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Official blog of Bangladesh Open Source Network

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Open House Day Starts on 25th April with JoomShaper Visit

Bangladesh Open source Network (BdOSN) started celebrating International Girls in ICT Day 2017 on 21st April 2017.

Along with other programs to celebrate the occasion, ICT Open House Day (Seeing is Believing) is one of them that aims to help the women to be introduced with the ICT companies and organization.

On 25th April, the first visit was at JoomShaper, one of the leading Software Companies. There were 8 visitors in total visited the place.

The Founder & CEO of JoomShaper Mr. Kawshar Ahmed explained how he started his company with the visitors. He also shared with the girls that he is currently looking for an experienced & skilled worker for his team and he shared the opportunity of women to work in such fields.

Mr. Rayhan the technical writer of JoomShaper gave  a brief about how to be technical writer & all the things.

There were participants from AIUB, BRAC University and national university. Jesira Sultana from AIUB shared her opinion quoting that the visit was very effective for her. She had seen the real environment of a software company that she dreams to build her career in. Umme Hanie Esha from National University was very excited sharing that ‘ I never have visited any IT company but being here today made me very motivational to build my career in the IT field.

Farhana Sharmin Tithi, the coordinator of the visit from BdOSN expects that the visit will have create an effect on the participants’ views and planning of an IT company. Arranging such future session could bring more girls in the ICT fields, she expects. 

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Ruby Conference held at Dhaka

On 22nd April RubyConf Bangladesh 2017 was arranged by Ruby Community Bangladesh at University Grant Commission Auditorium, Dhaka. Around 150 developers have participated in this conference. On this daylong program 10 tech talks was presented by expert rubyists. Nascenia & BdREN were gold sponsor of the conference & BDOSN assisted as partner.

 


Experts discussed about different frameworks of Ruby, especially Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails is a popular full stack web application development framework, which allows us to launch a web application really fast. Popular products like airbnb.com, slideshare, Github are developed using Ruby on Rails. Biyeta.com, ishkul.com are one of few sites in Bangladesh that are built using this framework.

Judging from the eagerness & enthusiasm of the participants, undoubtedly Ruby on Rails is emerging as a popular framework in Bangladesh. The objective of the program was to develop network among Ruby community & to encourage new programmers.

In future, the organizer RubyBD wants to arrange the program at a larger scale.

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International Girls in ICT Day 2017 Kicks Off on 20th April in Bangladesh

International Telecommunication Union celebrates "International Girls In ICT Day" with it connected countries to motivate the girls and women about ICT and ICT career. Every year the day is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of April. But in Bangladesh, it is celebrated throughout the whole month spreading the range of ICT working areas in girls and young women. The celebration of International Girls in ICT Day kicks off this year with a seminar at Dinajpur Women's College, Dinajpur on 20th April 2017. The IT Solution Dinajpur was the organizing partner, and organized by Dinajpur Women's College Teacher Monurunjon. Ms. Nahida Parvin chief executive officer of IT Solution coordinated the seminar in  Dinajpur.

Bangladesh Open Source Network's program officer Sarmin Kabir Said "This year the celebration has been spreaded to Dinajpur, Rangpur, Chittagong, and Rajshahi. There will be Career talks on how girls can join in ICT, Roundtable meeting on how a large number  of girls can be interested in ICT, visiting ICT Companies, Quiz and Contest." "Besides some of eligible women will be placed in the internship" said Sharmin Kabir.

Noted that Bangladesh Women In Technology is the co-organizer of this celebration. Jenex, Zoomshaper, Binary Image and chakri dot com are patronizing the celebration this year.

To know more about it please visit http://girlsinict.bdosn.org/ . To organize on your own campus please email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

ছোট হলেও কেমন করে জানি জানতাম যে ক্যান্সার খুব ভয়ঙ্কর একটা কিছু! ড্রয়িংরুমে বসে টিভি দেখছিলাম। ভেজা কিছু উপলব্ধি করে যেইনা বাথরুমে গেলাম, কমোডে বসতেই সাথে সাথে দেখলাম কমোডের পানিসব লাল টকটক হয়ে গেলো। কোনরকমে নিজেকে সামলিয়ে একদৌড়ে চলে গেলাম আব্বুর কাছে। আব্বুর কোলে ঝাঁপিয়ে পড়ে বলতে লাগলাম, ‘আমার তো ক্যান্সার হয়েছে।আমি তো আজকেই মরে যাবো। আব্বু দেখলো জামার পেছনে লালদাগ। আম্মুও বাসায় ছিলেন না।আব্বু হয়তো বুঝতে পারছিলেন না কি বলবেন।কিন্তু আজো তার চোখের চাহনির কথা মনে হলে এক অসহায় বাবার নির্মম চেহারার কথা মনে পড়ে বুকের কোথায় যেন চিনচিন করে।

ইউল্যাব

International Telecommunication Union celebrates "International Girls In ICT Day" with it connected countries to motivate the girls and women about ICT and ICT career. Every year the day is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of April. But in Bangladesh, it is celebrated throughout the whole month spreading the range of ICT working areas in girls and young women. The celebration of International Girls in ICT Day kicks off this year with a seminar at Dinajpur Women's College, Dinajpur on 20th April 2017. The IT Solution Dinajpur was the organizing partner, and organized by Dinajpur Women's College Teacher Monurunjon. Ms. Nahida Parvin chief executive officer of IT Solution coordinated the seminar in  Dinajpur

Bangladesh Open Source Network's program officer Sarmin Kabir Said "This year the celebration has been spreaded to Dinajpur, Rangpur, Chittagong, and Rajshahi. There will be Career talks on how girls can join in ICT, Roundtable meeting on how a large number  of girls can be interested in ICT, visiting ICT Companies, Quiz and Contest." "Besides some of eligible women will be placed in the internship" said Sharmin Kabir.

Noted that Bangladesh Women In Technology is the co-organizer of this celebration. Jenex, Zoomshaper, Binary Image and chakri dot com are patronizing the celebration this year.

 To know more about it please visit http://girlsinict.bdosn.org/ . To organize on your own campus please email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Featured

NGPC Online Preliminary Test on 8th April

The National Girls Programming Contest 2017 has started offcially today with the Online Preliminary Test here goo.gl/CEXO0G. In response to the online registration form circulated and accepted from March 16 to 31, we got 388 team from 73 universities from all over Bangladesh. 



After the primary selection, we selected 362 teams for the online test and given them the unique ID & Password. The selected 120 teams from this contest will be invited for the national contest designed to be held on the end of this month.

Besides, there will be 5 awareness raising workshop at 5 different universities in Bangladesh staring from 15th and will be continued till 25. 

The Information and Communication Technology Division has been arranging this contest for its 2nd time with the implementation partner Bangladesh Open Source Network and Academic Partner CodeMarshal.

The details can be found here: www.facebook.com.bdosn or http://www.nhspc.org/2017/ngpc/about/.

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National High School Programming Contest 2017 Curtained Down on 8th April

With a colorful and cheerful celebration, the National High School Programming Contest (NHSPC) 2017 has just turned its curtain down on 8th April 2017 at Krishibid Institute of Bangladesh (KIB), Dhaka. A total number of 1200 winners from 16 regions and upozilas participated in the Gala event.

In the morning at 9 of the clock, the ICT State Minister Mr. Zunaid Ahmed Palak of the Information and Communication Technology Division of Bangladesh Government inaugurated the ceremony. There he motivated the young kids participants and shared that by 2021, with the prudent leadership of Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh will be a Digital Country where the present participants will have to lead it towards the global platform.

The programming contest held in two parts; one at IIT, Dhaka University with the senior students and another one is at Daffodil University, Dhaka with the junior participants. The programming quiz and question-answer session were conducted by Munir Hasan, the General Secretary of BdOSN and Lafifa Jamal, the Chairperson of Robotics and Mechatronics Department, Dhaka University.

The closing ceremony of NHSPC-2017 started at 4pm at KIB with the presence of Mr. Zunaid Ahmed Palak, State Minister of the ICT Ministry as Chief Guest, Additional Secretary of the ministry Md. Harunur Rashid, Muhammed Zafar Iqbal Sir from SUST and so on.



110 National Winners were awarded the prizes. They will be getting some residential training on Dhaka from where they will be choosing on their performance basis to perform at the International Informatics Olympiad to be held in Tehran, Iran.

This national competition was implemented by Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) with the judging partner CodeMarshal. The relevant information is available at www.fb.com/nhspc and www.fb.com/groups/nhspc

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Grand finale and prize-giving ceremony of the National High School Programming Contest (NHSPC)

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) division of the government initiated third edition of computer programming contest for school-goers to inspire in computer learning on March 9 and has been completed 16 regional and 3 upazila events in last one month.

Around twenty thousand students participated in the events in Jessore, Khulna, Dhaka, Comilla, Noakhali, Chittagong, Sylhet, Gopalgonj, Patuakhali, Pabna, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Tangail, Mymensingh, Barisal, Saidpur of Nilphamari Singra of Natore and Anowara of Chittagong. The 1,200 winners of the contests will crowd in capital in grade finale.

National-level quiz on programming and award ceremony will be held at Krishibid Institute at Farmegate area and grand finale of programming contest will take place in two different venues of Information Technology Institute of Dhaka University and Daffodil International University.

ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak is scheduled to present at the award ceremony while Additional secretary of ICT Division Harunur Rashid, Prof MuhammdZafor Iqbal, BUET Prof Mohammad Kaykobad and Bangladesh Open Source Network General Secretary MunirHasan attended in different sessions in the day-long event.

Regarding the event, ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak said Bangladesh has taken different initiative to skilled up human resources in computer programming as demand of coder has been increased in pace of time.

“Programming contest at high school level brought a difference experience where we found the unsung coding talents across the country can triumph title if they being nursed well. The contest became a platform of the little plants in programming in Bangladesh,” Palak said.

The junior minister also informed that the Bangladesh team of International Informatix-2017 to be held in Tehran in Iran will be selected from the national winners of the NHSPC-2017.

BDoSN General Secretary Munir Hasan said Bangladesh need ‘a large number’ of programmers to lead the technology-based state in future and NHSPC only contribute to pave the way for young programming talents.

There has been using the international automotive judge engine Code Martial and real time update of the event are published on social media and official internet address of www.nhspc.org.

It’s should be mentioned that ICT division of the government has been organizing the national level contest to develop world-class programme from Bangladesh to lead future challenges. Bangladesh Computer Council and BDoSN are associates while computer science departments of different universities role as local host.  

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NHSPC Regional Camp in Rangpur

Around 900 students from different schools in Rangpur participated in the regional National High School Programming Contest (NHSPC) arranged at Begum Rokeya University Rangpur on 14th March 2017. To create a programming awareness among the school children, the ICT Division of Bangladesh has been arranging this camp since the last two years.

However, the contest was categorized into two parts: programming and quiz. 69 participants were announced as winners who were handed over certificate and medal by Md. Shorfuddin Ahmed Jhontu, Mayor of Rangpur City Corporation and Md. Saiful Rahman Saif, the additional superintendent of Police, Rangpur.

The vice-chancellor of the university Professor Dr. A.K.M Nur-un-Nabbi encouraged the participants with his good words and urged them to be the leaders of the digital world.

The ICT Division of Bangladesh Government has arranged this initiative for its third time to popularize computer programming among the school children. The winners from the regional contests will participate in the National contest and after a series of selection from there; the students will be awarded to participate in the International Informatics Olympiad.

Bangladesh Open Source Network is the implementation partner while Code Marshal is the judging partner of National High School Programming Contest 2017. 

To learn more about the programming contests, please visit www.nhspc.org or https://www.facebook.com/nhspcbd/  

Research on Building Skilled Stuffs for Call Centers (Bangla) with Appropriate Languages and Training

Language and communication barriers are some common problems for the BPO industry in Bangladesh. It has also been found in some recent studies that if we can emphasize on the ‘call center jargon’, the call centers agents' communication will be more easier and convenient. There are some contents available on the internet but these are not enough to meet our contextual problems. So, it needs to study from the baseline of the usage and demand of the respective language and develop a complete and contextual guide.

In this circumstance, we need to identify the language barriers and develop a suitable discourse for the abovementioned group of people. Keeping that in mind, we are conducting a thourough research in association with the ICT Dividion of Bangladesh Government in the related fields aiming to develop a proper content that would be effective to create a resourceful staffs and harness the development of BPO in Bangladesh.

Data Collection: Call Center Visit & Focus Group Discussion

We visited 4 call centers located in Dhaka named- FIFO Tech, Winmill Bangladesh, My Outsourcing Limited and Genex Infosys.

At the FIFO Tech, two of us visited and stayed there for one and thirty minutes while we were busy with the observation, recording and taking notes on the conversation the stuff were having with the customers/clients on other side of the headphones.  The stuffs made all outbound calls while they were taking guidelines from a written script on screen.

On the other hand, during our visit for one and twenty minutes at the Winmill Bangladesh, we observed both inbound and outbound calls and followed the similar tools to record the raw data.

Moreover, in the My Outsourcing Limited, we observed 10 inbound calls and took notes the necessary. We arranged a FGD with 7 females and 1 male where the participants discussed with the challenges they faced initially and the lacking should be met up soon. They have been in this service for 7 month to more than one year and thus we have got a different opinion from them. (See the attachment C for FGD questions). We also conducted a FGD at Genex Infosys in participation of 7 male employees there. Along with one Assistant Training Manager and one Assistant Quality Assurance Manager, there were 5 call center agents who are in this job for the last 3-4 years.

In the inbound calls, the stuffs were attending a call on demand and continuing the conversation based on the client’s queries.

The purpose of the visit was to observe the real conversation between the call centers stuff and the customer/ client. This enriched our understanding of the practical discourse in a call centers.

Apart from call center visit & FGD, we have analyzed call centers audio files, studied literatures and met with linguistics to get an insightful data on this. However, we hope successfully completion of this research would be a potential resource for BPO industry and help it to take to the next level. 

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Programming Regional Camp at Pabna & Dinajpur

It was a cheerful ending with around 2,000 school children who participated in the National High School Programming Contest Regional camp at Pabna University of Science and Technology and Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science & Technology University on 13th March 2017.

Professor Dr. Al-Nakib Chowdhury, the Vice-Chancellor of Pabna University of Science and Technology and Professor Md. Abul Kashesm, Vice-Chancellor of Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science & Technology University inaugurated the camp in the morning.

The programming contest was held in two categories while the ICT Quiz was in total three categories. 70 participants from Dinajpur and 54 from Pabna were announced as winners and they were handed over the gifts by the present guests. Before, they answered many interesting and challenging questions regarding programming and ICT  asked by the little participants.  

 The ICT Division of Bangladesh Government has arranged this initiative for its third time to popularize computer programming among the school children. The winners from the regional contests will participate in the National contest and after a series of selection from there; the students will be awarded to participate in the International Informatics Olympiad.

Bangladesh Open Source Network is the implementation partner while Code Marshal is the judging partner of National High School Programming Contest 2017. 

To learn more about the programming contests, please visit www.nhspc.org or  https://www.facebook.com/nhspcbd/  

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NHSPC Regional Programming Contest 2017 Held in Rajshahi, Khulna and Jessore

Computer programming is going to be the best resource to change the world in the coming days. To be a skilled programmer, one needs to practice it from the very beginning of his/her life. A student must learn coding as mandatory as it is taken for Bangla, English and Science.

After the successful completion of NHSPC 2015 and 2016, this time the arrangement is going to be in a bigger scale around the country. Already the regional programming contests have been started all over Bangladesh. For example, the contests have been arranged on 9th, 10th and 12th March in Jessore Science and Technology University, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology and Rajshahi University respectively. Around 3,000 school children participated in the quiz contests. Professor Mohammad Abdus Sattar, the Vice-Chancellor of Jessore University, Professor Mohammad Alamgir, the Vice-Chancellor of Khulna University, Pro-vice-chancellor Professor Chowdhury Sarwat Jahan, the Chancellor Dr. Rafiqul Alam Beg from Rajshahi Science and Technology University were present in the opening and closing days.

The students studying in class 6 to class 12 actively participated in programming quiz and programming contest. 203 participants got selected for the national programming contest.

The ICT Division of Bangladesh Government has arranged this initiative for its third time to popularize computer programming among the school children. The winners from the regional contests will participate in the National contest and after a series of selection from there; the students will be awarded to participate in the International Informatics Olympiad.

Bangladesh Open Source Network is the implementation partner while Code Marshal is the judging partner of National High School Programming Contest 2017.