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Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) organized various events in Sylhet and Dinajpur to bring women forward for the equality of women in information technology. A total of 5 programming camps, 3 ICT camps and 3 job preparation hands-on training workshops were held at various institutions in Sylhet and Dinajpur to increase women's participation in the technology workforce by creating women's interest and skill development. This huge event started on September 14 and September 22 with an ICT camp in Dinajpur.

Theoretical knowledge is not enough for making a good professional career. With an aim to go beyond academics, industrial visit provides student a practical perspective on the world of work. Following the same lines students of some renowned universities of the capital Dhaka got an opportunity of meeting the most popular company Rokomari.com.

Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) has arranged an exposure visit on 3 September,2019 with 6 female students of different universities. Rockmarie.com is an online based e-commerce company. A familiar name to thousands of book lovers across the country. There are numerous young people working in different departments of this organization.

All students need to experience the world of work, particularly work of the future, long before they leave their student life. In our country, it is commonly seen that students are almost always engaged in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge in the life of education. Or pay attention to study end. But they are not aware of what to do when this part is paid off. Rather, at the end of their education life, they fall into a confused state where they do not understand what to do. 

They take time to acquire the skills they need in the workplace after their student life for which they do not have enough time. Although male students can overcome this random situation in a very short time, it is not an easy path for female students. Because they have surround impedance. It is often seen that many girls drop out after their education life because of this condition cannot be overcome. Because they are unable to prepare themselves, they are not much visible in the workplace.

From this thinking, a hands on job preparation workshop "A Dream to Guide" was organized on July 27 and 28 July in the initiative of Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN). The workshop was organized in the office of BDOSN with a total of 11 graduate women students. This workshop provides hands-on training on all the skills and concepts a female student needs to have before place herself on the workplace.

Through this workshop, students get an idea of ​​the soft skills they need to get their dream job. Also find out how much digital literacy can help with their work. From applying for a job, to face an interview board which facts should be kept in mind also denoted in the workshop. In addition to the CV writing methodology, the job application process is discussed with the students.

The workshop was organized under BDOSN's three-year project "Enabling Sustainable Development Goals of Bangladesh for 2030-BdOSN". The BDOSN project will assist women in preparing themselves for workplace by conducting several workshops.

About 1,000 computer graduates come out every year in our country. Not everyone wants to be a programmer. Thousands of students study in a 4-year graduation course in computer science. Out of them, only 3,000 students come into programming. Where the number of female programmers is absolutely negligible. Which is difficult to express with percentage. But by 2020, around a million knowledge workers in the world will be needed, most of them will programmers. 

However, the situation has improved somewhat. Women are currently coming forward in programming. Programming among women is going to target a positive concept. The participation of women in various competitive programming contests is notable. Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) celebrated 50 years on the moon on July 23, 2019. A total of 185 students from various institutions across the country participated in an online programming contest where there were about165 female students.

Crest and certificate were awarded to the first five winners. Tahneema Chowdhury, a runner-up at Contest, said that a competitive programming contest will help women programmers to be master on programming at home. For women programmers who want to work with programming but do not have the same opportunities for social disruption, Online Contest is an easy solution for building skills. She advises all programming interested women to participate in the Contest on such an online platform. Tahnima writes her feelings on her blog-

https://tahanima.github.io/2019/08/30/girls-programming-contest-by-bdosn/?fbclid=IwAR3131w5WQB-A-UWodETOmWpvFT-1ueA1-b42RYGOgEtJuoZyIMjMEWlwdE

In this age of free information flow, computer programming is one of the most relevant occupations. Although the profession is creative and complex, the diversity in this profession is much greater. Because so far, a total of 701 programming languages ​​have been created. It is possible to work as a programmer in any one language. However, a skilled programmer usually knows and uses 3-5 languages. The profession is very popular and exciting for high income, flexible time and work freedom. Many people think that programming can be taken by the boys as a profession or this field is for them. But no, girls are also coming forward in this profession. And in this case they have many opportunities to do well.

We are currently living in an era where a country with no knowledge of modern technology such as robotics, sophisticated intelligence, machine learning, IoT (Internet of Things), Big Data, etc. will be far behind. There is no substitute for robotics and artificial intelligence to simplify our everyday lives. The use of robotics and artificial intelligence is increasingly rise day by day. With the concept of extending robotics to remote areas of our country, Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) has celebrated Technology Week at Bhangura Jarina Rahim Girls’ High School in Pabna. For the first time girls of this school got an idea about robots. It was a six-day event started on 27 August and ended up on 1 September.

At the first attempt students completed the coding of the line follower robot. As a visible success of Technology Week, students showed their line-follower robots on a robot truck. Features of Arduino, activation of the Inter-school and Inter School-College Programming Competition, and some preliminary sessions in Programming Language C were also shared with the students in this Week. The students of Jarina Rahim Girl's High School have been working on Robot Gathering and will be participating in the 2nd Bangladesh Robot Olympiad national event to be held at TSC of University of Dhaka on September 6-7. In addition, a team from the school will take part in the Standard Chartered Bank-Prothom Alo Inter-School and College Programming Competition. 

It should be noted that, Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) arranged a program titled ‘Obak Kutuhole' earlier in this year. Where some high school girls had come to Dhaka for two days for the first time in their lives. During these days, they visited various historical places and establishments and technology based companies in Dhaka i.e. Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, National Science and Technology Museum, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theater, Dhaka University Area, Central Shaheed Minar, DBC Television Center, Nagarik Television and Information and Communication Technology Institute- Zenex Infosys, Kazi IT, Grameen Phone, Joomshaper. The main objective of this program was to unveil the possibilities of science and technology in front of the girls of remote villages.

Bhangura Jarina Rahim Girls’ High School students participated in Obak Kutuhole

In the first phase of Obak Kutuhole, four students of Jorina Rahim Girl's High School in Pabna Bhangra and Shaheedpur martyred intellectual Humayun Kabir High School in Vedarganj of Shariatpur returned to the village with a fresh passion for science. This Technology Week is organized to encourage the students in science and technology from there school life.

If you have a clear idea of ​​what the work environment might be like before entering the workplace or where you can apply your skill effectively that you have acquired in your life, then the battle for entry into a career can be very relaxing. To that end, the Bangladesh Open Source Network organized an event called "Seeing is Believing" where undergraduate students get a scope to visit various institutions and job exposures. In its continuation, on September 3, some female students from different institutions of the capital visited Rokomari.com.

Rockmarie.com is an online based e-commerce company. A familiar name to thousands of book lovers across the country. There are numerous young people working in different departments of this organization. Students visited the institute to learn about the scope of work with them and observe their working methods. Rakmari.com operates the work of delivering the book in different parts of the country, sitting in this office in Dhaka. Mirza Zahurul Islam, who works at Rakmari.com and Bani, who is also a employee of their customer service, shows the details of how every employee of the organization is working after reaching the order of a book until it reaches a customer. The company, which provides 100 percent service in 50 districts of the country, said they serve customers 24 hours a day on 7 days a week. There are separate sections for each job and each category is linked to each other's work. When asked about job opportunities at Rockmarty.com, Bonnie said that all the services of customer service, branding and outlining are available for girls. The institute’s activities inspire the students.

It would be exciting to work with so many books around, said Rabia Aktar, a student of Dhaka University. Kaniz Fatema Shehrin, a 4th-year student of BBA at Bangladesh University of Business and Technology. She thinks that this e-commerce company is very much associated with her educational life. She is amazed at how such an online-based company is operating seamlessly. She pledged to work with Rokomari.com after finishing her studies.

Sadia Kabir Dina experienced her first IoT job attachment

As the globe is moving towards development, IoT is the most driving issue that increases efficiency and effectiveness in the existing system. Most of the developing countries are adopting this Internet of Things where Bangladesh is lagging behind. Our ignorance about IoT surprised Sadia Kabir Dina, a student of Computer Science and Engineering of Rajshahi University of Engineering Technology. It aroused her interest in IoT and determined her to contribute in this sector. She started her first job attachment in Inovace- which is one of the latest tech startups in Bangladesh, focusing on IT sector, especially on embedded systems design- software development; and relentlessly working on the advancement of IoT in our country.

“I made a decision to contribute somehow in establishing the impacts of IoT in Bangladesh and for that the very first job was to educate myself and be compatible to do some better”.

Before engaging with this job attachment, Sadia has worked on organizing workshops, helping other students making prototypes and so on. She with her two friends wrote their first ever up-to the mark book in Bengali on arduino in 2018. This book was written for making Arduino easier to learn for the teens; which will eventually make IoT familiar among the youth to explore.

 “You know, when you plan to make some new concepts easier to the folks, you need to make enough resources available that are both informative and easy”.

The attachment started in the last half of Ramadan when she was on her vacation. On the first day, she was welcomed by the Managing Director of Inovace. There are four departments in that company. With them Sadia spent her most of the time at the Research and Development department as she thought this was the core of that team. She observed the total work flow from this department and tried to understand their working procedure.

“Any updates from the production are first served here. After that, R&D troubleshooting, analyzing the problem, solving it or giving directions back to them. They suggest necessary upgradation to the software and business department too. On the whole, it seemed to be a perfect bridge among all its branches”.

Team Inovace

During the attachment, I came to know about their-

• products,
• raw materials,
• manufacturing,
• circulation,
• working procedures,
• team management,
• component selection,
• business models,
• firmware and PCB designing,
• system monitoring,
• pricing and revenue,
• policies,
• marketing and branding,
• distributed research and
• Most importantly the challenges they are facing right now!

She asked frequent questions after she was served the details of each components which they used making their products. Sadia thought herself that designing a product and planning to make it great, she needed to understand each of its steps with WHY and WHY NOT?

From the very day she joined them, she knew how to research over a thing with beta testing, how any slight mistakes could affect in PCB designs, how to adapt any new technologies on older versions, how to minimize the loss and so on. Apart from the hardware part, she learned a huge amount of stuffs regarding business models, marketing and mass production. She got a chance to be familiar with the functions of stm 32 and LoRa, as they were doing research on these for the betterment.

“Before joining them, the concept of MQTT and NB-IoT was null to me though it is going to be great soon! I think this is the best part of this attachment that I can work and research over thing with proper guidance anytime beside me”.

She was overwhelmed with satisfaction when she started to express her feelings about her very first job attachment. She said, “This is a challenging factor to work in this environment where people are not easy to IoT products and not ready for paying this to get a better service or lifestyle than this. In this case, though the team dreams for any better service than existing products, they cannot think of going to any mass production”.  She added, “in the attachment what a student want the most is to get the vibes of workplace by working hand-on, learn new things to implement and get the experience that will last long to apply in his/her career. I’ve achieved all these in Inovace along with the opportunity to meet a bunch of talented people and a great team”.

She denoted the importance of having an internship opportunity from student life as it is a great initiative to thrive towards the goal of career. She said, “we should engage ourselves more with these attachments or join as an interns or make our own startups with IoT. ‘Cause it’s time to go on the battle and fight to conquer for the best!

The world is changing fast. Removing CNG - Uber is getting popula. YouTube-TikTalk is running to finish TV-Radio. On such a fast-changing day, Change should be brought in programming education.   A preparatory seminar have been organized in Dhaka.

The seminar titled 'Learn Programming for Future' was held at Dipanpur, at Kataban in the capital at three o'clock on 17 August, 2019 . The seminar was run by Jhankar Mahbub, a popular programming book writer and senior web developer at Nielsen Company in Chicago, USA. 

At the seminar, about 60 programming enthusiasts participated in the seminar.

Jhankar Mahbub discussed about the position and the requirements of programming in the future. He said, "Five to seven years from today, the use of technology will increase in all areas of life. Technology is also associated with creativity. If you cannot improve your skills in line with that technology, then you have to fall behind.

Jhankar Mahbub added, "If someone is stuck in the same place for being the best, the second person who is always trying to take his skills one step further, will one day hit him." Jhunkar Mahboob answers all the questions on the Seminar. Responding to a question about the impact of academic study of programmers in the workplace, he said that skills of programming is one of the main conditions for joining the workplace. Big Companies like Google, Microsoft etc. have chosen those skilled people who are tremendous in problem solving with coding.

Jhangkar Mahbub also said that technology is now getting smarter through artificial intelligence. After some time the use of robots will increase in all tasks. But the human brain also needs to run this robot, which will exploit the robot through programming. Therefore, advanced programming requires skilled manpower to adapt itself to advanced technology.

Munir Hasan, general secretary of the Bangladesh Open Source Network, said that interest in programming should be grown from the school level. Not for just learning, problem solving by coding can be a major challenge for future skilled programmers.

Adorsho Boi has sponsored the seminar.

Grace Hopper Girls’ Programming Camps and ICT Camps have been organized in various institutes of Chittagong to create interest in women and enhance their skills in information technology. A total of 165 students from three institutions of Chittagong have joined this program organized by the Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN). The event started from July 25 and runs till July 27.

Grace Hopper Girls Programming Camp is being held on July 24 at International Islamic University in Sitakunda, Chittagong. A total of 35 female students participated in this camp. Prof. Mohammad Shamsul Alam, a teacher in the computer science and engineering department of the university, and Tanvir Ahsan, president of the IIUC Computer Club were present at the camp. At the end of the camp, students participated in a separate programming contest. Certificates were handed over to the participants in the two contests.

In addition, a hands on Arduino workshop was held at Chittagong Independent University on July 25. A total of 25 female students participated. In the workshop, students use Arduino to make various projects.

Two more activities were conducted in Chittagong under the initiative of Bangladesh Open Source Network. The Basic Internet of Things (IoT) workshop was organized on July 24 at International Islamic University with a participation of 30 students. Attendees at the camp were trained in ten hands-on projects related to Arduino, Raspberry Pi and IoT.

And on 25 July, Chittagong Independent University hosted "Take Back the Tech" on social media and online seminars on how to prevent violence against women in online. About 50 students attended the seminar. Mahbuba Sultana, Chief Coordinator of Bangladesh Open Source Network and Senior Lecturer of Northern University, conducted the seminar. She discussed about personal data storage, information exchange and security assurance on social media. Atikur Rahman, Assistant Professor and Head of Computer Science and Engineering Department, Dr. Asif Iqbal, Associate Professor and Head of Electronics and Telecommunication Department, respected teachers from different departments.

It is noted that the Bangladesh Open Source Network organizes these camps under the project "Enabling Sustainable Development Goals for Bangladesh-SD1GBD" to encourage women in information technology and increase women's participation in the information technology workplace. Manuser Jonno Foundation is monitoring the project overall. Under the three-year project, BdOSN will organize similar camps in different places in the country