Bangladesh has initiated a mission to create locally branded open-source tools for essential web and software development, aiming to reduce costs and time. Volunteer tech enthusiasts have taken the lead in this ambitious project, which officially commenced on Victory Day through a day-long boot camp. Divided into seven groups with 70 teams, participants completed 3% of the mission’s work in just one day.
The camp, held from 10:30 AM to 5:30 PM at a venue in Farmgate, Dhaka, was organized by the Open Source Bangladesh Alliance (OSBD Alliance) to enhance the skills of developers, students, and tech professionals in the country. The day concluded with the distribution of certificates to participants, marking the formal launch of the initiative. Volunteers from diverse ages and professions joined the camp to contribute to the mission.
Certificates were handed to the participants by IT transformational leader Mohammad Mahdi-uz-Zaman, CEO of Loosely Coupled Technologies Firoz Mahmud Zahidur Rahman, and HeadBlocks CEO and machine learning expert Muhammad Asif Atik. Additionally, mentors received crests for their guidance throughout the camp, including Mohammad Hasan Mahfuz, CEO of Link Vision Software Solutions; Mehzab Kamal, Deputy Manager of B-Track Solutions; Syeda Naushad Jahan, COO of Loosely Coupled Technologies; and Mohsina Akter, Assistant Manager of Fiber at Home.
During the camp, participants gained hands-on experience in building cloud-native microservices and headless content management systems (CMS). They also honed their coding skills by engaging in team-based projects and leveraging artificial intelligence to develop integrated solutions. Whenever challenges arose, experts present at the event provided immediate assistance.
Highlighting the broader vision, community manager Mohammad Faruk stated, “Our goal is to transform Bangladesh’s tech sector into an open-source hub. Through this boot camp, we aim to enhance developers’ skills while expanding the country’s open-source community.” Plans for larger workshops in the near future were also announced.
