The meeting was organised by the Smart Rural incubator HIESE, on 25 and 26 June, at its headquarters, in the sunny municipality of Penela, and brought together representatives of the twelve beneficiaries of the project.
The SCAIRA project, a three-year initiative co-funded by the Interreg SUDOE 2021-2027 programme that aims to develop a customised training programme to support the creation and acceleration of startups in rural areas of Spain, France and Portugal, held its second face-to-face consortium meeting in the Portuguese region of Coimbra on 25-26 June. The meeting was organised by the innovation space HIESE, one of the beneficiary entities, at its headquarters in the sunny municipality of Penela, and brought together representatives of the twelve beneficiaries of the project.
Consortium meeting in Coimbra.
The first day of the meeting assessed the status of the project. Each partner presented an assessment of their work, highlighting significant achievements and challenges encountered since the kick-off meeting held in Toulouse (France) at the end of January at the headquarters of Aerospace Valley, the consortium coordinator.
One of the most important points of the first day was how the project would be affected by the departure of the French partner, IMT Mines Albi, which announced its withdrawal for technical reasons just before the meeting. In this regard, given the versatility of the consortium, among the solutions put on the table was to share the burden of its package of activities and simplify the schedule of actions for the second half of the year.
The communication and dissemination strategy was also high on the agenda, as the joint secretariat of the programme always emphasises its importance. In particular, the partners exchanged ideas on how to involve stakeholders and which channels and promotional materials to use in the segmentation process.
During the second day, the presentations focused on the services that the programme aims to provide (administrative, technical, and business) to entrepreneurs participating in SCAIRA.
Finally, to bring the second face-to-face consortium meeting to a fitting conclusion, SCAIRA partners saw first-hand why the Coimbra region is so well known in the Portuguese innovation ecosystem by visiting the Pedro Nunes Institute and the Penela Fablab.