Amped Up: Diego's Electronics Journey from Circuits to Competition

In this episode, we sit down with Diego De Dominicis Barrios, gold medalist in Electronics Secondary at the 2025 Provincial Skills Canada Competition. His win earned him a spot on Team Alberta for the 2025 Skills Canada National Competition in Regina, Saskatchewan—where he also took home the Team Spirit Award alongside his Ernest Manning classmate, Amal Hussainy.

Diego shares his inspiring Skills journey, what it was like to train and compete at such a high level, and the incredible support he received from teachers, mentors, and fellow competitors in the Electronics community. He also offers thoughtful advice for future competitors and reflects on his unforgettable time in Regina.

Tune in to hear Diego’s story of teamwork, dedication, and what it takes to succeed in Skills competitions!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Skills and Thrills, Alberta's Trade and Tech Youth Podcast, My Skills, Canada, Alberta. We feature the stories of skills alumni through sharing their competition experiences and how those moments shape their careers. Through casual, unscripted conversations, we explore the journeys behind the skills and the paths that followed. I'm Danny and I'll be your host. Let's dive into today's episode. Today our special guest is Diego Deleminichis. Diego competed this year at the 2025 Provincial Skills Canada competition and took home gold in electronics secondary. Diego joined Team Alberta and won the Team Spirit Award alongside fellow classmate Amal Husseini. Hey Diego, thank you so much for being here with us on the podcast today. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

I'm doing alright. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I'm doing good, thanks. What first drew you to electronics at your school or just in general?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

In general, I think the interest for electronics came from my parents. My dad, we would always like fix stuff around the house, whether it was something electronic or not. We'd always be messing with our car or anything like that. Ever since when I was younger, I developed that curiosity for how things work. I had this drive to play around with certain things, and uh I started watching YouTube videos and getting more and more interested in let's say like I bought an Arn Arduino Uno and I also bought like Raspberry Pi, and I just started like experimenting a lot, and then from then I just realized that I really like this area of uh electronics and kept learning through YouTube, through books, through everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Can you tell our viewers what electronics looks like today and what that competition looks like?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Electronics today, in the case of the competition, it's working with something called ICs, so integrated controllers. And what they do is essentially it's just a bunch of logic. And essentially how you get this is a bunch of transistors wired in different arrangements to have logic in the sense of like, okay, let's say this, if if this is turned on, if like if I'm giving voltage through one side of this and I'm not through the other side of this, then this should turn on. And then but if I hold them, if if I have voltage from both sides, it should turn off. And so essentially you're just using a lot of this like like computational, like ones and zeros logic to basically just uh achieve higher level levels of like programming and and higher levels of just uh of execution in this in this sense. Our CPUs are just trillions of small transistors. It's basically arranging those in a certain formation so that you get the logic output that you want.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

That's so cool. Like all the coding that takes to go into that and make it work and everything, like that's a huge thing, and that's a lot of skill, too.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Right, right. Now the transistors have gotten so small, now we're getting even more computational power, and so we have to find ways to deal with the heat from these because it all works through electrical pulses and literal ones and zeros, trillions of ones and zeros eventually abstract to what you see on your screen. What we what we do is we'd we'd wire certain ICs, certain certain ICs have different logic and different like use cases. A big part of the competition was putting these down on a breadboard, and you wire you're wiring these things up, and you're essentially in this year's competition, it was a counter, it would cycle through and it would keep counting up. After it reached a certain point, a buzzer would go off and then it would reset itself. That was what the competition was. There's so many different things that you can do with ICs, different arrangements, and and just really there's there's so much.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Do you mind taking us through what provincials looks like versus nationals?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, for sure. I remember provincials, I went into it very apprehensive because I was unsure of what this competition was gonna be like. Provincials was really awesome for me. It was an amazing experience. The difference between provincials and nationals was in provincials, our days were scheduled in the morning. We would take our theory test, and this theory test would be like like everything like Kirchhoff's law, Ohm's laws, and just like making sure that you know like the theory behind like how electricity works, and it especially the theory behind on how electricity in logic works. And so the we had the theory test in the morning, and after that, in in the afternoon, we would go into breadboarding, our breadboarding challenge, where we were given a schematic, and we would have to wire up our breadboards based on the schematic and make sure nothing goes wrong. For the second day, the morning was soldering, a pre-built PCB. We put down components and everything for like the ICs, the the lights, the buzzers. We did that. Um, and then in the afternoon was desoldering and desoldering, rework, and measuring. And so in that part of the competition, you're measuring the difference in the A potentiometer, the voltage difference, and the current draw. That was what provincial was like. Definitely different from nationals. In this case, nationals was in the morning. We actually started off with breadboarding, and we didn't have a set time to do this like theory test, but the theory questions were mixed in with everything that you did. So in the morning, as you're as you're breadboarding, as you're wiring things up, you actually have to be thinking about the theory behind it. In nationals, you have papers scattered all over, and you're just like writing down and you're like trying to, okay, as I wire this, I'm reading the data sheet. If this does this, then I should maybe put it here. That's the main difference from provincials and nationals. Even going into soldering the next day, you'd be soldering and you'd have to answer some questions. You'd actually have to prove that your components work and understand how to use what you were assembling. That was the biggest challenge, and I think the biggest difference from provincials and nationals.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Wow, that's a lot happening for your brain. You're like trying to make things work, but then you also remember the theory and all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

That's exactly was the project super different from provincials, or it was about the same with a little bit more like things added to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

So yeah, our main breadboarding project is where most of our marks come in. In that sense, it was a little different, but still similar in the sense that it was like this like we would use something called a 555 timer clock, and we would use that to like cycle through LEDs. Same kind of concept, except in provincials, you were allowed to use pre-cut wires. Pre-cut wires let you wire things up a lot quicker. You can just grab this, plug this in here. In nationals, you had wire and you had to strip it. Every time you needed to make a connection, you're stripping the wire and making sure it's the right length, and you have to make things look a little bit cleaner too in nationals. For nationals, instead of it being in five parts, like provincials, where you have to you have to check that one part works, then they give you the next sheet and you can keep going. Instead, you're just given this massive challenge, and you just you want to break it up into smaller chunks, but again, you're not given instruction on how to do that. The project itself was a little bit different. For provincials, we made a half adder along with a full adder. So just just to add binary numbers together. And then in nationals, it was like a counter. I don't know the exact name of the circuit. It was definitely a little bit harder to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, I bet I mean there's just way more on the table to do, so it definitely makes it more difficult with time management and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah. So how did you prepare for these competitions technically and mentally?

SPEAKER_00 8:16

For provincials, I was super lucky that I had our former competitor came from our school, AJ. He had won bronze in provincials, and he had, and so he had a little bit of info of what I should be preparing for. Regardless, still being my first skills comp, you're still kind of going in blind in terms of preparation. Mentally, I I was given a really good piece of advice, which was just keep moving and have a little bit of that goldfish memory where okay, what happened in the morning or afternoon or anything that happens, there's the next day, you can keep going. Your entire competition isn't over because maybe you couldn't get one part of your circuit to work just because in this certain part of this competition. So that was the best advice that was given to me. That was given to me by both AJ and the former Team Alberta secondary competitor. He actually competed again in nationals for a post-secondary. When I saw him at nationals, he gave me a bunch of advice. Tom, he really like saved me. Cause honestly, he he re told me, like, honestly, there are going to be moments where you don't know what to do. There are going to be moments where you're screwing up and all this stuff. And so he gave me all this like mental preparation of just snap back into it, get as much done as you can, and don't worry about what's happened in the past. That's what I would say for mental. In terms of technical, definitely brushed up on all the math required, like all the laws for the theory for both provincials and nationals. A little bit of practicing breadboarding stuff. And definitely the biggest part of my preparation was in the soldering section where for like after winning provincials, going into nationals, like Tom had let us let my school know, let my my teacher, Mr. McManus, know, hey, this is what the soldering competition was last time. If it's anything like it, like here, let me let me send you this link to this PCB that you can order and practice on. And it was practically identical. So I had practiced exactly what was going to be in Nationals. I felt super prepared compared to the other parts of Nationals where it's a whole different beast from provincials.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Takes a lot of prep and having a like mentors like Tom and AJ, like that's amazing. I feel like a lot of people don't really have that opportunity. So having that opportunity to chat with someone who's done it already is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

So yeah, absolutely. I really have helped. And I could not have gotten through provincials or or or one golden provincials without the advice of AJ. Just, you know, just keep moving, just keep moving on. If you don't mind, I have a little story from provincials, could have completely thrown away the entire competition for me, but I decided to listen to the advice and just keep moving goldfish hammer. That was when the theory test in the morning I went into it. You're given, I think, three hours or two hours, don't quite remember, but you're given a short amount of time, and I remember after taking that test, looking at this, and I'm just stressing, I'm down like this, thinking, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? I live next to me and I have people already writing down everything. And I'm looking at this test and I'm like, wow, okay, this is not what I was expecting. Regardless, I took the test, answered the questions that I could, and in the afternoon was this most important part, which was the breadboarding for provincials. If I had let myself get down because of the previous test in the morning, I would have not persevered through the issues I had while I was breadboarding. I think genuinely that moment in in between from the test and that breadboarding part was really like pretty defining for me. Just move on, goldfish memory. I keep saying that because it's something that you really need to remember and just went back into it.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, no, it's such good advice. I feel like people always have those moments in competitions where they're like, oh, I really messed up earlier. It's gonna like put me back a little bit or whatever it is, or just make them like feel down on themselves. But just saying, nope, goldfish memory. We need to forget that and just do what we're doing right now and focus on that, and we can still pull through. That's awesome. Such good advice. Do you mind talking about your mentors a little bit more and how they helped you guide you through the competition, what it looks like that way?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

I love this section because I get to thank the people that really allowed me to get past provincials and internationals and do what I was able to do at nationals because honestly, without my mentors, none of this, I would have not been able to do this. I have oh huge thank you to Mr. McManus, Miss L, Mr. McDermott, thank you to AJ, to Tom, like literally everybody that was on this skills trip. Like, thank you to my competitors for Team Alberta. Genuinely, I couldn't have done it without like these people. Definitely, there was there was times where I'm in class, and luckily I have Mr. McManus, my main mentor, as one of my teachers. And I'm in class and he takes an hour and a half out of his day just to help me out the entire time in that class. Never got frustrated, never got tired, regardless. Just help me out in everything. If there's a question, we would look at it together and be like, okay, so this is how I would approach it. Maybe how would you approach it? And just that kind of bouncing back and forth. As well as if I had a question and uh he didn't know it, he would look it up with me and we would contrast what we would have as results and what we thought the concept was. That helped me out so much, a huge aid in my training, especially with the soldering for nationals, given a replica of what nationals was gonna be like, helped out so much. I have to thank Mr. Igmana so much, as well as AJ, because the entire time I'm working, he's by my side. He's like, Okay, maybe you should approach this from a different angle. He would tell me from last year's competition, I remember there was this part. So maybe try to train this part. So huge advice giver. I can't thank him enough for that. I was looking forward to actually going with him to provincials. Unfortunately, he actually couldn't go. So that's what so I was like, I also like going into provincials, I felt a little bit alone because I didn't have him at by my side, and so just really goes to show like when I had him next to me the entire time helping me, he was just this constant help to Miss Al. Definitely, I did I want to thank her so much because she was like such a great cheerleader for me. She also was the person that instilled that mindset of like, okay, just move on. You got it, you're doing great, just keep pushing, just keep going. As well as as well as Mr. McDermott, definitely just like like was super accommodating. And anything, oh I I like I have some questions. Like, like maybe you can get in contact with Mr. McMahon, like anything at all, or like he was again super great, again, like super amazing cheerleader to have. And then as for Tom, I don't know how I would have gotten uh nationals without his advice and his and his like he made me feel like definitely like in during the competition whilst like being in Virginia you know, you obviously like you're stressing and you have so many different factors, and he told me, Hey, look, let's like slow down. You got this, everything's good here. This is what I remember. Let me teach it to you. Super accommodating. If I had a question and I asked it 18 different 18 different ways or 18 different times, he would always answer and he wouldn't get frustrated because he like he would understand everything about it. And so huge thanks to him. Um, as well as I forgot to mention Chef Jen, another great cheerleader to have with me. Like, I felt super supported of both in provincials and in nationals because of just these this wonderful uh group of people.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Oh man, that's amazing! Like, how cool is it to have that many supporters, you know, at your back and everything? Like, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Absolutely. Oh, and like regardless, I can't believe I forgot, but my teachers, um, super accommodating. My teacher, my math teacher, Miss Liang Chi, like made sure, okay, you're gonna miss like this week and then and then you're gonna miss the the next week for for national. So, okay, like we can figure things out, we'll get your tests done, we'll we'll everything like like super accommodating along with along with my language arts teacher, um, Mr. Pelanin. Definitely like I talked to him and he's like, Oh wow, so this is like I understand this, it's like an experience you can't pass up for sure. So don't worry about anything here. Like, I'll make sure you're caught up when you come back. So, really, just these like wonderful teachers. My um, my computer science teacher, Mr. Chew, he uh um he made I talked to him too, and he mentioned like, hey, like like take the opportunity, like that's super great, like anything that you need, you know, shoot me a message or anything. So also all my teachers, super accommodating.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, it's so cool when they they just want to see you succeed and do the thing that you love so much. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Awesome. Well, yeah, we went to Regina this year, which is so cool for nationals. Um, what was it like being a part of Team Alberta?

SPEAKER_00 17:26

It was it was such an honor, and I felt so much pride being on Team Alberta. Definitely like a wonderful experience. I'll never definitely one of those experiences that you dev you never forget. Just the friendships, the bonds that people create. Because everybody's going through no matter what, no matter like what skill you're doing, you're you are going through stress and you're and you have like these people like next to you, and you're and you like you're all going through the same thing, so you all understand each other and you build like this this like friendship through like honestly, like this great experience, right? From just like just being all together. Um like I felt super honored to be there, and it felt super great, and definitely every single mentor from Team Alberta too, just every everything was really awesome from Team Alberta.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah, nothing beats that experience to be surrounded by people in trades and tech, and they're all in different areas, but you guys like bond over the shared experience of being on Team Alberta and everything. Like that is like one of the coolest experiences for sure.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Do you do you have like a favorite memory?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Um, I definitely have a couple. Um probably one of my one of the most favorite memories is when after after the first day and everybody is just tired and exhausted. I got together with a bunch like a bunch of other um Team Alberta people, and we got together to just drink chocolate milk um and just talk about our day. And and if we didn't want to talk about it, we'd just be like, no, like like today was just because to like the first day is always super brutal. So um everybody would like we'd all be in this room and just be like, yeah, that today was today was really difficult, but hey, you know what? There's tomorrow. Let's and and you know, this like just this memory of like all everybody just bringing each other up. Like, I'm sure you did great. Like you're you're fond. Like, I did like I can't believe I did this bad too. Like, and it was just this like this really like friendship and bonding that that we had together over over just drinking some chocolate milk and just in a room talking.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

I love that it's so funny. Just drinking chocolate milk, like, oh yeah, my day, not so great, but we'll do our best tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's exactly what it was.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah, yeah. No, it's awesome to have that like shared, like safe space to like talk about the competition and everything and just like share the experience together and everything. So yeah. Yeah. Um, I know you kind of talked about a challenge like earlier, but are there any other big challenges that you faced during the competitions that you had to kind of overcome?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

I think the biggest part was the mental challenge of like the mental strain of like, you know, like it's like you're in this competition and you especially you have this pressure. Um, I like in in provincials, not as much, but certainly in nationals, you have this provid like this pressure of like, oh, I'm like, I kind of have like Alberta on my back here. And so like there's that kind of pressure that you have to deal with. Some of these like everything just becomes a little bit like hazy, you know, certain like the stress kind of like slows you down a little bit. So the biggest challenge I'd say was just moving past that, moving past that stress. Just honestly, I miss L Gate said to me, uh, you're here for a reason. Um, or like, yeah, everybody's here for a reason. So if you ever feel like you got to nationals, like you're you got to provincials, you got to nationals, like you are here for a reason. And it like like you're okay, like nothing like the entire world isn't kind of like coming down on you, if you get what I mean there.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, for sure. Like you already made it so far, and and I feel like just having the experience is something to be super grateful for. Um, and yeah, just like remembering to have fun, I feel like is like the hardest part at nationals, especially is yeah, just having fun and not letting the stress really bog you down.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, again, but since yeah, Team Alberta, you have so many like good friends that it's just like it helps when people are together and they just bring everybody up together.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah, it was so cool, especially like at the award ceremony, how much everyone was just like hyping each other up and like the energy.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

It was so good.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I think I think we were one of the loudest teams there of Team Alberta for sure. And I just friendship and bonding that we all had together.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, it was incredible for sure. Do you have like a favorite part of electronics like doing the most or like learning the most?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

So yeah, I do. I think my my most favorite part is definitely designing electronics or like you're designing PCBs or or like building the schematics at a close second is definitely breadboarding because you get to put these components together and then you get to test things out. And uh and you get into something like like a break fix cycle where whoa, okay, wait, this didn't work, but I just learned something from this. And I an example is when I was training and when I was simulating some of the stuff I would do electronics, I would I accidentally put my 555 timer in in buy stable mode instead of a stable, which it's in in regular. And so after I learned, oh, okay, wait, so the in this buy-stable mode, whoa, this like acts a little bit differently. And actually, I can use I I need this kind of property, so now I know okay, I can use a 555 as this same is in buy stable mode the same thing as kind of like a like an SR latch or like components like that where there's just like really there's something really nice about when you're when you break something and you and you learn something from it.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah. Like learning how to put it back together, make sure it turns on and all that, and knowing how to turn it back on and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah, exactly. And learning that, like, okay, this logic, I can use this logic in another circuit in the future. Yeah, certainly. Um one of my the bigger finding was yeah, the 555 in bistable mode acts like an SR latch, which means um for a few an upcoming project where I needed to actually test, I needed to test if I could latch something, and I didn't have the component that I wanted, it didn't have like the actual, like it's called an SR latch IC, but I did have a bunch of five five fives, so I ended up using the five five fives, and it's just like that knowledge that came from just like breaking it and just okay, just learn something like really helpful from that.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, that's so cool. You just learn multiple different ways to really, really fix something, and then it just comes easier like every single time.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Cool, cool. For those looking to compete in electronics, do you have any advice for them?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

I'm gonna have to recycle the advice that Tom, AJ, and and a lot of my mentors gave me. Just keep going. Don't let yourself be held up by one problem or a certain challenge that's happening. Just honestly, the more you push through it, the more you'll see like certain things start working. And even if and it'll be hard, and it's I like my I give this advice after competing because I know how hard it is to do that. Because it's just like you feel it mentally, and you just feel like, why can't I just go back and fix it? Maybe if I do this, like sometimes it's just better for you to just push on, just keep going, and forget about what happened the day before, forget about what happened in the morning, in the afternoon, anything. Forget about it because you still have so many different parts of the competition to go through. And it that's it doesn't determine one part of it. What I really liked in Nationals was there was no definitive one part that could score you way more than something else. The breadboarding challenge certainly had the most like smaller chunks that you could score in, but that doesn't mean that um the actual like completing it, completing it and like making it work, you could only ever get two marks from that actually. Well, whilst like wiring it properly and using the right color cables and everything like that, you you could have gotten like so many more marks for that too, right? So it's just that like okay, take a look at what you're take a look at what you're given, take a look, because you're also given um the grade sheet for it. You're given like, okay, this will be out of two points, and okay, this makes sure if it's 10 easy small things that like that are like worth two points, like that is so much better than just fussing over one small problem that just isn't worth that much.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yeah, for sure. Definitely look at the whole picture and be like, okay, what can I really focus on now that's easier in the moment, and then I can do the harder stuff later or do the harder stuff first, whatever makes it easier for you too. I feel is like the best way to go.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Make it easy for yourself. Anything that you can do to make your job any easier, maybe okay, uh maybe I should pre-cut some of these wires and like I already know what's gonna happen. Like, use use every single skill you have because, like, again, another piece of advice, you're there for a reason, and that's because you are you're the top, like you're one of the best. So you like you got there, so now use the skills that that have that that you've been given and just make it work for you because everybody has different ways of doing stuff, so there's no single method that's like way better than anything else. Just you have to adapt and just be who you are, but like do what you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah, that's such good advice. And yeah, remembering the goldfish thing that you said earlier, too, I feel like is so helpful when you're actually in the competition. So that's great.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

It is super helpful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah. So has this experience changed how you think about your future or career?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I would say a little bit, because I've my main goal has always been uh and to go into engineering, and I kind of was like a little bit unsure of maybe would I maybe want to do like electrical engineering or would because cause I had maybe mechanical, maybe um aerospace. There were just a bunch of different like engineering majors that I found that like I I would probably be really interested in and that I should strive for. And just after the skills competition, I'd like they really helped me deepen my love for electronics and for using digital logic and everything. And they just it really it helped so much um to just like give me a little bit more of that insight, like, okay, yeah, maybe electrical is the way to go for me, just because it was like I remember having a blast at the competition. So that kind of changed like a little bit of my perspective. Other than that, it's like just you know, keeping doors open, you know, there's there's a million different possibilities, a million different places you could go. Like, if if maybe you don't want to head into like electronics um or uh engineering, you could do electronics as like you could major that like as a as a tech skill, right? Like, and so like you know, there's so many different doors that like this kind of like opened for me, and I just I'm seeing them now.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, that's awesome. There's just like so many opportunities that you can go from here. So um are you gonna be competing again next year or hopefully, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

We'll see. Um, hopefully, um it depends on it depends just a lot on schedule. Um, I would love to. It's a if it came down to not like if if I had if I didn't have anything in my schedule, I would for sure do it. It was a blast, and I would I'd love to want to go back there right now. I would like what I would get to just go back like straight away, get back to work on it. Was that much fun? But we'll see how what kind of the where the road leads, and we'll see you know what happens in the future.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Yeah, it's awesome. We'll we'll be happy to see you back because you also uh helped with our team spirit on Team Alberta. Um so yeah, let's talk about that. So you received the Team Alberta Spirit Award alongside Amal Husseini, who's also from Ernest Manning, which is awesome. What was it like to win that award and why is it so important to have Team Spirit?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

It was really nice to win that award. I really I felt like again honored and just this kind of like I felt I don't know how to put this, but you know, this pride of like, oh wow, okay, like this is because that was a big award for me. And honestly, like winning it was super cool and super awesome. And I I genuinely don't believe that it would have been possible without a mall because together we brought each other. Up brought like the kind of like the leadership up. If you didn't know, she's her school's valedictorian. And like definitely, yeah, she's she's a great one at that. And uh um, and so she really her leadership just kind of actually like helped me lead a little bit more. Like, she I feel like I have to thank her a lot for it because that award was um really kind of like she kind of propelled me towards it.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, you guys were awesome, like really bringing the energy, and I feel like it really helped everyone else like really get that energy too, especially like when we were doing that video for Team Alberta.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

So yeah, yeah, for sure. I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Yeah, yeah, so much fun, so much fun. I mean, why not? You're a part of a team, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Exactly, yeah. You're yeah, every team needs to, you know, bring each other up, you know, have have like the people, you know, that just like go team A B, you know, the those kind of people. And it's so fortunate that this year we had so many of those people. And I feel like the there's a lot of other people that the the spirit of world could have also gotten to because there we had so many people uh this year also just, you know, who are we, team A B? Like everybody was was a huge factor in that.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah, the energy was definitely there, like everyone was just hyping each other up. It's yeah, it's such a cool experience.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

If you could sum up your skills experience in one sentence, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 31:26

So many adjectives I could use because it was such an amazing and such a positive and and wonderful and and eye-opening experience. Um and it really was honestly like I can't even put it in a sentence how amazing it was and how like I think I just like the honor and the pride to just compete in skills. Um just from that, it's just like it's it's a monumental amount, and it's just like it's really amazing. Like it's it's an experience I feel like everybody should have like an experience like this because honestly, it was the best thing ever for me.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Oh, that's amazing. I'm glad it uh gave you a really, really good experience and you really enjoyed your time with us at Regina and Provincials and all that. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

For those currently training for upcoming regionals in the new year and everything, what are some tips to really sharpen their skills and like prepare for the competition itself?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I feel like some tips I would give is brush up a lot on your breadboarding. It never hurts to train train harder than what's actually gonna be in provincials or train harder than what's gonna be on nationals, regardless it's gonna help you like train to have a time limit and just make sure the discipline of I have this time limit and I will I won't go over it and like I'll stop exactly when and then I'll actually have. I think a really good my best advice would be have someone with you or have someone that let like you're training with uh whether it be a mentor, whether it be your friend, or have somebody that you can hold you accountable for kind of as you train, because I feel like like this big part of it was you're under stress and you're under time. Just try to recreate it as much as you can. Practice a lot of like stripping wires and getting things down on a breadboard. Practice a lot of oh, something a little bit sort of a curveball for me at Nationals was using an oscilloscope. Um, practice to use one super well because they're like oscilloscopes are amazing tools. And honestly, like if you get to if you have one at home, if you have one at your school, mess around with it because to be honest, like there's so many things here you're gonna learn on how to use an oscilloscope, and it actually can create shortcuts for you. So know what an oscilloscope is, know how to use it, um, even if that's not part of provincials. Brush up your knowledge on the theory, because the theory is again really important. And it could be the difference between like, you know, why isn't this like brute forcing? Why isn't this working? Should I plug this in here? Between actually understanding what a circuit does, and then maybe, oh, now that you properly understand what this circuit does, you can actually like troubleshoot like it's smarter, you can troubleshoot better. So understand and really just do if you're training, do what you're doing because that's honestly doing that and like already training is already big enough to just give you this little bit of an advantage and just practice. Practice will always help you out.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah, that's such great advice. Like, one thing I really learned from people like chatting with them is knowing the certain tools you'll need to use in competitions, because sometimes you don't use them in daily life. So yeah, just knowing that too.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like the tools, the tools that you use, electronics, um not as much as many other of the skills, more in the sense that our tools are mainly, you know, our breadboards and then our or actually where we have our soldering irons, our breadboards, and our oscilloscope would be my three main that I would, you know, have a really solid understanding of, especially for electronics. Once you have those three, anything will like really become a little bit easier um throughout the competition.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yeah, it's great advice just for everyone, anyone who's looking to compete in electronics. So and what is your favorite thing about electronics?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Definitely just the constant improvement and the constant problem solving. I absolutely love, you know, just encountering something and then just being like, okay, like I wanna, I wanna let me fix this. I wanna, I wanna like turn this into something useful or or um, or if you have an idea, just knowing like the kind of electronics knowledge to learn how to um maybe you need to step down a voltage and you know how to build your own like buck converter so you don't have to spend as much money on on buying one or or anything like that, where to the point where you know my favorite part of electronics is just the figuring things out and just like that drive for like constant improvement.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, it's like a really, really cool puzzle that will turn on at some point and it'll be useful.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a puzzle that that turns out being useful, even if it's not useful, like the experience that you learn from it is useful enough, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

So yeah, yeah, that's so cool. Like what a cool problem solving thing, and then yeah, it working and everything. Like, it's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Absolutely, right.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Do you have anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Maybe one last piece of advice is especially from my perspective, where I remember so I was ecstatic at winning gold in provincials, especially when it was mainly like grade 12s, and it was like the competition, the other the people in the podium X were grade 12s, and you know, winning as a grade 10 was like such a like amazing experience, and like just I felt so ecstatic. And then the other side of that was in nationals, um, you know, to the point where I feel like holding yourself so accountable that in in my sense when we went to the awards ceremony at nationals and I wasn't in the the top three, I didn't know what position I was, I didn't know if it was fourth, fifth, sixth, I didn't know where I was after the the ceremony and and the closing ceremony. Um, you know, it can be really easy to just be like like this just sucks, like this isn't for me, but honestly, like being there is like a massive achievement for anybody, anybody at skills, anybody that's got to provincials or nationals or anything, being there is already an amazing achievement, and keep that in mind because it was really difficult for me to understand that. And I kind of went through that like after I was like, why couldn't I, you know, just get on that podium? Is there like what could I have done? And like all this, like all these kind of thoughts like that. But like the achievement itself is you got there and you improved, and like again, the skills experience is so amazing that you actually you made friends, and you shouldn't let anything, like any of your results, impact what else will happen on the trip or or how amazing the trip was, or the people that or the networking that you did. Because again, skills is such a massive networking event, it's just like that. And so it's just don't let that like kind of drag you down, because I know for me it sort of did, and because you know, being honest, it hurt a little bit, right? But honestly, just know that you got there, and that in itself is a monumental achievement for you.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and I I can't say it enough. Like just getting to the point where you are in skills, like you're still a skills alumni, like you've already made a huge achieve achievement just getting there. That's amazing. And it takes a lot of guts to compete, I feel, and be on that level with a bunch of other people who are also competing against you, like you know, so just be proud of yourself for making it that far and doing all the prep and training that it takes to get that far. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Exactly. Yeah, because you certainly you got there and you got there for a reason. So you have to be so proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Exactly. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. But thank you so much, Diego, for coming on the podcast with me today. It was amazing hearing your story. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Yeah, I know. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Yeah, of course. And thank you, everyone, for tuning in. We will see you in the next one. Thanks again for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and gained some valuable insights from our amazing guests. If you'd like to learn more about Skills Canada Alberta and our wide range of programs, be sure to check out our website at skillsalberta.com. From bringing skills right to your classroom to taking part in our competition programming, there are countless ways to get involved. And don't forget to follow us on social media at Skills Alberta to stay up to date on our latest episodes and events. See you in the next one.