2025 Protocol Symposium
The 2025 Protocol Symposium has two components. You can apply for one or both. Applications are due August 15th, 2025.
- An online, week-long course comprising twelve modules from September 15-19, 2025 for students and professionals seeking to build or expand their protocol literacy.
- An in-person working conference from September 12-14, 2025, where 30 participants will work towards a formal, mathematizable theory of protocols.
About the Conference
When: September 12-14
Where: Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
Who: 30 research professors, professionals, and early- or mid-career academics
Format: Lightning talks, working blocks, seminars
Application Deadline: August 15
The goal of this weekend is to take a small step towards creating a formal theory of protocols. Do they have an inherent structure or pattern that could be expressed with math or logic? Could we model a simple handshake and a complicated climate accord with the same notation? We invite established research professors and early- and mid-career academics, especially from quantitative fields, to apply.
Conference Schedule
September 12: Participants arrive throughout the morning. Some tailored sessions in the afternoon based on the subset of researchers who will be present. Group dinner.
September 13: Kickoff talk, followed by a series of structured exercises. Round one of lightning talks. Lunch. Short working period. Round two of lightning talks, followed by a working block. Group dinner.
September 14: Presentations by participants of their candidate theories, models, and formalizations. Participants depart throughout the afternoon. Some curated group discussions based on who’s around – everyone is encouraged to join the online component of the symposium, starting September 15.
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.
About the Course
When: September 15-19
Where: Online
Who: 50 participants from any background
Format: Twelve, ninety-minute modules
Application Deadline: August 31
Modules are in development by the SoP25 teaching fellows and program leads. Anyone who registers for the course should leave with a high degree of protocol literacy, a sense for how to apply key concepts to their own field of study or practice, and some great contacts with protocolists from all around the globe.
Course Schedule
All times in U.S. Eastern Time. Add to your calendar.
Monday, September 15 | Engineering
11am – Introductory Seminar; 4pm – Protocolized Modeling and Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems; 9pm – Beyond Consensus: Protocols as Digital Institutions
Tuesday, September 16 | Art
11am – Protocols of Storytelling: How to Craft Meaningful Stories in an Age of Generative AI; 4pm – Protocol Art; 9pm – Musicalization not Music: Experimenting with Systems through Art
Wednesday, September 17 | Organization
11am – Designing Trust: Protocols, Society, and Web 3.0; 4pm – TBD; 9pm – Strategy as an Organizational Coordination Protocol for the Public Sector
Thursday, September 18 | Humanities
11am – Protocol Design as Governance; 4pm – Designing Digital Worlds: Communities, Protocols, AI, and Power; 9pm – Towards a New Social Science of Protocols
Friday, September 19 | Application
11am – Applied Protocol Theory; 4pm – Graduation