WorldSkills 2017 Abu Dhabi Day C1

Today was the first day of competition (Sunday = start of work week in some areas of the world). This was the first full day of competition. Competitors met first in the morning for a briefing about the project they will work upon. They are not allowed to ask questions. Once the briefing has concluded, competitors have 15 minutes to speak with their compatriot expert and ask questions about the project. Here is a photo I took of the competitors surrounded by experts and interpreters at the start of the briefing on Sunday.

Since there would be nothing to immediately review on this first day of the competition, I decided to take a walk around the venue. Keep in mind, the scale of this event is Olympic in size.

I did manage to make it back in time to have lunch with Riley. I am proud of his enthusiasm and focus and dedication to doing his best. I think he will go far in this field.

Here are some of the Theta 360 views of selected competitions and a few additional photos. I am just trying to provide an idea of the scale of the event. If anyone is curious, I walked over 5 miles to see all the various competitions. There is a large highway which is spanned with a bridge. The highway separates many of the construction skills (such as brick laying). There is a waterway on one side of that area.

This is the area on the other side of the highway (near where the bricklaying competition was held). Yes, it is very hot when one is outside.

In order to get to some of the competitions, you use a bridge to walk across a highway. Note the scale of this event (and the number of visitors in the walkway).

Here is one of the vendor exhibition areas.

This is the concrete construction competition.

Here is a quick view of the painting and decorating competition.

And this is the area near one of the entrances to the venue.

After my “tour,” our group of experts met and discussed our plans for marking our parts of the competition. I have observed that it makes a great deal of sense to discuss how one will review competitor work prior to actually starting the review. This included looking at one of the websites I have created over the years and using that as a template so we could all agree what we would score that site based on the criteria in the assessment for this competition. Grin – my site received neither highest mark nor lowest mark, but did receive marks (even though I built it having no idea it would be reviewed – guess I am doing a few things right) End Grin.

For those who are curious, I am averaging roughly 16 hours a day at the actual venue. It takes a lot of passionate, dedicated professionals to make these competitions a reality. We come together once every two years. Given how rapidly the field of web design and development changes, it is a monumental task to try and stay in line with what is happening in the industry. Congratulations to all the competitors on their accomplishments and preparations in order to be here. Kudos to all the experts who have devoted so much time away from family and friends to make this a reality. In many ways, this seems like a “family reunion” that happens every two years.

Updated Nov. 14, 2017

I finally had a chance to locate the actual work order for this part of the competition. I provide a link to the CMS challenge that competitors worked on during this time. I encourage readers to review the linked document. [Yes, both links take you to the same document.] Could you accomplish this? Could you complete it in the time allocated for the competition? You have 2 hours to install WordPress and complete the initial design. You have 3 hours to create the necessary plugins and related code to accomplish all that is asked for in the linked document. I know I can definitely answer yes to my first question and no to my second question. I simply can not type that fast.

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