Platform

One data model, three ways in.

Sympozio runs the full lifecycle of a scholarly congress across three connected applications: a console for the organising team, a phone-first application for on-site staff and volunteers, and an installable application for attendees.

They are separate interfaces because the three audiences do genuinely different work, but they sit on one account system and one data model. That is the part that matters operationally: an entitlement configured in the console in June is what a volunteer’s phone checks at a dining-room door in September, without an export, an import, or a reconciliation step in between.

Surface one

The organiser console

The console is where the secretariat prepares the congress and then runs it. Everything described here is configurable by the organising team through the interface: adding a new attendee category, changing what a ticket includes, or restructuring the programme does not require a developer, a support ticket, or a new release.

Invitation-based registration

A scholarly congress is not a public event, and Sympozio does not treat it as one. There is no open sign-up form. Organisers issue single-use invitation codes, which can be distributed as a plain code, as a join link, or by email — individually for a single guest, or in bulk when a partner institution sends a delegation of two hundred. Each code is the credential that the attendee’s eventual QR badge encodes, which is what allows the platform to connect an invitation issued in March to a person arriving at a door in September.

Attendee tiers and entitlements

Congresses rarely have one kind of attendee. Speakers, students, accompanying persons, honorary guests and full delegates each receive something different, and the differences are usually financial. Sympozio expresses this as entitlements — the gala dinner, lunches, a particular workshop, a seminar series — which are bundled into named tiers. The tier travels with the invitation, so redeeming a code grants exactly the right access with no manual reconciliation afterwards. New tiers and entitlements are created by the organiser as the programme evolves.

Pre-created accounts for invited guests

Some guests will never fill in a registration form: a keynote speaker, a rector, a government representative. For them, the organiser creates the account directly and sends a one-time activation link, which the guest uses only to set a password. They arrive already registered, already in the right tier, already on the directory.

Participant management

A searchable directory of every account associated with the event, with roles and per-person detail pages showing tier, entitlements, check-in state and contact details. When a registration desk asks a question about a specific person during the congress, this is where it is answered.

Programme management

Build and edit the schedule — sessions, times, rooms, session types — and revise it as the inevitable changes arrive. Because the participant app reads from the same programme, a room change entered in the console at eight in the morning is visible to every attendee immediately, without a reprint or an erratum sheet on a noticeboard.

Announcements

Publish an update once and it reaches attendees twice: as a banner inside the application, and as a push notification carrying a deep link to the page it concerns. This replaces the mail-merge that half the room never opens.

Institutions directory

Maintain the participating institutions — description, logo, website, country. These populate the in-app directory and the global map, which is often the first thing an attendee looks at when deciding whom they want to meet.

Networking hours

Define the windows during which attendees may book colleague meetings. This keeps networking in the intervals where the organiser intends it to happen, rather than in the middle of a plenary.

Volunteers, areas and the roster

Describe the venue as areas — registration desk, main hall, session rooms, cloakroom — post staff and volunteers to them, and keep a roster with contact details. During the congress this is what makes it possible to find out who is actually standing at a given door.

Overview dashboard

Live counts of registrations, sessions, announcements and roles, so the state of the congress is legible at a glance rather than assembled from three spreadsheets on request.

Surface two

The on-site staff and volunteer app

During the congress itself, the people who determine whether it runs smoothly are usually volunteers who were briefed ten minutes ago and are working standing up, holding a phone in one hand. The staff application is built for exactly that situation: it opens in a browser on whatever device they already own, and it does a small number of things without ambiguity.

QR badge scanning

Scan an attendee’s QR badge with the phone camera and their registration is verified in seconds. A manual code-entry path is always available, because screens crack, batteries die and someone will inevitably arrive having left their phone in a taxi.

One-tap check-in

Checking someone in is a single action, and it produces a single record showing who checked them in and when. The question of whether a person has already arrived therefore has exactly one answer, available to everyone at once.

Entitlement verification at the door

When a badge is scanned, staff immediately see what that attendee is signed up for — the gala dinner, the day’s meals, a specific workshop. This is the capability that makes door control and dining control workable without printed lists at every entrance, and without a volunteer having to make a judgement call.

Help requests

An attendee who needs assistance raises a request in their own app; it appears here. A volunteer claims it, which prevents four people converging on the same problem, messages the attendee directly inside the platform, and marks it resolved when it is done.

Surface three

The participant application

The attendee’s companion before, during and after the congress. It installs directly from the browser as a Progressive Web App on iOS, Android and desktop — there is no app store listing, no review queue, and no separate build to maintain per platform, which matters when a programme change needs to reach attendees the same afternoon.

Programme and personal agenda

Browse the full schedule and assemble a personal agenda from it, so an attendee carries their own version of a congress that may be running eight parallel tracks.

Digital badge and contact card

A QR badge for scanning on site, and a contact card in vCard format that an attendee can share with a colleague — which imports cleanly into whatever address book they already use.

Directory and profiles, under the attendee’s control

Profiles are rich, but visibility is granular and belongs to the attendee: whether they appear in the directory, whether their contact card can be shared, whether they can be messaged, and whether they are open to meetings at all. Email addresses and telephone numbers leave the server only when the attendee has chosen to share them. Nothing is disclosed as a side effect of registering.

Structured networking

Attendees suggest, accept and decline colleague meetings within the networking windows the organiser has defined, with availability and conflict handling so that two meetings cannot be booked into the same half hour. It is a scheduling instrument for scholars who want to speak to one another, not a recommendation engine.

Private messaging

One-to-one messages between attendees, inside the platform, subject to each person’s messaging preferences.

Institutions directory and global map

See which institutions are represented and where in the world they are — a straightforward way for an attendee to understand the composition of the congress they have travelled to.

Announcements and notifications

Organiser updates arrive in the application and as operating-system push notifications, with the attendee in control of what they receive.

Help and FAQ

Self-service answers to the questions asked most often, and a request-a-volunteer path that routes directly to on-site staff.

Account and privacy controls

Profile and photograph, notification preferences, password change, and full account deletion with anonymisation of what remains — exercised by the attendee, in the product, without writing to anyone.

See it against your own event

The most useful demonstration is one framed around a congress you are actually planning. Tell us its shape — the size, the format, the number of parallel tracks — and we will walk through how Sympozio would run it.

Request a demonstration