my taitaja experience
getting there
For the first time in its history, Keuda hosted its own home competition — Taitaja2026 — bringing around 400 competitors across 48 different skills together in Tuusula. I made the trip with the Sakky crew to compete in skill 206, web development.
life between rounds
The days were long. The competition kicked off in the morning — somewhere between 8 and 9 am depending on the day — and ran until around 4–6 pm. I was up early every single morning, usually around 5 am, because I could just never really sleep at the hotel. The evenings we spent together, wandering around the Jumbo shopping centre and refuelling for the next day.
the competition
Skill 206 was web development, and for three days it was heads-down and locked in. The work was split into stages: taking on and planning a client project, sketching the wireframes, then building out the frontend and the backend, and finally laying out a plan for how the project could be developed further. A lot went well — the atmosphere and the level of the other competitors — but it wasn't flawless: there were technical issues, the task briefs weren't always consistent, and at times it honestly felt like a few corners had been cut on the budget.
taking the win
In the end it came right down to the wire — I took first place by just 0.3 points. I'll be honest, I was kind of shocked I actually won. The competition also had a sprint round (pikataival) — a list of short, timed tasks you work through one after another — and mine went really well, which is what ended up tipping the whole thing in my favour. Altogether we brought home 11 medals for Savon ammattiopisto.
what it really meant
But the medal isn't really what stuck with me. What I'll remember is the people — meeting so many new faces and seeing how genuinely motivated everyone was about their own craft. The team spirit, the friends, the shared grind (and, of course, the food) — that's the part that made the whole thing worth it.
one week i won't forget
The feeling is still unreal, and the trip as a whole was something I won't forget. It left me hungry to keep pushing and to keep building. Huge thanks to everyone who was there with me, my fellow competitors and the judges — and a special thank you to our competition supporter Minna Punkki, who never stopped cheering us on and made sure everything ran fairly and flawlessly. ❤️ Thanks, everyone!