properly help your mentor, you're doing something good and beneficial for others and giving back to the community by increasing its members. The business also benefit from it. So if there are business folks here, this is for you. If your employees are mentors, your business can benefit as well. If colleagues are mentoring each other, this will raise the overall performance and productivity as everyone shares their knowledge and experience.

It happens all the time. If your company mentors students and interns, this will increase your brand recognition. People will notice your company more often, it will raise your reputation. Not to mention that this is such an easy way to attract potential future employees to your company who also benefits from mentoring. Of course, the community and as I have already told, many times, community is one of the best things that behind every technology. So mentoring helps include a number of people joining the community case with Drupal, mentoring adds potential contributors and promotes Drupal as a technology. Actually, I really hope that after this conference, some of you will truly consider diving into the Drupal realm. It's fun and it's amazing. I promise.

As you can guess already, the importance of mentorship is unquestionable, but how to be a good mentor. Let's now focus on those of you who are willing to try but still have some doubts or worries. It happens, it's totally normal. So no worries. So the very first thing you need to do is or do this step out of the comfort zone and make the decision to actually be a mentor, don't underestimate your skills and don't be afraid to try. There exists a big problem with the lack of mentors. A lot of talented people, especially women have never had a formal mentor in their life and in their career, this is, this is sad. It's a total waste of talent and we must do our best to change that the most difficult thing is to start after that. There are some simple tips and guidance that we can follow. And here I'll share some of them with you first. Yeah, that's nasty imposter syndrome. Right. We all know about it. That, about this nasty feeling that makes us doubt our accomplishments and think of ourselves as frauds, but we just need to accept it. Life is too short and we cannot learn all that we want, just accept it and move on if you're still too concerned, things like that, even if you help only one person, it means you have changed the life. This counts a lot and makes a difference.

Actually, that vulnerability that you don't know and everything it drives trust, it makes you human in the eyes of your mentee with this, sorry and this threatens your relationship. It brings better results. It definitely sets a great example. We should recognize that all of us can learn and benefit from having mentors throughout our careers. Sometimes you may need a mentor to learn how to mentor. So don't be frightened. Mentors also have mentors. It's something very normal. One of the most important thing is to break the stereotype, don't afraid, don't be afraid to do it. You don't need to take the formal image of a teacher or instructor ask about the interests of your mentees, try to cover them and provide personalized approach during your work together. The most important thing is that you stay true to yourself and remember everyone has a different path to success. Take this into account also think about factors such as cultural, religious, racial, political, and of course gender differences and please respect them, build a relationship with your mentee that is based on trust and learn to respond to his her needs.

This needs to show your good side and be open and honest. Don't take yourself too seriously. Most of all believe in your man, his abilities and encourage him or her. Don't uh let them receive everything ready or solved. Make them find a solution. Be patient and respect their feelings during the whole time sometimes. However, yeah, you need to show your bad side as well. Don't take their work from your mentees. Let them work independently and provide guidance when needed. Show them different options. Let them make choice require more in order to get the best out of them. This, it's always good to challenge them. You can always give constructive feedback, but sometimes you need to keep them mental on the ground. So don't be afraid to do this. You should spend time to prepare materials, topics, things that can be useful to your mentee. In this time, you constantly improve yourself, uh allow yourself to learn to benefit from your mentee. And as we remember, the mentor, mentor relationship should be mutually beneficial.

Stay open to evolving and keep up with the changing world. It sounds pretty easy, right? So how do we do it in reality? Now, after talking about why you should consider mentoring and how to improve it. I would like to share with you how we are currently mentoring so that you can get an idea of how to do it yourself. And as a part of coding girls, Drupal girls and the local Drupal cation, I have organized many events of this kind, meetups, workshops, courses, Drupal camps. This is one of the best way to start mentoring and helping people. One of the things we do is to provide access to all of them for free. This is very important because in this way, you can reach out to more people and they can learn something new. Also our mm events are very often mm aimed at beginners because when you see someone very motivated, very open minded and it's very easy to work with them. Here, you can see a picture of one of our groups of high school students and teachers and see you wait here after our course is finished. I also have a few more pictures. As you can see, we prepare, prepare some certificates for our attendees.

You can see their happy faces. We always love to see them. We work both with Children and with grown up people. And uh yeah, working with people from different um target groups, different age, different gender. It's so beneficial because uh you keep this perspective of the world, you improve yourself all the time. You can always learn something from your ments and I mentioned about Drupal camps. Actually, the Drupal community organizes events every year. There are international ones like they are called Drupal Cons.

But in the meantime, we organize local events and this is one of those. It's a Drupal camp in Plovdiv, my hometown in Bulgaria. Another way you can get a mentor or mentees is by participating in uh different programs at the university. This is what we do and um I particularly enjoy working with students. There, students are so open-minded and eager to learn. It's a wonderful opportunity to spread on Drupal knowledge, to find young talent and get new employees and of course to grow the local Drupal community.

Here, is it one of our internship groups that we had at our office and mentioning the office. Yes, mentoring can happen at the office as well and it's something very good. It doesn't always need to be between a beginner and an expert. People of similar level can also exchange knowledge no matter what, you can always learn something new from the person next to you. Right. Yes, Drupal is fun to learn when you have or when you are a mentor, I can guarantee this. And in order to summarize in short gotten productive mentoring relationship with the right person provides huge benefits to both sides. Mentors and mentees improve their knowledge and performance much faster than they would otherwise do on their own. Not to mention how much fun it is for both parties.

It is definitely a time well spent. And how do I know that? Well, the answer is simple by stepping up and think a mentor, one of the best quotes out there belongs to John Crosby. And it says mentoring is a brain to pick a neural and a push in the right direction. I'm sure we all agree on that. Thank you. And don't forget to show your appreciation to your mentor or to get one or to become one and pay it forward, spread some triple love and magic around. It's worth it. Well, final thing before we continue with our um discussion, I already mentioned, I told you about the biggest Drupal event. Mm This year. This is a Drupal cone. Yes, it's, it is now global, which is good that many people can join it. It's however paid. But we have a good news here because the Drupal Association decided to offer three free scholarships to the women Tech network. We will make sure to give them away soon after the conference is over. So please stay tuned and follow our social channels. So now it's time for your questions and I'll move on to the chat. Hey, so if you have any questions, please ask them, I really enjoy a lot of discussions. Yeah, I'm also looking forward to the book. Um and I hope to see if there as well.

Thank you too. It was nice. I really prefer to talk to people live. I mean, in person because I need this connection, this two way the um communication. But actually this virtual global conference turned out to be pretty successful. Pretty nice. OK. We have a question from Rachel.

Hey, how did it feel? The first time one of your mentees had their work included in the project they were working on? Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing for both um my mentee and me, I always enjoy their success. I can give an example with one of my best colleagues. Uh today, he was a mentee. He started um with Drupal uh during one of our events, it was uh during the European COVID. I think he didn't know anything about Drupal, but he um made so much um improvement so fast and he learned a lot and now I work with him. We um make together all kinds of events, we go together to conferences, which is really amazing. This is what I love most by bringing him to one of the, to the last Drupal Con, which was the Drupal Con Amsterdam. And so, yeah, that feeling is amazing. I can describe it. OK. Anyone else? Well, can I start asking some questions then? How many of you have mentors do you or how many of you are mentors you can use the T? Yeah. OK. Hi. Oh Amazing. And I'm sure you laugh every day of it, right? I hope. And if there are some shy ladies or guys here who have never had mentors, please find one if you just tweet about it.

Uh You ask um a colleague, mm You if you are a university student and uh you see some internship program or you can talk to your professors, to your co fellows cot students, you can always find some opportunity and don't be afraid to try it. Just go for it. It's worth it. And yeah, I mentioned my mentors. Uh one of the best that I had was a colleague um at my company. And during the three years we worked together, I learned so much from him. It was amazing. Uh I wouldn't do this progress if, if I was working on my own. So it's really worth it. Hey, OK. Yes. Hi, Erica. Say yeah, having a mentor really, really matters, but it's never too late to find a mentor. And this is something I have seen. Um many of my colleagues um different companies or mm fellow students, some of them are just afraid to say that they don't know something and we shouldn't do this. This is something very wrong. If you don't know something, don't be afraid to admit. It just say it just ask for an advice. It will save you a lot of trouble to fix the problem. Um A lot of accusing, self accusing and yeah, um you will see that people are ready to help you and in this way you will learn a lot more than even the question that you ask and you will learn to collaborate, which is something very important to grow.

A successful theme. Hi. I really hope you liked it. And I indeed, and really, really hope that you will try to be a mentor or to get a mentor. Oh, and you can always find me on my linkedin and my Twitter account. I think they have provided them on the schedule that was post about me. But uh you can always just Google my name. Uh They are not, it's not that common. So you'll find me pretty quickly and don't be afraid to reach out to me. I, I will always be um glad to help you in some way. OK, I go for, oh nice. You have a mentor. It's Friday. Yeah. Don't be afraid. Just enjoy it because the most important thing of our work is to have fun. Your work should be fun. You, you would see. Mm I don't remember when I was uh just a Drupal bunny. I was so afraid I got such a complex project when I started my first job. I was, I feel I thought that I was going to mm Yeah, to fail and um that I don't know anything but step by step, everything fits together, all teeth fits. So um you, you will see that emotion when you fix something um that you didn't know. Yeah, that's one of the best things in our work. Mm. Don't have one of the most important thing that I can tell you is never give up. Yeah, there will be um hard moments.

There will be time when you just want to give up everything and move on, start doing something else. But please don't just find someone who can give you some support, just uh try to find a solution and hm, something else about being a woman in the it field. Um Yeah, I've heard some other colleagues are telling me some there. Mm sad stories and so on in actually, I haven't never had such problem. I have never been underpaid or um something. Um I haven't received any negative energy. Um Maybe because yeah, the Drupal community is so amazing and everybody is so nice and supportive. But uh if you happen to meet some difficulties, um just don't give up, try to find a better place, a better job, better company because people, we will respect you and they will cherish your knowledge. So it's not about being a woman, being a man. It's about your knowledge and your uh hm your enthusiasm, your, if you are willing to learn and to make good results, everybody will um cherish that OK, we have a few more minutes. I don't know if you, if you want to talk more about this topic or you can share something else. Number 10, let me just check again if I haven't missed any question. It's ok. Can you describe your ideal mentor? Hm. I do, man. It's hard to tell.

I have had three mothers. Um They are different characters. Uh One of them was very kind, always supportive and never um making me feel sad or mm that I can do something. Well, on the other hand, my maybe my best mentor, the one I, I could um really say that he's the best mentor I had, he was a tough mentor. So when I said that you should keep your mentee on the ground and sometimes you should uh show your bad side. Yeah, if you have a mentor that is uh that requires a lot from you, it means that you, he or she will make you mm improve faster and learn a lot more that you can imagine that you're capable of. So yeah, just um trust your mentor. Um tell him, tell her how you feel uh what you want to progress or what your, your interests are. Yeah, this is more something very important your mentor should have in mind, the interest, your interest and um he or she should guide you in that direction. So there are no, no, there are no ideal people. But if you build this um mutual connection based on trust, you can achieve a lot. Thank you. So get help.

And as for the, let's describe the ideal man, then, well, the ideal mentee should be very enthusiastic, very open minded and um willing to learn. So if you are looking for a mentor, these are things that if your mentor will really appreciate, just show your enthusiasm and always prepare questions. Yeah, this is something I do. So often I ask a lot of questions to my mentors and they really appreciate it. Uh because in this way, our communication works and the best way I require the same thing for my mentees. I always make them think about different aspects of the problem um to ask about different solutions because, you know, there are often so many solutions of a problem, but some are just better than the others. So yeah, it's always great to work with hard working people who try to show their best and to make good results. All right, then I think we will finish the session now and I really hope to see you at other events and reach out to me. Thank you. Oh, yes. Just before I close the session uh at the beginning of I have put some links on the chat. They are about Drupal. Uh If you are new to Drupal.

Uh If you are curious about it, I want to learn uh who uses Drupal and what is suitable for. Um We have now um Drupal nine, the new version of Drupal. It was released just a few days ago. So there is um a wonderful video about this as well. I hope you can check them later. Yeah. I have provided the slides, so I think we have covered it up. I wish you all the best and see you soon. Bye.