SELISE Conducts Mobile Application Development Training for Bhutanese ICT Officials

The land of the thunder dragon eagerly awaited the arrival of SELISE’s very own Farhana, where she was all set to conduct a three week long training program. Arranged by the Department of Information Technology and Telecom (DITT), this marked the first time Bhutan has been a part of  a training program of this scale. SELISE was approached by Tshering Cigay Dorji, CEO of Thimphu Tech Park (TTPL), to conduct the program and SELISE couldn’t have been more excited to be a part of this initiative.

Farhana Haque is working as a Senior Software Engineer, who has been with SELISE for over three years now. She also leads the Mobile Team in the Dhaka premises, and naturally was the best person to take on the mantle of a trainer.

In Bhutan, she had a class of 21 students- all of them who are current ICT officers, ready to learn more about Android Application Development. Over the course of three weeks, Farhana conducted a crash course that covered all the basics- starting from UI development, code functionality, to topics such as network integration and deployment. A lot of focus was given on building the basics and ensuring the best practices when it comes to developing an application on Android.

“Personally, it was an adventure for me to fly out to another country and talk about something I have been doing in a formal setting. My class was a very friendly one, and it helped me to connect with them easily. Their enthusiasm was very good to see, and I am sure that if the learning is followed up and the basics are strengthened, there is a lot of potential in Bhutan.”, says Farhana.

The Thimphu Tech Park is already a familiar home for SELISE, and has been the base of operations for the Swiss company since 2014. The Bhutan lab already has 8 Bhutanese nationals working for SELISE, and the family is expected to grow in 2017. Such a training program, which may as well have been the first of many, was another wonderful opportunity for SELISE to contribute and shape the ICT landscape of Bhutan.