All about people
Report from Carsten Johnson
WorldSkills is the bi-annual summit of vocational education and training. Like at the Olympic games national teams and more than 1000 participants compete with each other for gold medals. And it was a fascinating event. More than 200,000 visitors came to watch the 50+ competitions – among them 7 IT-related skills competitions.
Skill #39 is the NetAcad competition on IT Systems and Network Administration. 90 % of all competitors were NetAcad students. Asia led the top positions in the Skill #39 category, with Jason Soh from Singapore and Takuya Nishide from Japan taking home gold medals, and Hui-zhong Liu from Chinese Taipei with a bronze. A huge congratulation to the winners and all competitors who took place in the event! The best participant from the European Market region was Lukas Hubschmid from Switzerland (5th place). And: 2 out of three medal winners are active NetAcad students.
Industry partners of WorldSkills ran information booths in an area called “Discover Your Skill”. Young pupils from Germany and abroad received information about career chances in many professions. As the IT sector presenter Cisco took the responsibility to inform about the large variety of IT professions. The discover your skill booth was staffed with volunteers from a Networking Academy in Muelheim (an der Ruhr) in Germany. The Academy students did a great job in presenting the value of IT skills in interactive workshops on “Secure WLAN”, “Managing an Energy Grid” and ” Sports meet IT”. If you want to get some impressions on how the atmosphere at WorldSkills Leipzig was visit www.worldskillsleipzig2013.com or try out the facebook diary about the live at the information booth and in the competition area of Skill39 (IT Systems and Network Administration) at twitter under #ciscoatworldskills, on facebook: Networking Academy.
Cisco’s role as a sector presenter was made possible through a sponsorship of 70k from the budget of the German Public Sector team. Christian Korff is the executive sponsor from Cisco corporate.
During the WorldSkills event we can report a 1 on 1 meeting between the new country manager Oliver Tuszik and the Minister of Economic Affairs of Saxony, Steffen Morlok. Jackie Barker lead the Corporate affairs team and head many meetings with industry partners, gave presentations at international conferences and handed out the medals to the winner in skill #39. The Academy team was present with Bob Schoenherr, Julie Chrysler, Jutta Jerlich, Lourdes Nieto and Carsten Johnson.
