Development of the IT community in Khujand: key events of 2025

Muhammad Abdugafarov, city — Khujand, organizer of IT events, LinkedIn

2025 was a productive year for our community: we held four major events under the GDG Khujand and .NET Community Tajikistan banners. Thanks to these events, we managed to provide a platform for sharing experience and knowledge for both experienced professionals and beginners, as well as strengthen ties within the community and put Khujand on the radar of global IT initiatives.

Community Formats

GDG Khujand hosts events for a broad audience, striving to cover various topics and skill levels of IT specialists.

.NET Community Tajikistan focuses on working with .NET stack professionals, which allows us to dive deeper into technical and architectural topics.

Events of the Year

In April, we kicked off the year with the Build with AI event, which was part of the global GDG program. Four speakers shared their practical experience on how they use AI in their projects.

In June, .NET Conf took place with a focus on modernization: we discussed Background Jobs in .NET, From idea to MVP in 2 weeks — The .NET way, OpenTelemetry in .NET, and held a panel discussion with local experts. One of the speakers was our fellow countryman working in Germany.

In October, we organized DevFest — part of the global GDG event series, where speakers talked about using Gemini in real projects, frontend optimization, applying Figma MCP, and the Shape Up methodology for product teams; among the speakers was a guest from the US who detailed Shape Up.

In December, another .NET event took place dedicated to the .NET 10 release: speakers covered new features and changes, and a separate talk on product management received particularly lively feedback from participants.

Aside from local events, community organizers also participated in global events: in June, the GDG Khujand team was invited to Google I/O in Berlin, and in October to the GDG Summit in Dubai.

The main goal of these trips was to exchange experience with other IT community organizers and explore opportunities for new collaborations.

Language Development Initiatives

In late 2024, after a talk about Common Voice and a proposal to support adding the Tajik language to the open voice data database, a separate initiative group was formed.

Since January, volunteers have actively engaged in the work: within a month, the platform interface was translated into Tajik, by April about 2,000 sentences had been collected, and by the end of May, the Tajik language became available on the platform for voice recording.

The main goal of the initiative was to ensure that anyone could contribute to collecting voice data in Tajik, and this goal has already begun to be realized.
Currently, approximately one hour of voice and about 4,000 sentences have been recorded on the platform, and about 50 volunteers participated in the initiative on a fully voluntary basis.

Speakers

Huge thanks to all our speakers who shared their experience and inspired future industry leaders.
We host not only experts with years of experience but also beginners who already have a deep understanding of their topics and are ready to share knowledge with the community.

We consciously create a platform where one can not only transfer expertise but also improve soft skills and public speaking abilities.

This year, for most speakers, this was their first public appearance — and they handled it well, with active support from our organizers.

Partners

Such events with more than 50 participants are impossible without partners and financial support. This year, we were supported by local and international companies:

American Space Khujand — provided a venue for offline GDG Khujand events and supported the community in organizing events.

Snoonu — one of the fastest-growing startups in Qatar with a distributed team, including from our region.

Eskhata Bank — one of the largest banks in the country, actively expanding and hiring IT specialists.

Silk Road Professionals — an IT company that has provided outsourcing services for the US and Europe for over 10 years, constantly supporting the local IT community and serving as a "school" for many IT specialists in the region.

On behalf of our entire community, we express our great gratitude to partners and sponsors. By supporting our events, they win the hearts of their future employees and contribute to the development of the IT industry in the region.

We are always open to new partnerships with companies that share our values; you can contact us on Telegram.

Organizers and Volunteers

This year, the active organizers were Doniyor Niyozov, Usmonjon Nurmatov, Orasta Mirdadova, Dilshod Khodjiboev, Farangis Shokirova, Asliya Niyozova, and I, Muhammad Abdugafarov.
We were also supported by more than 10 volunteers who helped with event organization — from registration and photography to moderation and content.

All organizers work on a voluntary basis, investing their time, energy, and resources into the growth and development of the community.
Without their systematic and often invisible work, none of the listed events and initiatives would have taken place — this is a team of people for whom it is important to have a strong IT community in Khujand.