Do you have any advice as far as testing or contributing to modules or getting deeper perl experience as most of what I do is related to databases, parsing and manipulating data.

What I used to do in my very early days, was go to the CPAN's most recent release list, look for distributions I might have interest in, look for bug tickets, test the interface and see if there was anything small I could do (documentation, testing etc). Another thing is once I began becoming more familiar, I would peruse distributions I was using, and do the same thing. Then I'd review distributions of the authors whom I highly respected and do the same. Slowly, I got to the point where I was fixing major bugs or adding new features. In the end, I built the confidence to start releasing my own distributions, with a whole bunch of knowledge of how I wanted to do things, simply by being exposed to how so many others did them.

I still do monitor the CPAN for new releases, but I don't have the same amount of time to work on others' software anymore (I have a whole lot of my own I do my best at maintaining), but I most definitely will open bug tickets and in some cases, write full blown fixes for problems that I find (especially if the brokenness is in the way of me completing one of my own tasks).

I started looking at others' software once I got to a point in my early Perl days where I just couldn't think of anything to create. It got me involved with other authors, helped me grow using interfaces, and helped me learn a whole bunch about coding in general.

In essence, find a piece of software you think you may like, use the SYNOPSIS code to begin testing, and read the documentation and test out the various functionality. Even submitting a patch for a missing comma is doing something. Slowly, you'll grow in confidence, and others in the community will begin recognizing you for your contributions.

Even something as opening a bug ticket that's well laid out and detailed is a huge thing for a busy author!

-stevieb