EuroSkills Day 2–Setups and starts

It’s been a long day.. the EuroSkills competitors arrived today to the competition site to check their equipment and get everything ready for the 3-day long competition starting tomorrow. For us at WebDesign the day was pretty simple, check that the applications work, check the connections and configure the keyboard layout for your own language. After those tasks were completed we got familiar with the venue and proceeded to the Opening Ceremony, which was quite amazing!

(This is a part of the blog series I’m writing for the EuroSkills 2012 as the Finnish WebDesign expert)

This year the WebDesign skill is connected closely with Graphic Design and the competitors will need to work in pairs to succeed in the competition. Niko and Pia seem to get along and have synced what they need from each other to succeed. This is very important, as the contestants don’t know each other before the competition. The Finnish team has multiple training camps and one of the goals over there is building team spiriti, apparently it works pretty good!

The day ended with the Opening Ceremony for EuroSkills 2012. I was a part of the last EuroSkills in Portugal 2010, so I had something to compare it to. I really enjoyed the speeches today, they were the approriate lenght and contained a clear message. There is a big effort to bring more attention to vocational studies in Belgium, as those seem to be underrated in some eyes.

I think EuroSkills is a great opportunity for everyone to come and learn what do you get our of vocational studies and to see some of the most talented young minds out there. It’s honestly an amazing and very humbling experience.