Bangladesh Economics Olympiad

You guys thought this is a Bangladesh Economics Olympiad website! It might feel like it, but the real story is completely different.

Hello everyone. I am Sanaul Haque, a competitive programmer since 2015. I started coding by building animated wishing websites, Android applications, and many more fun things. I never learned coding to make money, and I never had the goal of working at FAANG.

I barely had friends. I got a computer right after I was born, and at one point I even lost interest in playing video games. Instead, I tried to build things and ended up deleting Windows XP C-drive folders many times. I also had a Sony Cybershot camera since 2010, but after doing a lot of experiments and messing up many things, I tried installing Linux and accidentally formatted my whole childhood memories. From that moment, I learned that nothing on a digital device is permanent, and I bought an external hard disk. Every loss gave me something new to learn.

Even though I lived in a tier-1 city, I became very lonely. I had nothing to do except study. I studied at a top district school and was admitted through entrance exams, so I was not an average student. I received grades like A in Cambridge Education and A+ in National Education. I had friends from class 3 to 8, but I lost my best friend because of school politics, and after that I thought I would never make anyone my best friend again.

Later, I met a guy who was interested in computers. My older sister was learning C programming in 2015, so I became interested too. I saw that HTML was a funny and enjoyable thing, because I could build anything and people could browse it from anywhere. So I started learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

In my senior year, I thought I should love someone because you know how hormones work at that age. I focused on making her happy by creating special animations, applications, and wishing websites. I did this for 7 years repeatedly, and eventually built a small software company called Partrigde Lab (check where will get the BDEO 2019 Leaderboard), earning more than 1,000 USD per month. But nothing worked the way I imagined, and I stopped the company because I was not enjoying earning money anymore. Since then, I have remained single.

One day at school, some university students came to promote a programming contest. I participated and met a junior from my school who also joined the contest. We became friends. I also met another guy who was a bookworm and loved reading detective books, history, and many other genres. I made him my friend because I thought he was a different kind of person, and I was also a different kind of person.

After the programming contest, we became very close. We even developed family relationships because we were from the same school and held similar ideologies. Then I realized something that scared me. This would not be the same in the future. After graduating, we would all leave our place and our memories behind.

So I decided to build a platform where I could host any event and have a real reason to talk with my olympiad seniors, juniors, and my two friends. I did not build anything for money, fame, attention, followers, or anything like that. I built it simply to keep a connection alive.

In 2018, I built a platform called ArenaBoard Online Judge, where anyone could host programming and quiz competitions, use real-time leaderboards, automated proctoring, and many more features using a Service Oriented Architecture. I hosted ArenaBoard Mega Contest 2019 in February. My two friends helped by uploading quizzes and doing extra work, but nothing related to building or coding.

After the mega contest, I realized I needed to make the platform more advanced, but I had no funding. Even though in 2018 I had cloud platform sponsorship for 2 years (which I managed in 2017), I still needed more support for the next steps.

So I searched for an international olympiad that was not available in Bangladesh at that time. I mailed the International Economics Olympiad and they replied that they already had another offer from Prothom Alo and BDOSN. I sent them the platform details, and they became interested and provided ArenaBoard the authorization to conduct the Bangladesh National Event.

During this time, I was developing new features for ArenaBoard while maintaining my education. I assigned Rafid to handle external communication, but in reality, most of the work was done by me. If you look at the BDEO 2019 posters, you will see a lot of errors, grammatical mistakes, and even my personal old phone number. I was the one who posted posters in schools, universities, and English-medium institutions in Dhaka.

We also applied for the ICT Division Innovation Fund, and I gave Rafid the responsibility because I already had too much work.

After receiving international authorization, I still had no funding and no economics background. So we tried to seek guidance from my high-school alumni who studied Economics at Dhaka University. His name was Timur, and he introduced us to a professor of Dhaka School of Economics, Md. Alamin Parvez. He extended his hand to help us, and that was the reason we were finally able to host the event. For the first year, he spent his own money for international travel. This meant a lot to me.

Everything at that time felt magical, because I had no funds, yet everything worked out.

Along with that, we received the ICT Division Fund, and this became the beginning of the destruction of ArenaBoard. We applied to the Innovation Fund quite casually. Our project was already built, and the proposed project did not apply to us because I had cloud sponsorship. This meant most of the fund was unnecessary for the project. I thought the project should still charge for development and running costs, which was around 50 percent. In my mind, I also thought about buying printing equipment like heat-press machines, printers, sublimation printing tools, t-shirts, and similar items, so we would never have difficulties arranging goodies again.

So I charged 50 percent of the fund because I also needed to market it. But then one of our teammates created noise and complained. Nobody listened to me even though the platform was mine, the idea was mine, and everything was built by me. Yet my voice was not recognized.

Then I said, I will not submit my project code to the ICT Division because this is my personal project.

At that point, I felt I had nothing left in Dhaka. I thought I should return to my home district and focus on my studies. I knew I was a skilled programmer, and I could build anything anytime. So I finished everything with them and moved on with my life.

So, when I don't want anything, why am I writing this? You guys might ask. But let me tell you that after the destruction of ArenaBoard and I came to my home, Rafid mailed me for apology and I thought they are my school friend - why should I care about the fund and etc? I am not making stuff for fund, but now I charge a lot for my time. At that time I just did it for wasting my time and learning new stuffs, so investing my pocket money to buy domains and scientific projects.

Now I have more than 50+ domains, and sometimes I sell them for a good price. So, my thought was let's be friends again but I will not do any projects with them nor have any relationship with them for money - just be friends for yapping and other stuff. But they have my BDEO and I hosted it in 2019 as one of the best events with an online version having proctored platform, ranking system, automated certificate generation, etc. So they don't even use website etc.

Anyway, this is a long story and I don't have time. So, last year when I was flowing 1M from my part-time initiative and working a lot as an independent one, I didn't get time for watching movies and he knocked me that why I added LinkedIn that I am the host of BDEO. Someone messaged them that I am coming to the next national round.

And he said, he didn't like this and sent me the screenshot (like I said bro, you have time for this shit work? Are you jealous that I'm doing nothing since 2021 and someone asks for me? I don't even use this as my work - I last edited my CV, LinkedIn and other profiles in 2022).

After that, he asked me for a favor of building a simple registration, syllabus website and all of a sudden I built it within 2 hours and deployed it. I just added my name to the footer section as "built with love by Sanaul Haque". He said he asked me for friendship and to make a website where he doesn't want to add my name? Like seriously bro? I am the one who provided this to you and you cannot even add my name as a developer?

So, why should I provide you this? Back in 2018-2019 you didn't have any ground to get International Economics Olympiad authorization without ArenaBoard. So, you get the platform and the template and you make yourself a leader? You're obviously a hardworking person but without any position you cannot get anything.

Now I am a teacher, a researcher, a programmer, and someone who hosts international competitions around the world. I have no interest in the Bangladesh Economics Olympiad and no reason or benefit to destroy them.

Even the Bangladesh Economics Olympiad logo was created by my friend Shajid Hasan, who is also a great programmer, developed many applications and platforms like ACS, and does fun experimental projects like Chitti.me.

Actually I don't have time to add images, Visit my Linkedin, Portfolio website, and youtube videos. Sanaul Haque

Haha bye!