I have been learning to program for a couple of months outside school using some great online resources including MIT Open CourseWare and the O'Reilly School's Python course.<p>I have a ton of ideas for small and large apps and programs that I would like to develop.<p>While the current courses and tutorials are excellent, I feel that I need more specific and advanced skills for the programs I am creating and I would also like to fast track my Python learning.<p>Therefore I am looking for a Python expert (it would be nice but not required if they had some knowledge around data retrieval and Django) that could help mentor me and fast-track my learning.<p>Basically I am looking for somebody who could answer my questions via email/Skype and point me in the right direction from time to time.<p>The amount of help would of course be down to the individual mentor's time constraints.<p>While I'm not be any means an advanced programmer yet, I would be willing to work extremely hard at improving my skills and of course also give something back to my mentor.<p>I'm not sure what as a mentor you would like in return for your time, but I would be willing to program for you (when I am at a sufficiently advanced level), offer some cash, give you equity in individual projects or all projects created over the time you mentor me or SEO services.<p>I am currently doing part-time work as an SEO for a couple of companies and the main reason for learning to program is to make possible my project to disrupt the SEO industry (see: www.theopenalgorithm.com for basic details).<p>If this sounds like something you would be interested in please contact me at mark@theopenalgorithm.com or feel free to reply here with any questions you may have.<p>Thanks in advance for your help.
Have you considered using stack overflow? It's a great way to have access to mentors and people to help you and if you're working in a particular domain, you will have experts to help you. With one single mentor you're stuck with only what they know.
If you're learning to program from scratch, you really need to start with Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way" <a href="http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/" rel="nofollow">http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/</a> . This is going to be much better for you than the MIT and the O'Reilly stuff.
Ive been working with python/django for about 6 months now so i wouldnt call myself an expert but i understand where youre coming from and im willing to help you out. How best to contact you?