Students of science and technical departments of North South University were imparted tech know-how needed for flourishing their future career at a seminar held at NSU on Saturday.
Titled ‘Idea Generation’, the seminar was organised by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) of NSU and cordially supported by NSU ACM Student Chapter and Bangladesh Innovation Forum. The aim of the seminar was to bring students into direct contact with the tech industry personnel and employers.
It was a kick-off event to be followed by much anticipated event - ‘NSU ACMSC Innovation Challenge.’
Experts from different sectors of tech-based industries, including Shaikh Wahid, MD and CEO of Leads Corporations Limited; Monir Hosen, chairman of Creative IT Institute; Rashedul Mazid, CEO of Raise IT Solutions Ltd, and Ershadul Hoque, founder and CEO of Rise Up Labs, were present at the event
Ariful Hasan Opu, founder of Bangladesh Innovation Forum, also graced the occasion.
Radio Foorti, StudentBD24.com, daily sun and Charismatic were media partners of the event.
The event commenced with the speech of Shaikh Wahid who has over 25 years of expertise on tech industry under his belt. He gave the students precious advice on both understanding the market and skill development.
Speaking on the occasion, he said, “After residing in the US for many years, I came back to Bangladesh to do something for the benefit of my country.”
He suggested that students should travel abroad if they wish to acquire knowledge and skills, but deep down, they must retain patriotic feeling and come back home for using the expertise gained abroad for the benefit of the country.
“Work on contemporary ideas that are new and reasonable. We have an innovation team in our firm who are always doing research on artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Being updated is very important for a tech entrepreneur. Success may not happen overnight. Be consistent and you will surely find it,” he advised the NSU students.
Monir Hosen, chairman of Creative IT Institute, shared with the audience some anecdotes which included his personal struggle.
“To be an entrepreneur you may have to face a number of challenges. But you should always remain committed and confident.” Hosen laid emphasis on looking for feasible ideas and opportunities.
“I had once visited a disabled person who was both deaf and dumb. After studying him, I found his enthusiastic nature and quick ability to learn anything. I taught him graphic designing and 3D which he fared well. Now in my company, we have 20 such disabled people! There is some inherent skill in everyone. You could take this as an opportunity and work on improving those skills.”
He suggested that students should cultivate their knowledge in a single field and go into the depth of it to make a successful career.
“You should not be a jack-of-all-trades without being a master of at least one. At Creative IT we strive for precise skills. Around 20,000 experts have been trained here till now,” he said.
Inspiring students to be innovative, Rashedul Mazid said, “We wanted to do something in Bangladesh which nobody had ever done before. We began working on programmatic advertising. It proved to be a grand success. We have also generated RITS browser- Bangladesh’s first browser.
When we made it, a question arose in our mind - why should people use our browser when giants Chrome and Mozilla already existed in the market? So we enhanced our idea with features such as tap automation and live TV. Currently, people in 196 countries are using this browser.”
Meanwhile, Ershadul Hoque from Rise Up Labs, spoke about the need for feasible ideas.
“Sometimes you may not even need to think of something new. Take Yahoo for example. Even though Google came after Yahoo, it is far trending whereas Yahoo’s business has only been declining. You could use an existing idea and enhance it. Start with small steps. Make a prototype and do some market research. Finally, go for implementation when you know you are ready.”
Rise Up Labs has created the popular Mina game app - a Unicef project. They have also made an IOS game which has been one of the most popular games created in Bangladesh generating around 15 million downloads.
Ariful Hasan Opu motivated the students with a parable. “Think of a swimmer who needs to swim 200 feet and has already crossed 180 feet but gives up. Our life is like that. You should believe in yourself and success will surely come to you.”
In the seminar, there was a question-answer session where the speakers solved the problems of many such aspiring tech experts and tech entrepreneurs. A short film on NSU ACMSC Innovation Challenge Season 1 and Season 2 was also screened.