📖 user-guide

Topics From the Floor

Logged-in attendees suggest future event topics — turning the 200 practitioners in the room into a sensing network for what BATbern should cover next

Last updated: June 13, 2026 Reading time: 3 minutes File size: 3.18 KB

Last Updated: 2026-06-13

Implemented — Epic 7.1

Overview

Partners have always had a say in future-event content through Topic Voting. Topics From the Floor opens the same channel to the wider community: any logged-in attendee can suggest a topic (a title and a short rationale) for a future event.

Crucially, this is login-gated by design. The point is not to restrict — it is to give you a return channel. When an attendee suggests a topic, you know who they are and can ask them why, or tell them when “their” topic becomes the next event.

How it works

Logged-in attendee  →  "Suggest a topic" form (title + rationale)
        │  POST  (ATTENDEE role, login-gated)
        ▼
partner-coordination-service
        │  writes a topic_suggestions row, tagged source = community,
        │  with the suggester's username recorded
        ▼
Existing organizer topic-suggestion admin UI
        community + partner topics side by side, source-tagged

Attendee suggestions flow into the existing topic_suggestions pool — the very same pool partners suggest into and vote on. They are tagged source = community (partner suggestions are source = partner) so you can tell at a glance where each topic came from.

For organizers

You triage community topics in the existing topic-suggestion admin UI — there is no new admin surface and no separate community-topic queue. Community-sourced suggestions appear alongside partner ones, distinguished by a community badge (source = community), and you handle them exactly as you handle partner suggestions: review, select, or decline.

Existing partner-suggestion behaviour is unchanged.

ℹ️ One shared pool. Because community and partner topics live in the same pool, partners vote on community-sourced topics too. See Topic Voting for the voting and status mechanics.

What’s in scope (and what isn’t)

In scope Not in scope
Logged-in attendees suggest a topic (title + rationale) Attendee voting on topics
Suggestions land in the existing pool, source = community A separate community-topic moderation queue
Triage in the existing admin UI with a community badge Notifying an attendee when their topic becomes an event

Behaviour notes

  • Login-gated. An anonymous (not-logged-in) attempt to submit a topic is rejected with 401 — enforced in both the api-gateway and the owning service’s security configuration.
  • Validation. An empty title, or a rationale exceeding the maximum length, returns 400 and no row is created.