It seems people can talk forever about something they're passionate about.

For Cheyenne Valley Area Career and Technical Center student Melinda Lyter, she only had 15 minutes.

"If I screw up, it's no big deal," she said. "I had a lot of fun. The 15 minutes just flew by."

She spent 15 minutes promoting Skills USA in the promotional bulletin board competition at the state competition in Bismarck on Monday. The first place finishers will go on to the national competition in June in Kansas City, Mo.

Her team's bulletin board was a three-dimensional design showcasing some of the vocations offered at the Valley City technical center and Skills USA. Photos of students in class showed up on a movie reel that appeared to come out of the poster.

The competition is for students who are in career and technical education classes. This covers automotive, welding, health care and graphic arts, among other vocations.

"It's one way industry lets educators know what they want," said Lee Friese, Bismarck State College Skills USAorganizer.

Lyter is in graphic design at Cheyenne Valley. She likes photography, and learned to use a dark room and started learning to use computer programs to work with photographs. Next year, she'd like to take the next graphic design class.

For the competition, industry representatives judged the events and some businesses donated items for the competitions. Students competed in skill competitions or leadership competitions. The skill competitions judge whether students know how to perform a given task in a category and the leadership competitions judge if a student has the skills to find a job.

"It's nice for the students, and industry appreciates their efforts," state Skills USA director Tony Scheerz said.

About 550 students took part in the state competition. The competition started Sunday at Bismarck State College and wraps up with the awards ceremony Wednesday.

It takes 200 people to judge 39 categories. Schools, two-year colleges and tribal colleges may only compete in categories in which they have programs.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)