Registration is now open for the 2026 Protocol Symposium, Sept 21-25. The event will be fully virtual. Registration is free but capped at 100 for the main event. There are also 5 workshops (separate registration), with capacities set by the respective organizers. As in previous years, this will be a small, intimate, mostly single-track event with lots of opportunity for connecting and talking with other protocol nerds (and becoming one if you aren’t already).
The theme for the 2026 edition is New Nature – the rapidly evolving planet-scale technological layer governed by laws with a hardness and inviolability approaching those of nature. New Nature is our overarching frame for the technological future, shaped by the intersection of AI and protocols, perhaps the most exciting portion of the emerging technologies frontier.
The goal of this symposium is to get you to this frontier, and prepared to engage at all levels from hands-on tactical to doctrinal.
Register early, since space is limited for both the main event and the workshops!
We’ll be livestreaming significant portions of the symposium and recording most of it, but based on our experience with previous events, being part of the live conversation and interactive portions on the Zoom call really changes the experience significantly.
The AI Angle
Protocols for working with AI are going to be a core theme of the Symposium, and as a conversation starter, we have an AI postures personality test for you, developed by community member Robert Peake.
How do you actually work with AI, and what is it costing you cognitively? The AI Co-Working Effectiveness Survey is a brief research instrument that maps you onto one of four postures (Partnership, Hypervigilance, Overreliance, Compliance) and scores the cognitive load, debt, and sovereignty underneath. Take it, get your posture profile immediately, and help build the Protocol Institute community’s aggregate picture, to be presented at the symposium.
You’ll have opportunities during the symposium to compare and chat about your results with other attendees. Of course, you can also take the test even if you aren’t able to make the seminar.
Symposium Preview
The first 2 days, Monday 21 and Tuesday 22, will be devoted to hands-on workshops, and the remaining 3 days, Wednesday 23 to Friday 25, will be devoted to talks. You can register for either or both, and we highly recommend both. We have 5 workshops and 50+ talks lined up.
Any of the workshops will give you a deep, hands-on sense of why protocols are so important to the emerging technological future, and the talks in the main event will give you a taste of the incredibly broad and varied scope of the field.
We highly recommend you attend one of the five workshops. Each exposes you to a different frontier area of AI x protocols. No special expertise is needed for any of them.
The Workshops
The workshops require separate registrations (also free). Each comprises 4-5 virtual sessions with asynchronous activities in between. Here are the links and brief descriptions.
Note that these workshops run in parallel, so you will only be able to attend one properly.
Robots as Protocol Citizens: Assembling One Into the YakRobot Protocol Stack: Explore the exciting emerging frontier of decentralized onchain robotics. In this workshop, you’ll learn about teleoperation protocols, control actual live robots on the other side of the world with an AI agent, and learn about the rapidly maturing technology stack for onchain robotic economies. Optionally, those interested will also be able to assemble their own robots and put it onchain (you’ll need to purchase a suitable kit for that component). Ideal for hands-on techies interested in protocols.
Protocolize Your Book: Run your manuscript through a book production factory: In this workshop, you’ll learn how you can use an AI-native book production workflow to take a book project from draft manuscript to print-ready and get a deep dive into how AI can accelerate and automate traditional workflows. Ideal for self-publishers and workflow mavens.
Protocol Hackathon: Securing Stigmergic Systems: In this workshop, you will learn about stigmergic systems engineering, the science of coordination inspired by insect swarm behaviors, which is turning out to be remarkably relevant to AI systems (think: markdown files as pheromones). We will focus in particular on the security aspects of stigmergic systems. You will participate in a war-game style tournament using a stigmergy simulator (no coding needed). Ideal for people interested in the formal protocol theory and modeling, conflict, security, and AI safety.
Beyond the Artwork: Designing Protocols as Art: In this workshop, you will learn all about the theory and practice of the wonderful and rapidly evolving world of protocol art, which debuted in the mainstream art world via the Strange Rules pavillion at the Venice Bienalle this year. You will learn about a conceptual framework and make your own protocol artwork. Ideal for practicing artists, theorists, curators, and researchers working at the intersection of art, protocols, and emerging media.
AI Kitcraft: A Hands-On AI Tooling Workshop: In this workshop, you will learn a unique and field-tested protocols-based approach to AI adoption for organizations, based on understanding it as a technology going through a composable “kit” phase. You will learn the the history and concepts of how major technologies evolve through their kit phases, understand the capability maturity model, and apply the ideas by developing your own kit of AI workflows for your organization. Ideal for non-technical analysts and managers from all backgrounds — project managers, operations and deployment leads, as well as AI-curious newcomers.
The Talks
We have ~50 talks, ranging from technical to non-technical, and theoretical to practical. There is a dizzying array of topics on the agenda — trust, institution-building, political economy, governance, geopolitics, technical systems, temporality, and of course, AI, AI, and more AI. All the content should be accessible to a general audience (though a few may require you to consult your LLMs as you listen).
We have 4 special sessions worth highlighting.
Inventing Psychohistory: A special session hosted by the Special Interest Group in Psychohistory, exploring how we might use AI to develop systematic long-range prophecy protocols, oracles, and divination technologies.
Southeast Asia x Protocols: A special session devoted to protocol-themed activities and thinking going on in Southeast Asia, where we’ve been nurturing a track of research, design, and study for the last two years.
The Art of Memory: A special session hosted on one of our longest running research themes, memory protocols, hosted by the the Memory Research Group. If you’re interested in the critical ways in which memory and AI are entangled, and how the current era fits into the long history of memory technologies, this session is for you.
Worldbuilding in New Nature: A special session devoted to protocol fiction and world-building, hosted by the Protocol Fiction Special Interest Group. This session will draw on more than a year of experience developing this genre through multiple contests, dozens of short stories, and an ambitious extended universe project. This session will include a special event: The launch of a new, dedicated, protocol fiction magazine.
We are really excited about this year’s edition. It’s the third symposium, but the first being organized under the aegis of the Protocol Institute, and in many ways this is our debut as an organization, and our first effort to explore our own future agenda systematically.
Key Links
Here are the key links once again:
Hi, the registration link for the 3rd workshop is private https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe52fhurW2ghSLNDflOLudGxCvnviwrQglsakfHdkukc8vkvA/viewform?usp=header
Could you open it to the public please?