Concepts
Concepts are the shared language that makes engage.re work. They give meaning to everything - from the skills on your profile to the goals communities are tracking.
A concept is any idea, phenomenon, or thing that can be named and have meaning on engage.re. When you add "Python" as a skill, create a goal about "Employment", or describe an entity as an "Air Quality Sensor" - you're using concepts. By connecting everything on engage.re to the same vocabulary, you are able to aggregate, compare, and take meaningful action.
One Word, Many Purposes
The same concept can be used in many different ways across the platform. This is what makes the system powerful - when someone adds "Employment" as an attribute and a community sets an "Employment" goal, our concept system means they're talking about the same thing.
Who you are and what you do
Skills describe what you can do. Interests describe what you care about. Both are concepts that help others discover you and match you to opportunities.
- Python (skill)
- Climate Action (interest)
- Project Management (skill)
- Education (interest)
Measurable properties that can change
Users, organisations, and entities all have attributes. When these change, they can be tracked as real-world impact. Attributes are the raw data that goals aggregate.
- Employment Status
- Housing Situation
- PM2.5 Level (sensor)
- Fund Balance (fund)
See: Tracking
What communities are trying to achieve
When you create a goal, you link it to a concept. This tells engage.re what phenomenon you're trying to change - and lets it aggregate relevant data from across the platform.
- Goal: "500 people employed by December 2025"
- Concept: Employment
- The system finds all users tracking "Employment" and counts changes
See: Measurement for how concepts get measured
Who's involved in an issue
In the stakeholder matrix, types like "Homeless Person", "Housing Association", or "Local Council" are all concepts. This enables analysis across different issues.
- Responsible
- Affected
- Addressing
- Concerned
What kind of thing an entity is
Entities are tracked things in the world (see Tracking). Their type is a concept - "Air Quality Sensor", "Community Fund", "Social Housing Unit".
- Sensor
- Fund
- Vehicle
- Building
Data collection via peer-to-peer questions
When you attach a question to a post, it's linked to a concept. Answers become attributes, feeding the same data system that goals aggregate.
- Question: "Are you currently employed?"
- Concept: Employment
- Answer updates the user's employment attribute
How the System Connects
"I found a job in March"
"500 employed by Dec"
"Are you employed?"
Because all three reference the same concept, the user's job change can automatically count toward a goal - and anyone can ask questions that link to goal-tracking.
Synonyms & Phrases
The same concept can have multiple names. This prevents fragmentation - whether someone prefers the word "coding" or "programming", they refer to the same concept. Also useful for multiple languages.
Multiple Meanings
Some words have completely different meanings in different contexts. The concept system handles this by allowing a word to have distinct meaning branches, each with its own hierarchy and synonyms.
Writing code and building applications. Parent of: Python, JavaScript, etc.
Arranging broadcasts or events. As in "TV programming" or "event programming".
When you select "Programming" as a skill, you'll be asked to clarify which meaning applies.
Concept Hierarchies
Concepts can have parent-child relationships, creating a taxonomy. Concepts can also have siblings - other concepts at the same level with the same parent. This enables both specificity and aggregation.
Parent (broadest level)
Child
Child
A goal like "Improve community mental health" could aggregate data from users tracking Anxiety, Depression, and all their child concepts like Social Anxiety or SAD.
Measures Per Concept
Each concept can have multiple ways to measure it. This ensures data is always collected and aggregated correctly.
See: Measurement for how to configure data types and combination rules.
Why This Matters
Connection
Data from users, goals, and questions all link together
Discovery
Find people, projects, and resources by what they're about
Aggregation
Combine individual changes into collective progress
Scaling
Same vocabulary from local teams to global movements
Concepts are the semantic backbone of engage.re - a living system of language that brings meaning to objects, actions, and outcomes. Without shared vocabulary, there's no shared understanding. Without shared understanding, there's no collective action.