Organised by North South University Computer Club (NSUCC), the fair ushered in a hail of compliments and encouragement for the aspiring computer science students.

For the first time in five years, NSUCC ventured into ensuring the participation of corporate IT firms in the fair, along with the usual participation of students from the educational institutions. The fair's motto "Download the future tech" became quite appropriate as most stalls were exhibiting futuristic software -- their innovations in robotics, 3D games, application software and so on.

Dr M Asaduzzaman, chairman of the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh, inaugurated the fair. The fair sported a list of more than 40 participants that included various public and private universities, software and game developers, IT training institutes and professional IT companies. The participants were competing in two different levels -- universities and corporate level, each consisting of three prizes.

The stalls, received huge response throughout the fair. One of the popular stall was the North South University's robotics project -- 'Automated Guided Vehicle'. This contraption is the brainchild of Shofiul Alam, a CSE student. A car that moves automatically and can change its directions, when it senses obstacles. The group from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), with their project 'Online Automated Digital Telescope' received similar response.

The fair, also had its share of demos and full version 3D games such as 'Ronn' -- developed by NSU CSC department students, 'Mrittupuri' by Department of Computer Science, University of Dhaka and 'Arunodoyer Agnishikha' by Shom Computers Ltd. Various multimedia software and tutorials were also being sold at some of the stalls.

The audience appreciated the cyber café management software -- 'Cyber Café Manager' developed by the students of Shahjalal University of Science & Technology. This software is capable of solving most of the everyday problems faced by cyber café owners to manage their customers and cash flow.

The fair also had everyday seminars. The award giving and closing ceremony was held on March 27. Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan, minister, Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology handed over the awards as chief guest. The minister complimented the efforts and projects of the students. He stressed on the point that the information and communication technology sector of Bangladesh is still not in tune with the business sector of the nation.

"We have to market our solutions and ideas before they become extinct in the global IT scene," said Khan. "Hopefully with the cooperation with the business sector, the IT sector of Bangladesh would finally be seeing better days," he added. The minister also promised the aid of concerned authorities for the next '6th Softfair 2005', which is expected to be held at an international level.

The first prize was whisked off, by a voice recognition project by University of Asia Pacific. The project had three aspects, which included 'Voice Control Devices', 'Voice controlled Online System' and a 'Voice control PC'. The 'Automated Guided Vehicle' by North South University and 'CryptoPix', an image based steganography project of Independent University won the second and third positions respectively. In the corporate level, The Decode Limited, 4-in-Genius LLC and MAMTech Limited were the award winners.