SOFTEC 2004

Amir, I was at the exhibition too, and believe me, majority of the participants had NO idea how to do a proper presentation! A certain student of a very reputable University was talking to us like we were his customers in a machli bazaar... that really makes you lose points. I don`t think the decisions would`ve been biased... the students don`t realize their mistakes and the examiners and judges seldom point them out.

I would like to congratulate all of them though for their sheer hard work in going so deep in making their projects. The students had information, knowledge, potential and determination, no doubt. Some of the projects I really liked was Muhammad Saad Saleem`s CNC milling machine programmed by a self designed computer program. The guy`s good and he can do a lot more, but sadly the project wasn`t entirely about software but had a wee bit of mechanical engineering in it too. Some other guys had designed GIS (geographic information system) related softwares to locate a certain point in a remote area, and some were just on the chaapa tradition of getting codes from their seniors, notes from their teachers and bits and pieces off the internet... that`s not programming!

Amir, you might be right about the biasness, there could be to some extent, its human nature, but why are you calling that biasnes, as Azure said there are things which students overlook but judges are looking for that, the also look into how good you present your thing to them everything has points,
let me give you an example, I was in Software Competition at Karachi FAST, there were many brilliant people from all over Pakistan, but people are not very good in telling and describing their things, they were confusing us, at that time obviously I dont have enough time to judge all thing myself, how I can be so sure that if he is explaining the thing then he actually implemented that, you might say only by representing thing maturely will make the other person winner, no judges are not that dum that they cannot even differentiate between right and wrong, there is chapa khana thing,,.. alot.. and ppl do explain that well, but there are things to judge that....you will learn by experience.

you will win someday inshaAllh....

Amir Bilal - You wrote ``Please comment on “ Is there any chance that our nation will excel in the field of Information Technology in the presence of this sort of people”. ``

Very good question. Unfortunately Amir, the issues of favoritism, bias, and corruption in our education system do not register any attention in our minds since we are pre-occupied with fulfilling western dictates in reforming our education.

There is widespread corruption and favrotism in administring exams, competitions, and admission offerings to good schools / universities.

Unlike those who go through the standardized A and O levels, the majority of Pakistani students go through an antiquated ``Board`` system. The exams and grading standards of Federal Board are different from the standards of Pindi Board. It is possible to get 140/150 marks in F.Sc. english exam from pindi board. This is however unthinkable in Federal Board. How the admission offices of the universities take that into consideration when they set up their admission offerings is beyond me.

Zain Malik

I do have the same reservations about biased judgement at SOFTEC since last few years. I have listened this type of complaints from many students. No doubt, FAST is a good place for CS students but it is a very cheap way to prove that.

I think students should consider participating competition held at GIKI, at A Q Khan competition or at Bahria university.

Assalamoalaikum
#3 malik99, you make a very good point about the difference in how easy it is to score in Rawalpindi Board compared to the Federal Board. Having taken federal board exams, i could complain about the same, and i used to do that but since (almost) every university in Pakistan has introduced entry tests now I believe the good students really can make it to the top, because the tests have almost 90% weightage and the Board marks count for only about 10%.
#4 Charlie
The A Q Khan software competition is Pakistan`s oldest software competition i believe, and it is very highly regarded. The Bits Bytes N Colors competition at Bahria Uni was held only recently (17-18 April 2004) and two of the three top prizes went to research oriented projects. Bahria University didn`t win any prize but they sure won the respect of the participants at how beautifully they organised and conducted the event. You can see the results at http://www.bci.edu.pk/bacs/bitbyte.asp
Its really a shame that FAST-NUCES should lose respect because of biased decisions at softec. It has the potential to give great exposure to students. And it really is a good place for learning.FASTians are really good at what they do.
#2 humairshah
I agree that the judges probably have a good criteria and that they know their stuff. I would like your comment on this situation though: (Almost all) The judges at softec offer a particular group presenting their project an opportunity to work at their Universities, and praise their work to the sky while adding ``you guys probably won`t win because your project is so difficult people can`t understand it easily``. And that group doesnt win a prize in the competition, but they have offers lined up to work/research at the Universities where the judges teach. Then what are the judges for? If they agree that the project was great, shouldnt those guys have won? The judges say one thing privately, and their decision for the prizes is its absolute opposite!

Does it make sense??

I am a student of computer sciences back in Birmingham,United Kingdom and what I think of Pakistani I.T industry is that it is on the wheels now thanks to some of the work done in the days of Dr.Ata-ul-Rehman but we are ofcourse way too back as compared to some of the other countries like India ! or even Ireland ... I am a Karachite and I always have tried
to something when I was studying there (ofcourse not A or O Levels but Matric as a normal
student from a upper middle class) and what I actually sold was a VB (Visual basic) software which was a business solution software to a firm and earned Rs.2oooo-- and that was my start -- I sold many and plans to open and migrate to my own country after having some job experiance back in U.K --
a)What Pakistan needs is a better standard of English ( now I must say the standard of English has improved a lot but we need a lot to catch up ) that could actually help us a lot for opening and shifting out-sourcing centres CALL CENTRES from countries like U.K,Australia or US to Pakistan instead of India and we could actually get big contracts- like Norwich Union shifted to India and so did HSBC

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b) what Pakistan need is introducing something which is call `Presentation Classes` where students of Secondry Classes are taught to present something in-front of his or her respected classes

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a morale booster for sure...
c) encourage quality computer eductaions and organizing more and more competitions

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Pakistan still is 1o years behind , but we could catch up if we want too and that could only be done by making quality institutions like FAST and GIK`s in even Rural parts we need more NIT`s
Pakistan Zindabad :)

yups aryam i agree that AQ Khan competition is very good indeed. and about Bits, Bytes and Colors, I was there also for the both days and the competetion was really good and our university won 4 prizes in that conpetetion.

The 2nd prize prize winning project (Grid4U) was from my university, and also I was in the team which got 2nd position in Quiz competetion and I see a pic of mive on the link you have provided :).

And this is the project which got no prize in SOFTEC but got 2nd prize in this competition .... ans you would have seen that this project was highly research based.

Exactly ! and also you just forget to mention ZABVISION . the coming event ZABVISION 2004 (All Pakistan Inter Unoversity Software Competition and Exhibition) will be held on 22-23 May 2004 at National Library Islamabad.

and about bahria university I got 2nd Prize in Quiz Competetion (Bits Bytes and Colors 2 days ago) .......

sorry, forget to mention that,

#7 was in reply of #4Charlie
and
#8 was in reply of #5Maryamm

Dear Amir Bilal,
The point behind your article was to highlight that the dicisions of judges were extremely biased. Well I would like to point a few facts here, if you just look at the history of SOFTEC held in last five years, you will clearly see that students from UET-Lahore, SSUET-Karachi, Lums, etc have also been winning top prizes at softec. I have personally observed that one project was rejected in first round at Softec but it won 3rd prize at NUST; this project was made by FAST-Lahore students. So to imply that the decisions of SOFTEC are biased is totally a fallacy. As well as research is concerned, though not being a theeta of FAST-Lahore, I can proudly claim that FAST-Lahore is the best research centre in CS (language processing & multi-media).
My last words are that atleast SOFTEC gives you and other brilliant students like you to present their work/research in front of government & industry people. Best of luck in next SOFTECs & keep on working hard, you will win someday Inshalla.
Regards - Bilal Altaf

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Humairshah:

Did you work in Cressoft Karachi in 2000?

Regards,
Irfan Hamid.

Best of luck in your attempts to promote IT in Pakistan.

Ras

#8 amirbilal
so you must be from SZABIST, doing your MS?

#10 bilal843
i stick by my impression of softec, unless, of course, you can give a satisfactory explanation for the situation i described in #5

#10 bilal843
dear i have have provided names of recent two victims there in softec... but i never got convinced by your arguments.... please give soem satisfactory explanation. thnx

#14 mayyamm
yups i from SZABIST but I m doing BS. the guys who got second prize in software competition were from MCS. I was in quiz competition and got 2nd position there as well.
and you were there for participataion ??

Being one of those groups who had a R&D project ``Project Rhapsody-An intiative in Artifical Creativity`` in SOFTEC 2004 finished among top 5 and was not considered deserving for the top 3 spots and infact the project won prizes in all other competitions it was presented in, infact ``Best Overall Software`` at A.Q. Khan, which was the only way we could have answered how flawed SOFTECs judging system is, which was the very reason we didnt submit our second version this time around.

I guess the major point here is the new found love of FAST for Urdu Development. I believe there is a certain group in decision making which considers only Urdu Projects as valid research projects as Professors are involved in their research, where as research effort carried out by indepedent group of students is considered with a non-serious attitude. Infact certain judges were bent upon proving that our efforts were not even concrete because we havent studied books regarding Creativity, and also Music has no valid output [thus proving how blocked their minds that they view Creativity as fixed input and fixed output].

I think its abt time that, yes, Urdu Research is important as a National cause since major portion of our population are literate in Urdu, but we should also encourage to venture into new areas of research bacause if we want to excel globally in IT , the research has got to come from from the best universites here. We are always forced to follow the trends and technology introduced by others leaving us only improving their processes. The thinking has got to change and such competitions must start encouraging innovative and novel ideas because this will bring depth to computer science in Pakistan, which for me, right now is only focused on software development [which also explains the fall out due to 9/11].

Btw, as far as quality is concerned, well FAST students has been winning competition all over Pakistan even last year. Infact the very group that got first prize has been in the same slot for the previous 3 competitions. And yeah they didnot win in A.Q.Khan, but again FAST won there too, and as far as GIKI is concerned i guess they didnt participate in that competition. And btw, if u know. all FAST projects that have won competitions, are research projects!

So you can see its not all abt the point proving tht FAST is the best!!! they have been winning every where!!! but i guess the attitude towards other areas of research should also be encouraged!

PS: by the way .... correction in my previous reply...we participated in SOFTEC 2003 [second line] :)

there were no judges from the faculty of fast this time, most of the judges were from lums and there were no participants from there. fast lahore didnt win any prize as well.

#15 amirbilal
Yes, i was there for the software competition. Our group won 3rd prize overall, first in our category. You wont see me in the pic on that link though because i didn`t go to the stage:)

So ppl here I am with some more updates regarding a new sofware competition.

SZABIST Islamabad campus won first prize in BrainStorm competition held at Pearl Continental Hotel Peshawar on 26-28 April 2004. Bahria University Islamabad won Second prize.

It was the same project titled : Grid4U (http://www.grid4u.tk). This team will be awarded with a scholarship of worth $7000 (US) from LGE (Lawrie Green Education).

All the re knowned universities all over the Pakistan were there to participate.

Regards
ABC

#19 maryamm: thats very nice !

~> CONGRATULATIONS >~

Wish ya best of luck all the way !

How come no body is lamenting the fact that there wont be AQ Khan this year? I was so looking forward to it...

Wow , on one side u congratulate the team on organizing such event, n secondly u puta bad name on the same people. U should have rather gone for targetting the Judges, who were mostly from a leading university of which i dunt wanna take the name, go n look into the abstract of softec if u dunt believe me,

Secondly , no judge of FAST lahore wuz included.

Thirdly FAST didnt participate in software competition i repeat software competition in ZABVISION or bits n bytes n a hundered differrnt places

Fourthly FAST wins becuz they deserve 2 win, do come by some time n c how rigorous FAST;s studies are , then u might understnad the fact y FAST wins everywhere.

Fifthly u guyz dunt have a damn idea what a R&D project is , I have seen that 3-D thing n atleast its not R&D from the grass roots, grass roots meanz that its built on stuff , stuff thats not made by the creator , while all major softwares of FAST that win , win becuz they are made on softwares that the creators make themselves

n lastly dunt be a sour loser , i have seen that 3-d project @ more places than i can imagine in the last 2 years , stop showing it , let someone else have a chance for participating from your university , 2 yrz iz enuf for showing off a software in competitionz

n to conclude all this , FAST students are the best , n they can be the best @ whatever side u may take them , they participated in this years ZABVISION n took away the top notch in QUIZ competition n Computer Genuis of the year , while also securing 3rd position in Coder ceomptition , n they didnt have a software in the software competition or else as it seems it would have won as well, there werent any FASTIAN judges there , then y did FAST win in 2 events n also secured a position in the 3rd . THINK n dunt be jealous , rather try outwinning them

SOFTEC 2004 was a marvelous event and i want to congratulate the softec team, but like every year, this year as well people are crying about the bias decisions, i am amazed that in such event where more than 15 judges participated and they all are from very well reputed universities or software houses , but people still got a chance to criticize its decision, may be they think their projects as best R&D based projects but i want to ask them the true meaning of R&D? I accept that Project Rhapsody is a very innovative idea and i like that software a lot but thing is that there still are many factors which the judges consider,... in the fast islamabad project which won 1st in Punjab Tech, Procom, Nascon and at Softec, is indeed a great project and if someone is going to make decisions according to the efforts then no one can beat them, but still I will never call it a R&D based project. Now I would like to share my experience at ZABVISION, overall that event was good and szabcoms deserves to be congratulated but there still are many things which they have to improve. In Zabvision, totally 9 judges evaluated me, i m happy that they gave me 2nd prize after considering my efforts. I beat many projects there, in softec i won 1st prize in Under-18 category and in krl I won 1st in under-16, but this time it was really a good experience to compete in open category and to win some prize, i beat the project which got 2nd position(in main category) in softec, so it boosted my enthusiasm a lot, but i noticed that in softec and krl as i am competing in under-18 and under-16 categories, but judges asked me such questions that i really like to answer them because they just expose the technical aspect of the project but in zabvision, few of the judges which even didnt ask me a single question :O so how can we show them the technical aspect of our project. So I want to say that judges should be selected properly and they should know better about the field in which we have done the research. I also want to say that there are so many software competitions taking place, but there should be a software competition which would be organized totally by the government, so every institute will send their projects and it will promote the sense of competition among the students. So, HEC is the right department to do it so, as HEC hosts many debate competitions so why they cant host a software competition???

# 24 DonQuixote:

Thank you very much dear for your appriciation.

First of all our appologies if there was something wrong on our behalf. Actually we conducted a survey from software section to get a feedback and results were very good. neways thank you very much that you pointed out, next time we will try our level best not to repeat this thing Insha Allah.

It was second time that we conducted this competition and with very limited resources we did this. We did not have too much HR (very short strength in university as its a new campus) and even the venuewas not ours.

We tried to put maximum number of judges so that we can get maximum feedback about the projects. you see only two judges visited our Project at SOFTEC and this project won $700 for each member at Peshawer.

Again feelin sorry for any inconvenience.

Fi Amaan Allah

# 23 Nomi:

Very first thing is that I never all this to start a fight between students of FAST and other universities. SOFTEC organizing team has done a great job and every one should appreciate that. I was never against them my objection was the decision of judges. RIGHT!

Secondly you wrote that FASTIANS deserve, with that you should know that others deserve as well its just what you think but the real world fact really different. The proof is that I am member of that team which has defeated FAST in QUIZ competition at many places, So I do not need someone else`s comment that how much competent they are, its my personal experience.

Third Thing, Well ask any of your good Ph D. teacher at FAST if you wana know I will provide you names: d, that what is R&D basically. You know grid computing is the very very hot research topic these days and not one yet have developed this software for Windows platform yet. Now see we do that recognition thingy as course project in our university (thanks to Dr. Afaq Hussain for his efforts to make us do that). Its too old thing, which they had developed.

THING IS VERY CLEAR FROM THAT THEY COULD ONLY WON IN COMPETITION ARRANGED BY FAST. AQ Khan is the biggest competition in Pakistan, why that project could not win a single prize over there. THIS SIMPLY SHOWS THE WORTH OF THAT PROJECT.

Finally, My dear loosers and good students are everywhere like you and me respectively. :D So, its your work which carries worth for you and your university.

May Allah (Subhan Wa Ta`ala) enlighten your vision to see what is better.

Fi Amaan Allah

Hey, Can anyone tell me who is the chief guest there at ZABVISION in the concluding ceremony and he announced something that the winners of the software competition would get a chance to attend the conference at Hawaii. Please tell me the chief guest name and his department as i want to contact with him,

Best regards....

#27 DonQuixote:

Mann I have received this query from lot of winners at ZABVISION 2004. :D

hmmm mail me at info@szabcoms.org.pk

I will reply you with complete info.

Best Regards

It started from SOFTEC 2004, went through bits`n bytes...ZABIVISIONS...and had references of krl, nascon, procom, etc... nice discussion and article too.
i read it VERY late, but i still can say things about SOFTEC and ZABVISIONS.
congrats to administrative ppl of both, both were good competitions. I`ve participated at both places.

First about SOFTEC.
i think it was totally unfair and totally biased event, but only for the ppl who didnt win. it happens all the time. who is not able to win becoms a GREAT critic. i m not and the reason behind is perhaps my second position.
15 judges evaluating, 7 projects for final round, panel of 6-7 judges evaluating the final round, final round was like an attack for me and i had to defend my project, 10 minutes to say everyt hing that can get me across the line, i think every one had the same experience. does it look biased?? or unfair??
top project for under-18 was THE BEST in his catagory. congrats to Sadan Nasir. And for our catagory, is it only FAST giving top position to that group from Isb? they had been taking away the competitions before that one as well, and none of them was organised by FAST. In Punjab-Tech and SOFTEC i got 2nd position and they got First, but i dont feel it biased. that was a project to win, so it did.
Every body talks about R&D, i have just one point to say...If your project is an R&D based, it doesnot mean that none else is there. have u really seen that winning project as a critic, have you talked to those galz and tried to judge how much R&D is there. perhaps you didnt, but judges had to do this as their duty.
and my last coment, i am not from FAST but i still believe that FAST is one of the BEST institutes for CS. and i dont say this because of any other impression, but i say this because i know the capabilities of FASTIANS. they are with me in Office, in competitions, in social gatherings...isnt it enough to judge the standard of some institute??

i`ll be commenting on ZABVISIONS, another good event, on my monday post. right now official stuff is waiting for me.