On November 29, 2018, Kardan University hosted the first Google DevFest event in Afghanistan, which was organized by Google Developers Group (GDG) community.
At the event, which is the biggest Google tech conference in Afghanistan and lasted from 08:00 am till 04:00 pm, more than 200 developers, programmers, and technology enthusiasts participated to talk and exchange their ideas related to latest technologies.
More than 20 students and employees of Kardan University also participated to get an insight in to modern technology and share their ideas and experiences with other participants.
Discussions and Workshops
Experts in the latest software development, UI/UX designing, web development, and tech teaching shared their knowledge and experience with the attendees. Workshops on different technologies were conducted by trainers, teachers, and developers in four different fields for specific groups of attendees who were interested in those areas. The four fields were:
• Android Track
o Game Development for Android (Dr. Yama Ramin)
o Google APIs’ for Android (Shahir Hossaini)
• Firebase Workshop
o Building a Chat Application (Ebadullah Amini)
• Web Development
o Search Engine Optimization SEO (Shamsuddin Mohammad Wali)
o Amazon Web Services & Cloud Programming (Mustafa Wahrez)
• Flutter
o Introduction to Flutter Codelab (Sami Nazari)
Topics discussed by Guest Speakers
Expert speakers invited to the event shared their ideas and experience on the following topics:
• Idea to App
By Hasibullah Sahibzada
A Software Developer working with Quintly GmbH Company in Germany, Mr. Sahibzada talked about the combination of React.JS + Firebase by which single page Apps are made.
• Successful and Disastrous App Launches
By Sher Shah Rahim
Mr. Rahim currently serves as the CEO of Intellectual Applications and Products and has extensive expertise in software design, architecture, mobile application development and block-chain technologies.
He talked about his own venturing in to the programming arena and the applications he has developed so far; including Hesab Pay (payment solution), AfghaNet (ISP), Buber (ride-hailing service) and One Store (multi-vendor platform).
• Implementing Firebase
By Mustafa Ehsan Alokozay
Mr. Mustafa Ehsan Alokozay is a software developer by profession. Currently he is working as ERP Development Lead at NETLINKS. At this event he discussed the implementation of Firebase technology.
• Self-taught Developer
By Yama Ramin
Dr. Yama Ramin is a self-taught software developer who has been developing outstanding apps and games for the past 15 years. He has been Head of Computer Science Department at SINA College of Higher Learning, Indian-Multinational-NIIT Center Head and Head of Computer Science Department at Aria University. Dr. Ramin shared his lifelong experience in developing games and medical apps.
• Material Design
By Niyaz M. Khairy
Mr. Khairy is the founder of ZerOne Magazine, the first technology related e-magazine in Afghanistan. He has worked as graphics designer for Raz, Bazkhat, Awezha and Rana TV. He now works as UI and graphics designer at Saawis.
In his part, he talked about Material Design which helps you make beautiful products, faster. Material is a design system backed by open-source code that helps teams build digital experiences and beautiful User Interfaces.
• Dari Text Summerizer for Natural Language Processing (NLP)
By Mursal Ghori
Ms. Mursal Ghori is a senior student at Kabul University, She is researching about machine learning, NLP (Natural Language Processing) and deep learning projects. She is working on a text summarizer for Dari language. She introduced her project which was working as an automatic summarizer of Dari text.
Computer Science is a field which is continuously updating and in much less period of time new technologies get introduced. DevFest provided the opportunity for students, developers, software engineers and technology enthusiasts to learn and get an insight in to today’s latest technologies used to program and develop web, mobile, desktop, and cloud based applications. Such events increase the technology awareness in participants and motivate them to seek and learn new things.