MSDN Community News & Events

Islamic University of Technology (IUT) has signed MSDNAA agreement

Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. and Islamic University of Technology (IUT) have signed MSDNAA agreement today. Islamic University of Technology at Dhaka, Bangladesh commonly known as IUT is a subsidiary organ of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing fifty seven member countries from Asia, Africa, Europe and South America.

IUT is basically an educational and research institution offering a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate academic programmers conducted in the fields of engineering, computer science & information technology and teacher training. It also offers knowledge and skill updating and upgrading short and special courses as needed by the Member States. IUT also undertakes technological and industrial research projects, promotes technical cooperation, exchanges technical know-how and disseminates basic information of development of human resources as co-focal point under UN-OIC collaboration among the Member States of the OIC. IUT ensures coordination between its objectives with other national and regional institutions of the Islamic countries as well as with international institutions. It also undertakes advisory and consultancy services for Government, International Bodies, Foundations and allied Organizations.

Prof. Dr. M. Imtiaz Hossain, Vice Chancellor, IUT signed the agreement on behalf of IUT. Dr. Imtiaz mentioned on his speech how IUT and its students will be benefited through the alliance with Microsoft.

Omi Azad, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. did 3 presentations-

1. Power of Students – How Students can be a part of technology to change the world and how Microsoft can help them through its community commitments.
2. MSDNAA Program Info – Introduction to MSDNAA program, how students can access Software, Tools, Platforms, and Operating Systems from Microsoft for free of cost through ELMS.
3. Live@Edu – How Microsoft can host IUT’s email on its cloud and give countless features and benefits for online collaboration.

Approximately 1200 students were present in IUT auditorium, during the ceremony.

Aloashbei Bootcamp

What will the world be without innovation? How would things be if someone did not dare to take the first step to pave the way for future generations? I think we all understand the need for innovative ideas to come forward, or the need to create opportunities for these ideas to become reality. We have seen time and time again, that if given the opportunity the human race has the habit to exceed expectation, and deliver on the goods that can help improve the way we live.

Aloashbei is the first ever Mobile Application Development Community in Bangladesh, initiated by the partnership of Microsoft & Grameenphone. There is currently over 3100+ members in this community, sharing knowledge and building mobile applications. Microsoft & Grameenphone have recently declared the first ever Mobile Application Development Contest bearing Cash Prizes of 1 Million BDT, an additional 500K BDT for the 1st prize winning developer towards starting his own company if his application is chosen to be commercialized, and also a chance for the top 5 winning applications to be commercialized to the 23million Grameenphone subscribers.

As Knowledge sharing will play a vital role in the development of this community, Microsoft & Grameenphone arranged a Developer Get-together on the 17th of July 2010. The main purpose of this Bootcamp/Get-Together was to nurture the developers to create better applications, and share knowledge of the industry and to bridge the gap between the developers and the market.
Over 300+ highly motivated developers attended the full day event and shared their ideas and listened to the discussions from motivational presenters of Microsoft (DE, MVPs, etc), Grameenphone (Tech Team, Project Team, Etc) & Industry (Entrepreneurs, Developers, Etc). Even the top developers of the community were invited to give presentations and share their experience of development on this platform. In total there were around 14 presentations in 2 parallel sessions over the duration of the event. As this event was arranged to be informal, the developers felt at home in the surrounding, and did not feel shy to fire all their questions to the presenters and also approach them during intervals. The response of the event was great, and the developers requested that this type of initiative be a part of regular a routine. This is reflected in all the forum posts at www.aloashbei.com

Event Summary:

• Around 300 developers took part
• 14 interactive sessions on application development presented by 10 industry experts
• Event concluded with a 1 hour interactive session. Topics focused in discussion:
  • One on-going contest
  • Application commercialization
  • Platform related technical issues
• Project team collected insights of developers’ capability, engagement and motivation towards Aloashbei mobile application development
• No of unique visitors has been significantly increased after the get-together (Around 400 to 750 per day)
• Some of the developers requested for extension of contest time line