> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.trytalkvalue.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Data model

> The shared vocabulary behind TalkValue: people, companies, channels, and events, and how Path and Badge each use them.

<Note>
  TalkValue organizes your audience around four entities: **people** belong to **companies**, and people connect to **events** through **channels**. Both products share this vocabulary. Path tracks the audience graph across events; Badge tracks the attendees of a single event.
</Note>

Path and Badge both organize around people and events, using the same vocabulary. Path imports your contacts and answers audience questions across every event and channel. Badge takes one event's registrations and runs the on-site check-in for it. The four entities below are the shared mental model; each product surfaces the slice it needs.

## People

A **person** is one individual in your audience, identified by email. People have a primary email plus optional fields like first name, last name, phone, job title, LinkedIn URL, and address. When TalkValue imports the same email twice, it updates the existing person rather than creating a duplicate.

Example: Maya Chen, `maya@northwind.io`, Product Lead at Northwind. She registered for your last two events and is on your monthly newsletter.

## Companies

A **company** is the organization a person works for, identified by email domain. TalkValue groups people automatically by email domain. Every `@northwind.io` address rolls up under one Northwind company record, and you can edit the display name from the company detail page.

Example: Northwind has 14 people across three event registrations. Opening the Northwind page shows every Northwind contact in one list.

## Channels

A **channel** is a reusable source of registrations, a recurring touchpoint that brings people in. Newsletters, partner referrals, LinkedIn campaigns, and SDR outbound are all channels. Channels persist across events, which is what lets attribution and audience overlap analytics work.

Example: a `LinkedIn, Spring campaign` channel brought 230 people in across three events this quarter.

## Events

An **event** is a single gathering at a specific time, like a webinar, a meetup, or a conference. Events have a name, timezone, start time, and optional end time and location. Each event has its own attendee count and rolls up into your registration trend, attribution, and audience-overlap charts.

Example: `Q2 Customer Day` on May 22 in San Francisco, with 312 registrations attributed across four channels.

## How they relate

A person registers for an event through one or more channels. The person belongs to a company (auto-grouped by email domain). The same person can attend multiple events and arrive via multiple channels. The attribution and overlap charts measure these relationships.

```
Channel  ──┐
           ├──►  Event  ──►  Person  ──►  Company
Channel  ──┘                  (email)      (domain)
```

## Related

* [Attribution model](/path/concepts/attribution-model). How Path links a registration to its channel.
* [Audience overlap](/path/concepts/audience-overlap). What it means when the same person appears in multiple channels.
* [Tags](/path/concepts/tags). Group events and channels for scoped analytics.
* [Events, attendees, templates](/badge/concepts/events-attendees-templates). How Badge applies people and events to on-site check-in.
* [Import a CSV](/path/import/csv-quickstart). Bring your first set of people in.