Shia Muslim Professionals

Conference

Engage 2026

What everything on the screen means

Every colour, letter, circle and square in the staffing tool, and what it is telling you. Nothing here is a setting: this page only explains. It needs no sign-in, so it can be opened on a phone at the registration desk or printed and left beside it.

Statuses

Where one person stands on being asked. Every person carries exactly one, and it is the same colour everywhere it appears: the circle beside their name in the speaker list, the circle on their name on a session, and the fill behind that name when they have said yes.

Nobody has asked yet

N
Not invited On the roster, not yet approached. Where everybody starts.
↓
Imported Arrived from a registration form or a list rather than from a conversation. Nobody has looked at them yet.

Asked, and waiting

C
Called Rung. No answer either way yet.
T
Texted Messaged. No answer either way yet.
I
Invited The ask has been made properly and is with them.
?
Tentative A maybe. Interested, not committed. The colour sits between Invited's amber and Accepted's green, which is where the answer sits.

Answered

A
Accepted They said yes. Their name now appears on the public agenda.
R
Registered They said yes and then signed up through the form. This is the one status that unlocks their own page: only a Registered person can be sent their link.
D
Declined They said no. Nobody is waiting on anything.
⋯
Never replied The chasing ended without an answer. Not a step on the way to one, which is why it sits here: somebody has decided to stop asking. The mark is three dots rather than a letter, because N is Not invited and R is Registered, and a silence is better drawn than spelled.

The last four count as concluded. On the Invites tab they sort below the people still owed a call, and they drop out of the list when Include the ones already dealt with is unticked.

The circle is always round. The square letters beside it are networks, which is a different question — see below.

A name on a session

On the agenda, each role box holds the people doing it. The name itself carries three or four separate facts.

2IHAmina Bazzi RLHasan Bazzi ANZaid Younes
An outlined chip Still work. Anything up to and including Tentative, and anything that ended without a yes.
Filled green — Accepted They said yes.
Filled indigo — Registered They said yes and signed up. A different colour rather than a darker green, because two greens side by side is a puzzle: you should not have to remember which shade is which while reading an agenda.
2
The small number The running order within that role, shown only when more than one person holds it. The arrows move somebody up or down it. This is the order they go on in the room — the public agenda lists them alphabetically instead.
A
The round letter Their status, as above. On a filled chip it inverts to white with the letter in the fill colour, so it never disappears into its own background.
S
The square letter Their network. On a filled chip it gets a hairline of white around it so it never reads as part of the fill.
Name
A dark chip The spotlight: you clicked a name in the speaker list and the agenda is showing you everywhere that person is. Press × on the bar at the top of the agenda to clear it.
⚠
A warning triangle This person is in two places at the same time. The other session is named when you hover it.

Networks

Which of the conference's networks a person belongs to, drawn as a square so it never gets confused with the round status circle. Somebody in two networks shows two squares. Hovering one names it.

AAdministrators IAI EEducation NEntrepreneurs GGeneral OGuests of Honor HHealthcare LLaw & Policy RPartners PProfessionals CScholars SStudents

No two networks share a letter, which is why four of them are not the initial you would guess: AI is I because Administrators took the A, Guests of Honor is O because General took the G, Partners is R because Professionals took the P, and Scholars is C because Students took the S. Somebody in a network outside this list shows no square rather than a guessed initial.

The same colours fill the tag on a session card, which is the network that session belongs to.

Roles on a session

Every session has three boxes. A Quran session gains a fourth.

Reciter
Only on sessions whose title mentions Quran. The box appears and disappears as the title is edited.
Host
Runs the room: opens it, keeps time, closes it. A duty on the day rather than a billing, which is why a host is never named on the public agenda.
Facilitator
Leads the conversation between the speakers. Named publicly.
Speaker
Presenting. Named publicly.

These four colours are also what the Invites list uses when it says what somebody is doing at each session, so the two screens agree without your having to learn a second key.

The speaker list

The column on the left of the Staffing tab. Drag a name onto a role, or on a phone tap the name and then tap the role.

A red left edge Marked as a Speaker and on no session at all. The quiet failure on this screen: a double booking shows itself on the agenda, but somebody agreed and never placed just sits in the list looking like everybody else until the day arrives.
A grey left edge A speaker who is on nothing because they declined. That is an answer, not an oversight, so it is not drawn as a gap.
A gold left edge Picked up, waiting to be dropped on a role. Tap the name again to put it down.
2
A number after a name How many sessions they are on. Absent means none.

The search box matches more than names. Type part of a name, an organization, a network or a status. Typing clash narrows the list to people double booked, and status:never or network:students filter outright. A status prefix is enough: status:t gives both Texted and Tentative.

Session cards

A dashed card Registration, a break, lunch, prayer, the dinner. No role boxes, and it does not count towards "sessions staffed". Still editable.
A card with a heavy top edge Somebody on it is also on another session at the same time.
12 chosen
A seat count How many attendees have picked this one. Silent until there is something to say.
40 / 40 · Full
Full The seat limit set in the editor has been reached. Their page stops offering it.

Edit opens the session: title, tag line, description, tag, location, whether attendees may choose it, and how many seats. Location is a dropdown of the rooms at Bint Jebail; a session still holding an older name keeps it, marked off the list, so nothing is silently moved to the wrong door.

Remove this session is at the foot of the editor. It takes two clicks and the second one says what goes with it. Whoever was standing in the session is released and anybody who had chosen it has that choice let go. Every save is kept as a snapshot on the server, so it can be undone from there.

The Invites tab

The calling list. Each row is one person, what is known about them, and where they are on the day.

3:00 PM – 3:50 PMFacilitator Building Wealth Without Losing Vision Room D 5:10 PM – 5:55 PMSpeaker Beyond Success Banquet Hall

One line per session, in order: the time, what they are doing there, which session, and the room. Read down the left and the times line up; the role is coloured as it is on the agenda.

Invited · 12
The tally across the top How many people sit at each status. Click one to show only those; click it again to clear.
Include the ones already dealt with
The tick box On by default. Unticked, it hides Accepted, Declined and Never replied, leaving only the calls still to make.
Send link
The link button Emails somebody their own page. Only on people who are Registered, and only a super admin can press it.

What the public agenda shows

The page at /agenda.html, which needs no sign-in and is embedded on the foundation's own site. It refreshes itself whenever somebody comes back to it, so a change you make here is on the public site within the minute.

On it

  • Every session: time, room, tag, title, tag line, description
  • The facilitator, by name
  • The speakers, by name, alphabetically
  • Their titles — Shaykh, Sayyid, Dr.

Never on it

  • Hosts and reciters
  • Anybody not yet Accepted or Registered
  • Email addresses, phone numbers, photographs
  • Statuses, notes, who invited whom

So a session whose speakers are all still deciding prints no names rather than provisional ones. As each person says yes they appear on their own. Announcing somebody before they have accepted puts a claim about a real person on a public website, and an invitation that goes unanswered would leave it there.

An attendee's own page

Sent to a Registered person as a link with a token in it. No password: the link is the key, so it is theirs alone and should not be forwarded.

  1. Their details, and their biography. Every visit opens here, not only the first: a biography is read out when somebody is introduced, and the week before a conference is when it changes. A returning visitor gets "Still right?" and a one-press way on.
  2. The sessions, an hour at a time, in the order the day runs. A bar says which hour and how many are settled; a row of dots jumps to any of them. A session with its seats full says so, and every card names its facilitator and speakers.
  3. Lunch. Yes or no.
  4. The dinner. Yes or no. It waits until lunch is answered, so it is one question at a time rather than a form.
  5. Their day. Everything chosen plus the fixed points — prayer, the breaks. They can print it, or download a branded PDF the server draws.

Beyond the first step, a returning visitor moves by the three tabs — Sessions, Meals, Your day — rather than being walked through again.

A session somebody is billed to is not a choice. It is drawn in gold, marked You are speaking here (or facilitating, or hosting), and carries no Choose button; the rest of that hour closes, since they cannot be in two rooms. It lands on their day without their choosing it.

Where the day runs as tracks

A time with two or more different network tags on its options is the day running as tracks, and the room is decided by the person's own network rather than left to them.

Administrators
The Administrators session, in every track slot.
Students
The Students session, in every track slot.
Everybody else
Whatever network they are actually in, they are a professional for this purpose: the Professionals session in the morning, and in the afternoon a free choice between the four interest rooms.
The workshops
One tag between them, so nobody's track. Open to all.

The rooms that are not theirs are greyed rather than hidden, with the track they belong to written where the Choose button would be: seeing what the rest of the building is doing is part of knowing where you are. The greying is the courtesy — the server refuses those seats too.

Lunch and the dinner are asked, not chosen. Two yes-or-no questions on their own step, and the counts are on the Invites side of the tool for the kitchen. Every session card also says how many are going, refreshed while the page is open.

What they change on that page reaches the roster: their title, name, organization, phone, biography and photograph. What they cannot touch is anything the organizers own — their status, their roles, their networks, who invited them, and their email address.

Accounts

Three levels. Each one can do everything the level below it can.

Staff
The roster and the agenda: add and edit people, place them on sessions, work the invites list. Their menu holds the public agenda, their own profile and sign out, and nothing else.
Editor
Everything above, plus editing the sessions themselves, the registration lists, the name tags and name tents, and the social posts.
Super admin
Everything above, plus issuing staff logins, the activity log, the CSV and backup exports, importing a roster, and sending attendees their links.

Hiding a button is a courtesy. The server refuses the same things regardless, so nothing is reachable by typing its address.

Printing

Browsers do not print background colours unless the person ticks a box they will not have ticked. So on paper a filled chip becomes a white chip with a coloured border in the same colour, and the letters carry the meaning. Nothing is lost, and nothing comes out as a blank rectangle.