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METIS Concepts Diagram

A visual map of the handful of ideas everything else in METIS is built from. If you've read Getting started and Focus and want the "how do the pieces fit together" picture before diving into a specific app, this is that picture. Every box below links to the fuller doc on that concept.

The map

flowchart TD
    Class["<b>Class</b><br/><i>e.g. Organisation, Camp, Event, Person</i>"]
    Person["<b>Person</b><br/><i>an individual contact</i>"]
    Holon1["<b>Holon</b><br/><i>an org, camp, event, team...</i>"]
    Holon2["<b>Another Holon</b><br/><i>a second org, camp, event...</i>"]
    Journey["<b>Journey</b><br/><i>a named pipeline of stages</i>"]
    Step["<b>Journey Step</b><br/><i>one ordered stage</i>"]
    Membership["<b>Membership</b><br/><i>Person ↔ Holon</i>"]
    HolonRel["<b>Holon Relationship</b><br/><i>Holon ↔ Holon</i>"]

    Class -- "shapes the fields & sections on a" --> Person
    Class -- "shapes the fields & sections on a" --> Holon1
    Journey -- "is made of ordered" --> Step
    Membership -- "sits at a current" --> Step
    Membership -- "connects" --> Person
    Membership -- "connects" --> Holon1
    HolonRel -- "sits at a current" --> Step
    HolonRel -- "connects" --> Holon1
    HolonRel -- "connects" --> Holon2

What each box means

Concept Plain-English meaning
Person An individual you're tracking — a contact, a volunteer, a participant. Might or might not have a METIS login.
Holon METIS's word for "everything that isn't a Person": an organisation, a camp, an event, a team. Holons can nest — an event can belong to an organisation, which can belong to a parent org.
Class The "type" that decides what a Holon or Person actually is (Organisation vs. Camp vs. Event vs. Person) and what fields/sections show up on it. See Holons and classes.
Journey A named, reusable pipeline — a template like "Volunteer Onboarding" or "Partner Outreach" — made of ordered Steps (Invited → Confirmed → Active, etc.).
Journey Step One stage in a Journey. Whoever/whatever is "on" a Journey sits at exactly one Step at a time.
Membership How a Person's relationship to a Holon is tracked — it's the Person's live position on a Journey. Example: Alice's Membership tracks her progress through "Volunteer Onboarding" for The Gathering Earth.
Holon Relationship The same idea, but between two Holons instead of a Person and a Holon. Example: a Sponsor org's relationship to an event, tracked through a "Sponsor Relationship" Journey.

A worked example

  • Alice is a Person.
  • The Gathering Earth is a Holon of Class Organisation.
  • Alice's connection to that org is a Membership — right now it sits at the Active Step of the Contributor Membership Journey.
  • Separately, Camp Ignite is a Holon of Class Camp, and its relationship to The Gathering Earth (its parent org) is a Holon Relationship on a Camp Lead Relationship Journey.

Everything you see on a person's or org's profile — the "current step" badge, the kanban board you drag cards across, the journey picker — is this same handful of concepts, just rendered different ways depending on where you're looking.

Where this shows up in the app

  • Focus picks which Holon scopes what you see — see Focus: the holon scoping model.
  • People & Orgs is where you work with Persons, Holons, Memberships, and Holon Relationships day to day — see Working with people & orgs.
  • Journeys (the model reference, with the full list of built-in Person/Holon journeys and steps) — see Journeys.
  • Additional fields are the custom, per-Class fields you can add on top of a Holon or Person's built-in ones — see Holon Additional Fields.

One specialised case worth knowing about

Coherence's Conversations (the recorded meetings IRIS publishes) use this exact same pattern under the hood — a Conversation is a Journey position, same as a Membership or Holon Relationship, just for a different kind of thing. You don't need the general model to understand Coherence, though: see Events & Conversations for that side told on its own terms.