WebVR @ IIUC

Greetings Mozillians from around the world!

After a minor absent from blogging, I emerge myself to tell all of you about a fruitful event occurred on 20th January 2017. As we know, ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ have already formed web-based virtual reality event in Dhaka and wanted to spread this new technology to other district. So, the second event authorized in the largest of the eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh; Chittagong. With the help of ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ community, IEEE WIE AG and Computer Club – IIUC together organized an introductory seminar on WebVR at Islamic International University, Chittagong(IICU). Cool fact was seminar specially organized for female students and maximum of them were pretty much enthusiast about webVR.

#WebVRCTG@mozlearn@techspeakers@mozillavr@mozilla pic.twitter.com/ov9oCXRUj6

— SaifIslam (@saifislam804) January 20, 2017

The seminar started by reciting a part from Holy Al-Quran and Then Mrs. Shahnaj Parvin – The Honorable Faculty of Computer Science Department of IIUC gave a basic concept about VR technology. She thanked ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ community to take such an initiatives and then requested to start the seminar. The seminar was full of technical information with hands-on examples and demos. Salman Rahman Desh cover up the whole concept of ‘a-frame’ – a web framework for building virtual reality experience, how to use it, all the basic primitives, entity-component system, basic concept about metaverse, browser supported for webVR, about suitable VR-Box and controllers to use and so no. He highlighted to get basic knowledge on HTML, JavaScript and Computer Graphics for better understanding and for better productivity.

#WebVRCTG@mozlearn@techspeakers@mozillavr@mozilla pic.twitter.com/G8Hg5niByQ

— SaifIslam (@saifislam804) January 20, 2017

After his session I added two more primitives which can display 360 degree images and videos. Then I step-by-step showed the usability of primitives, component and by the help of ‘A-Frame Inspector’ through a project which I’ve been working on.

tech-speaker @Z547Khalid is giving speech on code preview @mozillaBD @MozLearn @mozilla @mozTechSpeakers @aframevr #WebVRctg pic.twitter.com/VkYmVcKbRI

— Sauradeep Dutta (@dutta_sauradeep) January 20, 2017

After that, senior Mozillian and the Honorable Lecturer of IIUC, Md Eftekhar Alam also took session about Mozilla’s mission and vision, his past involvement and activities of Chittagong Mozillians and finally a clear cut idea about contributing to Mozilla. After taking all the sessions, Mrs. Shahnaj Parvin mam gave three phenomenal students(‘Kazi Rifah Noor’, ‘Akefar Islam’ & ‘Jannatul Naim Riva’) for their admirable support and their hard-work for organizing this event. At the end of the event, participants experienced virtual environment through VB Box. We also had 10-minutes Q&A where most of them had questions on how to make dynamic projects, how to make it more interactive and so on.

Q&A session. #WebVrCtg @mozTechSpeakers @MozLearn @mozilla @mozbd pic.twitter.com/iVH8O3bUZw

— Nazmus Shakib Robin (@mozrobin) January 20, 2017

VR project showcasing!! #WebVrCtg @mozTechSpeakers @MozLearn @mozilla @mozbd pic.twitter.com/X9UqO0woI9

— Nazmus Shakib Robin (@mozrobin) January 20, 2017

A huge round of applause to the honorable Faculties and Students of  International Islamic University – Chittagong as well as the members of IEEE IIUC Student Branch WIE Affinity Group and Computer Club – IIUC. And not to forget Mohammad Naim Uddin, he truly support on logistics. From my experience, girls from IIUC showed more enthusiasm than any other varsities on this technical topic(cheers to that!). They have the potential to use it for their own developments. It’s a pleasure to met such eccentric students and I pray that they adopt webVR through self-study.

More Blog: https://goo.gl/fOlT80
Event Photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMqHcCb

The Followup Event of “Tech Speaker”

(First, let’s have a hug around of a pulse for ‘NewsCred, Dhaka’ who again sponsor our event.)

‘Tech Speaker v2.0’ took place on 25th March, 2016 at ‘NewsCred, Dhaka’ which was a followup event of ‘Tech Speaker v1.0’. Before we hive into it, let’s have a recap on what we did so far on previous event.

• On previous event, we learned about Tech Speaker’s objectives, purpose and the importance of regional community.
• We did learn full details on ‘TechSpeakers Curriculum’ and ‘Speaking Tips’.
• Learned to identify ourselves by ‘SWOT analysis’.
• Participated on ‘Team-wise Public Speaking’ and ‘Free Speech’ session.

[Here’s ‘Tech Speaker v1.0’ blog for more details]

In this event, it was fully focused on ‘Storytelling’ method where participants need to present a technological substance which was an essential part of his/her real life on some point.

Describing major problems while speaking

At the beginning of the event, Salman Rahman Desh shared the major mistake that speakers often do unconsciously; which is “um”, ”Ah”, “mhm”, “ooh”, “You Know” while speaking. The only solution is to ‘Cough’ when this happened. Also speaking errors can be solve by taking enough pause, avoid talking too fast, show a little attitude to motivate yourself(Not to Show Off). After that, previous participants team-up with new participants to mentor them about ‘Free Speech’ for around 10 minutes and then they present it with time limitation around 2 minutes. While preparing,  Some of them wrote key-points of their presentation which was a great strategy.

Then, Salman Rahman Desh showed the strategy to prepare the topics, how to select key-points and after that notify participants to prepare for ‘Storytelling’ session. Each participants were fully engaged to take key-points and resource of their selected topics. After lunch, one by one present their 10 minutes speech. A good number of life experience topics were presented such as ‘Impact of Social Media in my life’, ‘Weather Forecasting’, ‘Proper use of Google Hangout’, ‘What I found from Mozilla’, ‘Online Gaming’, ‘First introduce to Internet’ and so on.

Swags!!!

Participants showed much dedication on public speaking and within a few days, they will be ready for formal speech. This sessions will surely develop critical thinking skills, fine-tuning verbal and nonverbal skills and most importantly they will overcome fear of public speaking.

Etherpad Link: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/remo-tech-speaker-v2-0
Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsktF1r5h
Reps Portal: https://reps.mozilla.org/e/tech-speaker-v2-0/

First Ever “Tech Speaker” Event

For the first time ever, ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ with the sponsorship of ‘NewsCred Dhaka‘ organize an event to develop a strong community-driven technical speaker development program called ‘Tech Speaker v1.0‘. But before going further, let me give you a blunt definition of ‘Tech Speaker’.

What is Tech Speaker?
Tech Speaker is a program where a person learns about his/her technical topic of interest, tries to understand basic outlines and elaborately present it to the audience where they get the full scenario of that topic. In simple, Tech Speaker is the one who give speech on tech related topics but that person must carry some skilful speaking qualities to interact with audience. The purpose of this program is to increase developer awareness and adoption of Mozilla products and the Open Web as a platform.

On 11th March 2016, one of Mozilla Bangladesh’s Representative and renowned contributor Salman Rahman Desh took the initiative to build a better tech speaking group in regional community. The event held at ‘NewsCred Dhaka’.

The Participants

It’s a closed event with enthusiasts on public speaking so the participants were like 8 to 10. It was intentionally originated only to get feedback from selected participants about this program. After everyone’s arrival, Salman begins his session by elaborating Mozilla’s new program ‘Tech Speaker’, it’s purposes, outcome, why it is important and of course, what impacts they can push on to Mozilla Bangladesh community.

Explaining ‘Tech Speaker’

After explaining the full plot, he goes ahead with brief discussion on ‘TechSpeakers Curriculum‘ and ‘Speaking Tips‘. He part-by-part explains about content development and speaking practice which is mostly resourceful(You’ll find these content on Mozilla Wiki). Through this context, it manifest how a speaker act at the time of seminar like he/she is a PRO of his/her given topic and how it gains full control on audience’s thinking, how to manipulate through that topic, how to technically avoid deeper questions from geeky audience if you don’t know the answers.

Before he hand over tasks to the participants, he shared a method there a person can sort out his/her true nature through identifying ‘Strength’, ‘Weakness’, ‘Opportunity’ and ‘Threats’ which is called “SWOT ANALYSIS”. The purpose is to team up a 2-member group whose strength might be a cure to one’s weakness. Some participants find speech impediment; some fine fear, nervousness in the middle of presentation; other’s find comfort in making new friends, flexible in public speaking and so on.

After lunch break, participants gave around half an hour to choose a narrow topic and prepare for public speaking session. But before that, he showed a video “TEDx NewYork: How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk” which was hilarious.

Watching ‘TEDx NewYork: How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk’

Then after half an hour, each group present their speech with a time duration of 5 minutes. Other groups gave their feedback on other group’s presentation; what lacking were showing, how it can be improved and so on. And then back-to-back, we had individual ‘Free speech’ on topic which interest most. Everyone get 10 minutes to prepare and present it within 2 minutes. And finally, the event’s over with a group photo.

It was a great experience to learn some tips and tricks on public speaking. This kind of event should be initiated for the benefit of the contributors who already has the presence of mind on speaking. And also I would like to thanks “NewsCred Dhaka” to be a sponsor of this event.

NewsCred Dhaka

And thank you Salman Rahman Desh for launching such kind of event in Bangladesh.

You can see event photos on flickr as well…..

Mozilla Bangladesh Hoodie

From 1998, Mozilla Community pursue their effort to promote and support open web. Their main mission, which is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the web motivates the youth of 21st century to build a platform where everyone is equal. And who shows love to the open web joins to the community as Mozillian and spread the openness to their region. To empower and reward Mozillians by enabling them to be strong advocates, Mozilla Foundation came up with ‘Gear’ concept to make a statement of their dedication to building a better web. As a result, many contributors around the world proudly represent themselves as a part of a big Mozilla project. Since the idea undoubtedly punches its goal, then we thought why not making our own region focused gear?

For last two years, we’ve been regulating to make few t-shirts for regional events. But we could never gather the courage till this month for bigger appeal which is hoodie. Last year though due to no experience, lack of management, communication and material we had to drop the ‘Hoodie’ project off. But this year, we were desperate to make this happen into reality.

Mozilla Bangladesh Hoodie Demo Preview

This blog is all about my conduction on this project and my joyous affection to have it successful.

On the 1st week of November 2015, Mahbub Alam Papun suddenly reminded us about the urgency of Mozilla Bangladesh Hoodie. But we weren’t mentally prepare on making it because of our last year’s failure. Then at the end of the month, Mahir Labib Chowdhury personally consulted with Mahay Alam Khan about the project and came up with a decision that we should at least give it a try.

Later on December, on status I found out that Promi Nahid from ‘Zero Degree Communication’ is going to help us on this project. Mahay Alam Khan summoned me to take the responsibility. I was quite worried and skeptical on doing it because I’ve never contributed on management site. Well I somehow took it!

We did consult with many members who were also involved in this project to help by suggesting or any way possible. After many discussion, we decided the color of the hoodie would be ‘Dark Gray’ and design would be ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ on back and front left chest. We successfully managed to do that. We also managed to have it as a Zip Up Hoodie where zip color is ‘Dark Orange’. How cool is that!

After everything is good to go, I created a form and shared it on social media giving only one week time to fill it up.  Every instruction were given in the form for which everyone didn’t face any major complications. More than 60 order requests came within a week which was astonishing. In fact, people from outside Dhaka were also showing interest on making Hoodies. After the deadline, order for hoodie were submitted to Promi Nahid and within four days, hoodies were completed. Promi Nahid showed us the demo before delivering the whole hoodies to me.

Then my job for delivering hoodies to everyone begins after receiving those from production. Then me and Asif Raihan delivered to them who wanted the delivery service via ‘Sundarban Courier Service’ and maximum of them were from outside Dhaka city. But mainly it took us time to deliver within the Dhaka city because everyone wasn’t free or didn’t match the schedule to meet face-to-face. Finally, it took a week to deliver the whole hoodies.

As I was new about logistics management, I experienced a lot during this project which will come in handy. And honestly speaking! I personally underestimated our effort. I was in peace on that time when everybody was giving selfie with hoodie on social sites. Everyone was satisfied with it. But still I had to face some difficulties but that is nothing to comparing when I see more people were requesting for hoodies.

Even Brian King also appreciate and show the support to ‘Mozilla Bangladesh’ community

On this project, I would like to thank Mahay Alam Khan, Belayet Hossain and Ashickur Rahman Noor for advising and support. I also thank Anisur Rahman for preparing the clip-arts production ready within a very short notice. Again I thank Asif Raihan for helping me to deliver hoodies to outside Dhaka city. And a special thanks to Promi Nahid, we wouldn’t get the best quality hoodie without you.

 

It was a whole new experience and I had fun to do some good for the community. Because like we say, “Doing good is part of our Code.”

BUET Firefox OS app Train, 2015

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, mostly known as BUET is one of the most prestigious public universities for Engineering students in Bangladesh.  A very few number of students from BUET participated in many Firefox OS local workshops and events like Firefox OS App Day, Firefox OS HackFest and so on and showed an enormous potent as well as talent in web developing sector, they showed tremendous effort and quick contact with the knowledge of web literacy. Now, there is no Firefox club at BUET, even if they are planning to have one, have not been acclaimed yet. So, to boost up the thought of establishing a camp of net proficiency and to spread the web of net neutrality, Mozilla Bangladesh organized an app train recently.

“Firefox OS App Train @ BUET” was held on 12th June at CSE department of BUET. Just unlike old days, community introduces a slightly new structure of the training sessions by dividing the sessions into two parts: Hack Session and Make Session where they showed a little bit advanced topics comparing to the previous app trains and workshops.

Hack Session starts at 10:00 am sharp by introducing Mozilla and its missions by Ashkary Rahman. He touched a basic structure of the Firefox OS platform also. The introduction got elaborated and explained by Md. Anisur Rahman on the very next session. They both introduce the contribution areas of Mozilla if the participant wants to contribute on different sectors.

Then again Md. Anisur Rahman briefly described how to have a complete app developing project describing the steps starting from having an app idea, making the wireframe, creating app User-Interface draft and then converting using HTML & CSS, adding functionalities and implementing data storage or any other scripting based backend techniques. He followed the information recorded on MDN page and also provide the link to pursue the direction step-by-step.

He then started creating a demo app to demonstrate the participants of a real life logical steps of an app development project, what he was explaining on the previous session. He stopped on the app UI in HTML, CSS.

After that, Rabby Hossain demonstrate how to add functionality using JavaScript. Then he had a wonderful sessions explaining what the APIs, why and how. For HOW he demonstrated using Firefox OS API i.e. notification and alarm api and implemented that on the demo app. He also introduced the audience of ins and outs of webIDE and the app manifest. He showed list of different api and how to connect it with the app.The Heck Session came to an end with the last session taken by Samia Shafique.

Samia described the idea of having a database to manage data in an app. She introduced the idea of having database on any webapp and chose to present the local storage implementing in the app so that the participants have a practical idea. After the session, she instructed the participants to create groups and to have the Make session started. She then asked the participants to follow the steps as the speakers demonstrated throughout the sessions starting from generating ideas to end up with implementing backend codes.

After Samia’s session there was a break of one and a half hours for lunch and prayer. After the break, Make Session started by assigning mentors to each group. The participants looked quite passionate about their creations. It was quite a surprise that maximum number of participants were eager to make implementing interactive, dynamic apps instead of informative. Mentors were quite communicative and they tried to solve every single issues the participants faced during the procedures. After a long two and a half hours, participants presented their apps. We were quite impressed because every single app has user interactions and some had a few more like storing data, save and manipulation of the previously stored data, push notifications and so on.

And by the end of the app train, we again gathered to have our traditional way of ending, group photo. Though very few participants had leave an hour early due to some personal urgencies, the app train was an awesome inspirational event for me to have more in near future.

For more photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHskdt3Hwh https://flic.kr/s/aHske4MsN6

Get all the plannings, meeting and outcomes of the event here in etherpad: https://bangladesh.etherpad.mozilla.org/BUET-App-Train-2015