25 January 2012
WorldSkills London 2011 shares their experiences with WorldSkills Leipzig 2013
By Sally Eley, WorldSkills International
Bidding to host a WorldSkills Competition is one thing. Making it happen is a whole different ball game as the team from WorldSkills London 2011 will testify and as the team for WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 are just finding out.
In mid December, Claus Andresen, CEO of WorldSkills Leipzig 2013, invited the senior management team of WorldSkills London 2011 to Leipzig to share their experiences in order to learn from the lessons of the previous Competition. Led by Chief Executive Aidan Jones, the WorldSkills London 2011 team shared their honest reflections of how they had put the event together, what had worked well and what they perhaps would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight.
Chief Executive of WorldSkills International, David Hoey, who chaired the three day event, explains why this knowledge sharing was so important:
“For most countries/regions hosting a WorldSkills Competition is something that only comes round once in a generation. The learning curve is steep for each new host and inevitably throughout the preparation process there is a great deal of discovery and learning. We are delighted that this knowledge sharing/transfer has taken place as it can only help to strengthen the next Competition in Germany."
“This formalised process of knowledge transfer is something WorldSkills International would like to see happen after each Competition and we welcome the opportunity to collect the learnings of the past to improve the future. We are very grateful to Aidan and his team for making the time and effort to share their experiences and to Claus and the WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 team for hosting the event and making it possible.”
During the course of the 3 days information sharing session, the two teams discussed all aspects of running a WorldSkills Competition including operations, technical, marketing and communications, sponsorship and finance.