PITB workshop for developers

LAHORE

For the first time in Pakistan, Facebook for Developers in collaboration with Punjab IT Board (PITB) conducted a one-day workshop at Arfa IT Tower.

Speaking at the concluding session, PITB Chairman Dr Umar Saif said, “Facebook for Developers helps you build new platforms, grow and monetise your app. This programme provides developers with what they can do in collaboration with Facebook to enable them to share and grow their applications. We need one tech start-up from Pakistan to go big and become a billion dollar company and we will see investment pouring into our ecosystem. Facebook coming to Pakistan and arranging workshops for developers is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Ms Jennifer Fong, Strategic Product Partnership at Facebook, said, “PlanX represents a lot of the community here and it’s very evident from today’s event that PlanX stands out as a world class accelerator. There are a lot of things that really stand out today from the developer’s community to their creativity.”  

Sarim Aziz, the Strategist Product Partnership at Facebook, said, “There are lots of exciting products and services being built not just for the Pakistani market but others all over the world. We wanted to spend time with talent here to figure out how we solve problems and how we build products for engineers here. This is the 6th Facebook for Developers workshop we’re having in the world and we see some good engagement here in Lahore.”

Director of PlanX Ms Hafsa Shorish said, “The Facebook for Developers Workshop in Lahore has proven to be an immense learning experience for the developer community in Pakistan. We are happy to see Facebook realise the potential of the Pakistani ecosystem and look forward to a continued partnership in bringing such workshops to Pakistan.”

The workshop participants had the option to attend one of the three workshops streams on Account Kit, Bots on Messenger and React Native.

For the account kit, Andrey Belokrylov, a software engineer from the Facebook Platform Login Team and Ethan Goldman-Kirst, software engineer from Identify Tools Team delivered lectures. They went through a deep dive explaining why they made account kit, why it should be used and what needed to be done with this Facebook tool. The second session was Bots on Messenger – This is essentially a completely new way for businesses and developers to engage with their users, through Facebook messenger conversations.

It helps create meaningful experiences for users who are now able to engage with bots more instantaneously and effectively without having to leave the conversation. The trainers talked about how to build a good product, the policies that the bot has to follow and lastly the best practices on bot experiences.