Guilds: growing and sharing knowledge

The Game Design Guild set out to explore the dynamics of video game design, tackling the creative process from concept ideation to the development of a playable prototype.

During the meetings, the team developed Juan Piss, a casual roguelite beat ’em up that turns the journey home after a night at the bar into an odyssey of unpredictable choices, hilarious fights, and surreal situations. Through brainstorming, mind mapping, game flow analysis, and level prototyping, the guild experimented with new design and development techniques.

The results include an initial level prototype and an original, humorous game narrative—an engaging experience that combined experimentation, creativity, and plenty of fun.

The i3Finance Guild has set the goal of providing a solid foundation in financial education, helping participants understand markets, investment tools, and savings management strategies.

Through lectures, practical exercises, and a structured learning path, the guild has explored key topics such as inflation, interest rates, diversification, and risk, analyzing financial instruments including stocks, bonds, investment funds, and ETFs.

Participants have gained the necessary skills to better manage their financial resources, plan investments, and build a portfolio suited to their life goals, thus contributing to greater financial awareness.

The i3Skillz Guild has focused on exploring microfrontend architecture, choosing Angular as the reference framework. Through hands-on experiments, it developed a Proof of Concept (PoC) to integrate microservices into the internal application used for time tracking, tackling the complexities of migrating an existing system.

The results include a working backend in development, an analysis of the Skill Matrix, and a document outlining the next steps.

The journey will continue with the Guild’s second iteration, further deepening and applying the acquired skills.

The Guild set out to explore the evolution of digital interfaces, tracing the origins of paradigms and patterns that are still present today. The journey included studying modern interfaces related to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and wearable devices, with a focus on the impact of artificial intelligence on the design of the future.

A particularly valuable moment was the workshop with Emanuele Bassis, during which we tested cutting-edge VR and AR devices and rediscovered historic technologies such as the Commodore 64 and the Game Boy, analyzing their interfaces.

The experience reinforced the awareness that every technology is the result of a complex evolution with deep roots. Through collaboration and individual contributions, the Guild developed a broader and more critical perspective on interface design, connecting past, present, and future.

This second iteration of the Guild has continued the work started by the previous one in the first quarter, developing a Flutter application to manage desk reservations and attendance tracking in the office. In addition to the existing features (authentication, attendance tracking, and reporting), a new functionality has been introduced, allowing users to book desks through a dynamic SVG map, also built in Flutter. The team has also adapted the mobile version’s pages to be accessible via a browser, optimizing the code to ensure compatibility with both web and mobile environments.

The Guild will continue with a third session, aiming to:

• complete the web adaptation of the application;
• verify the correct functioning of operational workflows (such as booking a desk);
• add an administration panel for desk management.

This Guild was created to prepare for the Kubernetes Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certifications. Participants studied topics common to both certifications together, with the valuable support of colleagues already certified in CKAD.

The main goal was to deepen knowledge of Kubernetes, but the group also experimented with advanced tools such as ISTIO, Helm, and Operator. During the meetings, they explored patterns like sidecar, adapter, and ambassador, offering the opportunity to gain new skills and techniques.

At the end of the journey, two guild members, Carlo Ballabio and Yordan Asenov, passed the exam and obtained the CKA certification.

The goal of the Video Production Guild was to learn the fundamental stages of video creation. Participants explored the video production process, divided into pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution.

During the meetings, various activities were conducted, including:

• courses on cinematography, storytelling, and video editing using advanced software like Premiere and After Effects;
• an in-person workshop with external instructor Carlo Teofilo, providing hands-on experience with technical equipment;
• an online lab focused on editing.

The Guild team acquired essential skills for independently working on video projects. During the guild conference at the Intré Camp on October 2, a video showcasing the knowledge gained during this training was presented.

This Guild was created with the goal of exploring the “behind the scenes” of many well-known software systems, using programming challenges offered by the CodeCrafters.io platform. The challenges involved creating simplified versions of Redis, Git, Docker, SQLite, BitTorrent, grep, an HTTP server, and a DNS server, each accompanied by a detailed guide. Participants tackled each challenge using the most appropriate programming language.

The main result of the Guild was gaining a deeper understanding of how various technologies work, such as DNS servers, shells, Git, Redis, and Apache Kafka. Through these challenges, members learned how to use APIs to manipulate low-level data structures (buffers, bytes, bits) in various programming languages.

This second group of “Video Production” enthusiasts followed a similar path to the other guild. During the meetings, all stages of the production process were explored: from planning and scriptwriting in pre-production to filming in production, using technical equipment for image, sound, and lighting. In post-production, the team focused on professional editing, enhancing the videos with special effects, audio editing, and music using Movavi software.

All team members acquired fundamental skills to work independently on video projects. During the guild conference at the camp on October 2, a training video on ISO 27001 regulations was presented, in which guild participants recreated three potentially dangerous office situations that violated the regulation. For the unconference at the Intré Camp on October 2, the guild hosted a practical workshop on creating and editing a video using Movavi.

During this philosophical guild, participants followed a journey guided by lecturer Elisa Belotti, exploring the views of great thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Heidegger, and Popper. They tackled complex topics such as science, ethics, freedom, and bioethics.

Each meeting focused on dialectical discussions among participants, aiming to develop critical thinking and argumentative skills. The journey concluded with a debate, prepared in August, on the topic: “Is democracy still the best form of government?”, in which two teams defended opposing positions.

The same debate on democracy was later presented as an unconference session during the company camp, held on October 2 at the Diocesan Museum of Brescia.