Guilds: growing and sharing knowledge

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 Guild was created with the goal of acquiring essential skills for using various service providers for application hosting.

During the meetings, participants practiced with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure to learn how to manage different environments, such as testing and production, for deploying and updating an application (the repository is available internally).

Visit our blog and read the following in-depth articles:

• Hosting a static website on Google Cloud Storage
• Hosting a static website on Amazon S3
• Fun with Google Cloud – Book to Phrases
• Data Warehouse: Amazon Redshift e Google BigQuery
• Analisi e tutorial di configurazione di IAM User e IAM Role in AWS
• Creare una Azure Function con Terraform per inviare notifiche tramite SendGrid

With this guild, the development of a Flutter application began for managing desk bookings and recording office attendance.

Throughout the meetings, the group gained various insights:

• best practices for developing efficient and responsive Flutter applications;
• the key steps for publishing an app in stores (Google Play Store and Apple App Store);
• understanding the technical and administrative requirements for publication.

This first version of the application includes essential features such as authentication, attendance registration, and reporting. The i3Presence project will continue next quarter with another guild.

The guild aimed to learn how to design and implement an online game that is short, fun, and suitable for team-building events.

Team members, both designers and developers, used their UX/UI and programming knowledge to create a project in React and C#.

The game “Guess it!”, available internally, involves interaction where one person must make others guess what they’re thinking through a chat, providing a series of hints represented by fun icons. The web app includes a login form and a general leaderboard.

A guild dedicated to studying Java using the book “OCP Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 17 Developer: Exam 1Z0-829“, which thoroughly covers the language from basic concepts (operators, types, etc.) to more complex topics like Functional Interfaces and Streams.

Each chapter of the book includes exercises, so during each meeting, the group dedicated part of the time to theoretical study and the remaining time to solving exercises.