An ODK Journey By Bardh Rushiti
Hello there! My name is Bardh Rushiti and I just finished my Bachelor studies in Mechatronics and Management with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Vision. During the fall of 2019, I worked as a software developer in Open Data Kosovo; and together with a team of committed software developers we transformed governmental and market data into understandable and interpretable platforms accessible to everyone.
In my three month internship, I worked on different projects; starting from The Future Workplace, which was a data driven digital tool developed to declutter the ICT market in Kosovo. Then Mentorship 4 Youth which is also a digital tool that helped local NGO better manage the mentors and the volunteer for their projects. Last but not least, recreate the Open Data Kosovo Webpage.
In the recent years, Kosovo’s ICT industry is booming. In this volatile environment the need for qualified engineer is higher than ever, and to supply the market with much needed people is crucial to its development. The Future Workplace, as a digital tool, analyzed how the supply ( formal education highschoolers and students got in ICT) is meeting demand (the programming languages the ICT companies located in Kosovo used) through visualizations that made the data more comprehensible.
During this projects, I developed skills for web development, mainly with the famous front-end tools such as HTML, Javascript, and CSS, and backend tools with php in the Laravel framework. I had previously worked with programming languages (mainly for Machine Learning and Robotics), and in ODK I had the chance to further develop my programming skills.
After the war many NGOs were established in Kosovo with the aim to seed hope and support the people. Recently, due to the high number of participants and mentors helping these NGOs implement projects, there was the need to manage the mentors in a digital and automatic way; and the Mentorship 4 Youth Program was all that.
In this project, I focused more on the backend, specifically developed the automatic e-mail notifications NGO/ mentors get for updates. Additionally, I used my design skills to make the frontend experience compatible with the web design.
Last but least, the last project I worked on was recreating the ODK webpage with a fresh look, and more user-friendly design, where I discovered the Wordpress tool for easy webpage creation.
Even though most of my time in Open Data Kosovo was spent programming and designing, the biggest lessons I got from collaborating with the energetic and enthusiastic technical team were taking ownership for new ideas and paying attention to details are what makes any work exceptional. Additionally, throughout this internship I learned many interesting things about programming and myself. I understood that backend, where structure and organized code/ algorithm is fundamental for a successful application, suits me pretty well.
This internship has made me more aware of the flow of information in the backend and how functions/ pages/ network communicate through API. With the skills acquired in ODK I think I will be a more skilled engineer in the ICT industry, and more capable to tackle new problems.
