BITPA Conference 2026: My Experience Celebrating 10 Years of Bangladesh's IT Community

I went to BITPA Conference 2026 expecting a good tech event: some networking, a few useful sessions, and a chance to meet people from the industry I usually only see online.

I came back with new connections, a lot of memories and, completely unexpectedly, a keyboard, mouse and headset combo from the raffle draw.

The raffle was a small part of it, though. What stayed with me was seeing so many freelancers, developers, designers, marketers, agency owners and founders in one place, in the year BITPA turned ten.

BITPA Conference 2026 at a glance

• What: the conference of BITPA, the Bangladesh IT Professionals Association, in its tenth year
• When: September 19 and 20, 2026
• Where: Long Beach Hotel, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
• Theme: “Celebrating 10 Years, Beyond the Horizon”
• Format: talks and master sessions, networking, and five hands-on bootcamps
• Planned size: more than 1,200 attendees, 20+ speakers and 15+ sessions

A lucky moment: 3rd prize in the raffle

I have to mention this part, because I really was not expecting it.

BITPA ran a raffle during the conference, with 20 gifts and a 43-inch TV as the biggest one. When the 3rd prize came up, my number was called. For a few seconds I just stood there thinking, wait, was that actually my number?

It was. I went up and came back with a gaming combo box: a keyboard, a mouse and a headset. Not bad for a tech conference.

Winning was fun, but I enjoyed the room around it even more. People cheering, laughing, taking photos of each other. It made the whole thing feel less like a formal conference and more like a community get-together.

The best part was the people

What I liked most about BITPA was not any single talk. It was the people.

When you work in freelancing, web development or digital marketing, most of your working life happens behind a screen. You talk to people on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Fiverr, Upwork, Zoom and Google Meet. Then you go to something like BITPA and those profiles turn into real people standing in front of you.

I met familiar faces and people I had never met before, had random conversations about work and business, swapped ideas, and took a lot of photos. The networking never felt like “here is my business card, let’s collaborate”. It was much more natural than that. What are you working on these days? How is freelancing going? Are you using AI for this now? And, of course: “Bro, finally meeting you in person!”

Those conversations were worth more to me than remembering every slide.

Ten years of BITPA

This was not just another BITPA event. 2026 marked ten years of the Bangladesh IT Professionals Association, and the theme was “Celebrating 10 Years, Beyond the Horizon”. The backdrops around the venue put it more simply: Celebrating 10 Years of Excellence by the Sea.

BITPA started in Khulna, with a simple idea: bring IT professionals and entrepreneurs together, give the profession the recognition it deserves, and help people who are just starting out. Its first big gathering was BITPA Conference 2017, held in Khulna. Today its own website sums up the journey as seven conferences and one community.

Ten years on, seeing that many people in Cox’s Bazar shows how far the community has come. And it was not one profession in the room. There were developers, designers, SEO people, digital marketers, freelancers, ecommerce founders, agency owners, content creators, startup founders, fintech people and plenty of people working with AI. Different fields, but the conversations kept coming back to the same question: how do we grow from Bangladesh in a digital economy that is global?

Hands-on bootcamps, not only stage talks

BITPA 2026 was not only about sitting in a hall and listening. There were five hands-on bootcamps as well, including Automate Your Client Flow, Cross-Border Ecommerce Mastery, AI-Powered Organic Marketing and Modern Product Design Workflow.

I liked that direction. Our industry has enough motivational speeches. Practical sessions are where people pick up something they can take home and actually try in their own work. Anything with automation or AI in the title gets my attention, because automating business workflows is a big part of what I do for clients now.

AI was in almost every conversation

AI was impossible to miss at BITPA 2026. AI in development, in marketing, in business, in automation, and in the skills people will need next. It was not a side topic any more. It was part of the main conversation.

A few years ago, a lot of IT events in Bangladesh were mostly about freelancing marketplaces, outsourcing and basic digital skills. Now the talk is moving toward AI, automation, products, global businesses and international clients. I think that is a good direction.

Freelancing will keep mattering. But I think more Bangladeshi professionals will grow from freelancer to team, from team to agency, and from agency to product and a global business. Events like BITPA are interesting because you can meet people at every one of those stages.

The question is no longer whether freelancers should use AI. It is how to use it properly without becoming completely dependent on it. For developers, marketers, designers and founders, that will be a big part of the next few years.

The scale of it

BITPA planned for more than 1,200 attendees, with 20+ speakers, 4+ master sessions and 15+ sessions. That is a lot of people from one professional world, gathered in Cox’s Bazar.

The number itself is not what stayed with me, though. It is what it represents. Bangladesh now has a very large generation of people earning, building and creating through technology. Some work remotely, some are on Fiverr or Upwork, some run agencies, some build SaaS products or ecommerce brands, and many mix several of these at once. BITPA gave a small glimpse of how big that world has become.

Cox’s Bazar made it better

And of course, it was Cox’s Bazar.

A tech conference is already enjoyable when the community is good. Put the same community by the sea and it becomes half conference, half networking trip and half mini holiday. Yes, that is three halves. That is how it felt.

Being away from the usual routine helped too. No sitting at my desk all day, no endless browser tabs, no client messages every five minutes. Just conversations, photos, learning, food, friends and new people in a completely different place. Sometimes you need that.

What I took away

The keyboard, mouse and headset will probably stay on my desk for a while. The more useful things I brought back are not physical: new connections, a few new ideas, a clearer sense of where our industry is heading, and more motivation to keep building.

It also reminded me how much offline relationships still matter. We work in one of the most online industries there is, and yet a ten-minute conversation in person can build a stronger connection than following someone online for three years. I want to do more of that: meet people, talk, listen, share what I am working on and learn what they are building. You never know which simple conversation turns into a friendship, a collaboration or an opportunity later.

Was it worth going?

For me, yes, and not because of the raffle. That was a bonus.

It was worth it because I got to spend time around people who are building careers and businesses in the same industry I work in. There was learning, networking, AI, business, freelancing, a lot of laughing, and Cox’s Bazar. And apparently a free keyboard waiting for me somewhere in the middle of it all.

Celebrating ten years of BITPA with such a large community felt special. Congratulations to everyone who worked on the event, and to everyone who has helped build this community over the last decade. I am looking forward to seeing where the next ten years take Bangladesh’s IT community.

See you at the next one.