Feature

Meet The Leaders (MTL), a prestigious tradition of AIESEC, is the largest public seminar that is hosted by AIESEC to introduce dynamic leaders of our society to the audience. The leaders of the night demonstrate their creative leadership styles and share their career experiences, both successes and failures, to motivate the youth towards taking leadership opportunities that impact our nation positively. For this version of MTL organized by AIESEC in BRAC University that circled around the issue of DIGITAL BANGLADESH - the leaders who were present at the night were: Md. Rubayat-E-Hakim, Cofounder and CEO of Right Brain Solution Ltd (and also an AIESEC Alumni) ; Md. Anwarul Kabir, senior faculty of AIUB, Mohd. Aminul Islam, project in charge, Digital Ticketing System with IC Card, N-Wave Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan and last but not the least our chief guest Mr. Hossain Khaled, Managing Director, Anwar Group and Former President, Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

This time the leaders did not just focus on leadership qualities but also the future of our country concentrating upon the challenges, complications, feasibility, prospects and the pre- requisites to achieve a Digital Bangladesh. The speakers explained that 'digital society' is not a term used to explain an increased usage of digital devices by the major population in their daily lives. A digital society, rather, ensures an ICT driven knowledge-based society where information will be readily available on line, where all possible tasks of the government, semi-government and also private spheres will be processed using state of the art technology.

Mr. Anwarul Kabir pointed out that for making Bangladesh a digital society, the first few issues that we need to focus upon some preliminary issues: national power deficit (the country faces a deficit of 2000MW against a demand of 5000MW), poor network infrastructure (most LAN setups are only Dhaka centric which creates a digital gap within the country), small use of internet (internet penetration in our country is only 0.3%), the entire nation is connected to the internet highway through only ONE submarine cable; Mr Rubayet E Hakim pledged the youth to “come out of the box” and meet the endless demands of creative programming, application development, and infrastructure development of the country. Mr. Aminul Islam presented the whole audience with the way the developed nations use IC Cards to carry out their daily lives starting from buying bus tickets and grocery shopping to paying taxes and national security. A dynamic discussion was facilitated by the chief guest, Mr. Hossain Khaled, about how crucially e-governance can be developed by the use technology - in the country.

An interesting round of question answer round was put up by the audience for half an hour where a typical misconception was cleared out that Digital Bangladesh can be achieved only by students and youth who are studying subjects on Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Communications Engineering. To clear out this misconception, Mr. Hossain Khaled reminded everyone the concept of TEAM which stands for 'Together Everyone can Achieve More'.

The discussions were very effective and the seminar was a great learning experience for each one of us present in the event. The participants in the event included Ms. Mishu Rahman from Purple, Mr Emran Hasan from Right Brain Solution Ltd, respected parents and guardians, students from North South University, Independant University Bangladesh, American International University Bangladesh and BRAC University and dignified guests from Olympic Industries Ltd.

The seminar ended with the official launch of the website of AIESEC in BRAC University (www.aiesec-bracu.org). It was a great privilege to have the website launched by Ms. Mahnaz Nazneen, President of AIESEC in BRAC University and Mr. Rubayet-E-Hakim of Right Brain Solution Ltd, the sponsor of the website.