56 students from 10 different countries gathered in Sofia, Bulgaria on 11-13 March 2009 to compete in the international final of Skills@Work Challenge.
The national finals of Skills@Work Challenge competition in Azerbaijan sponsored by Microsoft took place on 27 January 2009. The first place winners – Mehran Ismayılzadeh, Sattar Orujov, Javid Orujov, Nijat Abdullayev and Arzuman Allahverdiyev got an opportunity to participate at the regional Skills@Work competition in Sofia on 12 March 2009
More than 1,500 students have taken part in the national competitions that were held in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and the UK. The winners of those national competitions then travelled to the international final in Sofia. But it all changed in Sofia because the students groups were mixed and new teams were formed of mixed nationalities.
The event’s sponsor Microsoft chose e-governance as the theme for the first Skills@Work international challenge. By developing projects to respond to the challenge the young people demonstrated their visions of civil society and services that an efficient government should be able to provide to its citizens and businesses by electronic means.
The students worked for five hours and the jury gave most credit to innovative, effective and applicable solutions. Besides, the members of the jury challenged the teams even further by requesting a business strategy which would then have to be presented in a Power Point presentation as convincingly as possible. The audience was impressed by the skills the young presenters demonstrated in attracting their attention. Four teams grabbed the prizes of the jury for their excellent ideas and presentations.
A special award was given to Sattar Orujov’s team 11 who demonstrated the best communication within their group. They had offered electronic road and night club surveillance systems to provide round the clock security in the attempt to reduce traffic accidents and other incidents caused by drinking or abuse. The team consisted of students from Azerbaijan, Israel, Romania and the UK.
The third prize, provided by sponsor AstraZeneca, went to team N12 with Arzuman Allahverdiyev for their offer to governments to introduce personal devices with personal data access to be used by individuals in voting, tax payments, access to their bank accounts and other financial transactions. The device will be protected by means of fingerprint recognition technologies and visual identification of users. Other three young innovators in this team were from Israel, Macedonia and the UK.
The second prize, provided by the event’s main sponsors Microsoft went to a team, who presented a programme for electronic transfer of documents to be added as a free download by Microsoft but generating income to users who register their own profile. Registration of the user profile will request personal information and subscription to the terms and conditions of usage.
And the first prize of the international final Skills@Work Challenge – a visit to the UK for more skills and entrepreneurship development organised by the British Council went to team N2, featuring young people from Bulgaria, Israel, Romania, Serbia and the UK. They presented a system facilitating voting which includes voting over the internet and mobile telecom networks, facilitating people with disabilities and mobility needs, representatives of public administration and parents caring for young children to take active part in elections. According to the team this system would give governments easy access to election lists, it would save direct costs and be environmentally friendlier than existing voting systems by reducing transport and paperwork, as well as increase number of voters and also be a more transparent system for monitoring poll results.
Skills@work is a part of the Skills for Employability programme.
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