Getting ready for EuroSkills 2012

It’s that time of the of year again.. it’s time to see what EuroSkills has to offer us this year. Today was the first day of the event where students from vocational studies from around Europe come together to compete in their own profession. EuroSkills represents everyone from florits, bricklaying, nursing to web design and much more. I have the honor of being the Finnish WebDesign expert this year and to looking at the competition from a experts point of view, I must say.. it looks pretty interesting!

During the day each group of experts went through the assigment, workplace setup and rules for their own skill. Different skills had different type of issues, everything from issues with the assigments to missing toolboxes. Luckily for me, WebDesign was pretty simple. All we needed were some PC’s and software on them

This year EuroSkills is organized in Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium. What’s interesting this year, and different from previous years, is the layout of the competition. The competition is located right on the tracks of Spa-Francorchamps, so it’s quite challenging to get everything working, but it’s also a very interesting location for the event. Florists are placed in the pitstops, there are tents built around the track and a lot of acitivity around the area, getting the venue ready on time.

I’ve been a part of these competitions before as a competitor. I took part in a couple of local Skills-competitions in Finland, then EuroSkills 2010 in Lissbon and WorldSkills 2011 in London. This time I’m taking part in the competition as an expert and I’m very excited to see how this is going to go!

Tomorrow Niko, the Finnish competitior, will arrive and we’ll get to check his machine and prepare for the competition. Really excited to see how this will go..I’m feeling pretty confident