Young professionals in standardization: CEN and CENELEC are launching a campaign

Young people are also key for European standardization. They can bring new, fresh ideas to the standardization work, ensuring that it is up to date and able to identify and foster innovations and new technologies. They can help increase the diversity of the European Standardization System, allowing it to consider new perspectives and be more responsive to the evolving needs of society and the industry. Finally, young professionals are vital to help the evolution of our system and make it more resilient and fit for the future, in a context in which global challenges – such as climate change – require, to be addressed, the engagement of as many diverse stakeholders as possible.

For this reason, CEN and CENELEC are happy join the celebrations of the European Year of Youth through a communication campaign that will run in the coming months.  The objective of the campaign is twofold: on the one hand, showcase the activities we and our community of 43 members in 34 European countries already do to engage young professionals in standardization work. On the other, we aim to raise awareness on European standardization among young people, in order to engage interested young professionals in future standardization work and in the renewal of our system.

The campaign will be multi-channel and consist of the following elements:

• A series of targeted interviews to young professionals (between 18 and 35 years of age) active in European standardization, as experts in CEN or CENELEC TCs, researchers involved in standardization or young European innovators, etc.
  • Episode 1: Kevin Carta
  • Episode 2: Lea Emmel
  • Episode 3: Kristin Fagerli
  • Episode 4: Alexandre Colombier
  • Episode 5: Saharnaz Dilmaghani
  • Episode 6: Jayson Shepherd
  • Episode 7: Bledar Beqiri
  • Episode 8: Lilian Fehlmann
  • Episode 9: Alessia Gaetani
  • Episode 10: Maya Petrova
  • Episode 11: Martin Häuer
  • Episode 12: Ewa Zielinska
• A series of quote cards where a wide range of European stakeholders will be invited to share their views on the importance of young professionals for standardization, on what their organisation is doing on the field, etc. The quote cards will be shared on Twitter under the official hashtag of the celebration, #EuropeanYearOfYouth.
• A mapping of the different projects organised by CEN and CENELEC members with regards to young standard-makers.

Some of the projects dedicated to young professionals in standardization by CEN and CENELEC members at the national level: 

• BSI host a podcast, 'The Standards Show', which deals with all topics around standardization, included a special focus on young professionals. In particular, episode 58 was dedicated to 'Next generation standards makers'.
• DIN has an established Young Professionals Programme. Among other things, it hosts a series of academic seminars on standardization, organises a competition of ideas called "DIN-connect" and participates to a series of European research projects. DIN Young Professionals also hosts a podcast about standardization which is available in English at this link. 
• DKE has launched Next Generation DKE, a dedicated initiative with the aim of strengthening the influence of young people at DKE.
• Danish Standards is hosting on 27 April the Nordic Young Professional Workshop 2022, an event dedicated to young engineers on how to strengthen the sustainable development goals through standardization. 
• NEK has a programme called 'NEK Young Leadership', a series of workshops and lectures given by prominent people in the Norwegian business community to inform young people of the benefits of standardization. It also has a mentoring programme, NEK Young Expert, allowing members of technical committees to invite a colleague of the age of 35 or younger into the same committee free of charge for two years. 
• OVE has the project 'Be Part of Standardization', targeted to OVE Young Engineers, who can apply for a "trial membership" in an OVE Technical Committee/Subcommittee (TK/TSK) and experience the advantages of the standardization network directly and at first hand.

• SESKO has been active both in international and national young professional programmes as of year 2010. In 2022, SESKO is participating as one of the 5 countries in the Nordic Young Professional workshop 2022 and implementing the Finnish young professional programme within electrotechnical standardization, where young professionals from earlier years have the possibility to on an annual basis network and share experiences from standardization in common events. SESKO is also promoting nationally to universities and stakeholders within innovation the CEN CENELEC Standards + Innovation Awards 2022, where a special category is dedicated to “Young researcher Award”.

• UNE organises a series of initiatives on young standardization professionals together with taking part to the IEC Young Professional programme with a national delegation. Among them, they host an academic prize for university students , open to students from Spanish universities. They also developed a "serious game" developed in partnership with a University to raise awareness about standardization amongst young people. Finally, they collaborate often with universities to deliver specific modules and training on standardization, and also offer a training course for teachers in universities. 

Regularly follow this page and our Twitter account to be informed on the deployment of the campaign.

Are you interested to participate in the campaign, or simply to know more about it and CEN and CENELEC’s activities? You can write to media@cencenelec.eu.