The SCAIRA project, a three-year initiative co-funded by the Interreg SUDOE programme that aims to develop a customised training programme to support the creation and acceleration of start-ups in rural areas, held its second in-person consortium meeting in the Portuguese region of Coimbra on June 25–26. The two-day event was organized by the entrepreneurial center HIESE at its headquarters in the sunny city of Penela and brought together representatives of the twelve project beneficiaries.

The project’s state-of-the-art was assessed on the first day of the meeting. Each partner gave a report on their work, highlighting significant achievements and thought-provoking findings since the kick-off conference in Toulouse, France, in January, organized by Aerospace Valley, the project coordinator.

One of the most important points was how the exit of partner IMT Mines Albi, which announced its withdrawal for technical reasons right before the meeting, would affect the project. In this regard, given the versatility of the consortium, one of the solutions put on the table was to divide the workload and simplify the schedule of actions for 2024.

Another important item on the agenda of the first day was SCAIRA’s communication and dissemination strategy. In particular, the partners exchanged ideas on how to engage the stakeholders and which channels and promotional materials to use in the segmentation process. 

On the second day of the gathering, the consortium concentrated its talks on the services that the programme aims to provide (administrative services, technical services, and business services) to the entrepreneurs that participate in SCAIRA.

Finally, to wrap up the second in-person consortium meeting adequately, the SCAIRA partners found out firsthand why this Portuguese region is so techy visiting the IPN institute and the Fablab Penela.