A special bootcamp with IIS Pentasuglia students from Matera

From March 9 to 20, we hosted a group of students from IIS GB Pentasuglia at H-FARM College for a bootcamp dedicated to digital transformation and entrepreneurship. This was an intensive two-week program that involved 46 students in a comprehensive experience combining lessons, company visits, and hands-on activities.

The program alternated classroom sessions on artificial intelligence, startups, and business modeling with hands-on workshops. Throughout the experience, H-FARM College students played an active role as mentors, sharing their own experiences, supervising the students’ work, and helping them turn theoretical concepts into concrete projects.

The Pentasuglia Institute students were able to experience firsthand our approach to education, characterized by experiential learning, direct interaction with companies, and the development of skills applicable in the real world. A key element of the bootcamp was the company visits: students explored major organizations such as EssilorLuxottica in Agordo, Diadora, Gruppo Simeon, and Sicon-Socomec, observing closely innovative processes and technologies applied to real business contexts.

In particular, the visit to Diadora included a guided tour of the company museum with Gelindo Bordin, who described the evolution of the brand across different sports. The students then visited the Innovation area, where they were able to directly observe the testing methods that form the foundation of the brand’s innovation process.

At Gruppo Simeon, students were divided into groups and followed a path covering all production phases, from manufacturing to prototyping. They explored advanced methods and techniques used to create cladding systems for skyscrapers and their installation for major international clients. They also saw prototypes and technical solutions, such as measurement models used for complex projects, including those developed for the Galeries Lafayette in Luxembourg.

The visit to Socomec began with a plenary welcome session attended by the CEO and the company team, followed by a presentation on the group’s history and activities and a talk focused on working life in the company and the value of people in industrial processes. The students were then divided into three groups and visited the R&D and production areas as well as the European repair center, where staff explained operational processes in detail. The day ended with a networking moment and a final buffet for discussion.

Participants were able to develop their own ideas, prototype projects, and present their final pitches. The projects created by the students ranged from youth well-being initiatives to the application of AI to improve business processes, as well as B2C platforms.

The experience, which was very different from a traditional school setting, had a highly positive impact, as confirmed by the school’s teachers, leaving students motivated and with a more concrete understanding of the world of technology and entrepreneurship.