WorldSkills Expert at Startech's Days in Belgium

what happend?

As I represented WorldSkills Romania in web technologies competition at WorldSkills Lyon 2024, I was invited to participate as an expert (I will tell you later what this means) at Belgium web technologies national competition, entitled Startech's Days.

An expert within a WorldSkills competition wears several hats, as explained in this article. Originally, an expert was the person that trained a competitor, but I had more tasks to complete, such as marking the work of the competitors, or handling problems, if they encounter.

I've trained Andrei Cosmin, an intelligent 17 years old aspiring web developer and high school student. It was a great experience helping him pursue this field, and I've learned a lot throughtout his training.

day in the life of an expert at a WorldSkills competition

The daily routine for a participant at a WorldSkills is challanging. There is the necesity to wake up early, the amount of hours you have to spent at the competition, and many more stressful aspects of such an event. But the toughness of it is what makes an experience such as this so beautiful.

We usually were waking up at 6:00am, took breakfast, than we were heading to the competition site. A WorldSkills competition is splitted in multiple modules (depends on the competition, the official one that took place this year had 7 modules, while this one had 5). Most often, a competitor goes through 2 modules on a day. Therefore, one of the most significant stress factors are the longevity of such an event. The job we had as expert was pretty simple, while the competitors were solving a module, we were marking their submissions for the one prior, or sometimes answering a competitor's question, and being sure that the competition is going well.

After the time allocated for the modules finished, we were spending our evening in the city. All I can say is that Marche-en-Famenne is a pretty authentic city, as we have seen stuff like an unicorn statue.

other stuff I've seen that blew my mind

In our stay in Belgium, we also got the chance to visit the Eurospace Center. This was by far better than an amusement park, as we had experienced a simulation of an astronaut training. Trying to walk on the moon, or sitting on a chair that is spinning on all axis was defintely fun.

and of course, we've visited a big part of the city, including a forest road:

sum up

This was a great experience, as I have learned a lot from being an expert, I have met a lot of new poeple, and seen so many beautiful things.

Thanks WorldSkills Belgium and WorldSkills Romania for the invitation, and also shout out to web technologies competitor and expert from Luxembourg, that had also participated at this competition.

👏 Participation in this competition is co-funded through the Erasmus+ program, under Erasmus VET Accreditation No. 2024-1-RO01-KA121-VET-000204311, held by the WorldSkills Romania Foundation.