# ETPROTO (&PROTO)

> ETPROTO, also written &PROTO, is a ludic foresight workshop: a long weekend in one privately booked boutique hotel, a cohort of 18 to 36 people from several countries, and one question that nobody involved has a ready answer to, the organisers included. It joins four formats people already trust, the seminar, the exhibition, the war game and the retreat, and stages them as one immersive experience. Its theme across every edition is meaning-making; its subject changes with each edition. It is being founded now, and this file is written for the people who might found it.

file: ingest.txt
about: the plain-text brief behind the &PROTO landing page, by the same author, with more detail than the page carries. It holds nothing the page's readers aren't meant to know.
page: index.html, in the same folder as this file
domain: etproto.net (X: @etproto)
revision: A
date: 2026-10-07
audience: prospective founding patrons and seed backers. Participants, authors and artists are not yet being approached.
status tags: [settled] decided and stable; [staging] set anew for each edition; [open] not decided yet, with no unpublished answer behind it; [verified] checked against a source; [from_memory] stated from the author's knowledge, not yet checked

## Short answers

- What is it? A two-to-three-day workshop in a hotel, where a small cohort works on one hard question by acting inside it: scenes, roles, tasks and rehearsals, alongside recorded arguments from published authors and installations by artists. [settled]
- What is the core claim? When any answer is a prompt away, the questions you ask matter more than the answers you get. Being told an answer and building your own are different things, and only the second changes what you do. That difference can't be recorded, summarised or transcribed, so &PROTO doesn't try. [settled]
- The theme, in one line: meaning is produced by acting inside real stakes, not delivered as a response. [settled; wording open]
- Who is it for, now? Founding patrons and seed backers. Later editions are for participants who hold standing (see Standing). [settled]
- How big, how long, where? 18 to 36 participants from several countries; two to three days, a long weekend; one boutique hotel with character, booked completely. The pilot is planned for South America (Colombia, Argentina or Uruguay), then roughly quarterly in different places. [settled for format; location open]
- Can I buy a ticket? No. A place is confirmed when the fee is paid, a token is spent and the pre-arrival task is done. "No task, no token, no room key." [settled]
- What does it cost? [open]
- Is it a crypto project? No. The token is standing, earned or given, never sold. It isn't a token launch, a DAO or a blockchain project. [settled]
- Is it recorded or published afterwards? No. The authors' material is heard only on site and isn't kept or released after the edition. [settled]
- Are there keynotes or panels? No. Nobody explains anything from a stage. [settled]
- Is there deception? No. The premise is fully disclosed. Only the staging and the installations are a surprise. Everyone knows actors are present; nobody knows which guests are cast. [settled]
- What do participants leave with? Whatever they made: a sharper question, a new venture, a proposal, a partnership, alone or with others. [settled]
- What is the first edition about? "Can making everyone richer make you richer, too?" (see First edition). [settled question; authors open]
- Who runs it? A permanent organiser, the game makers, with a new curator for each edition and the host hotel as operator for the days on site (see Who does what). [settled]

## What it is not

- not a conference, and not an un-conference: no programme of talks, no panels, no keynotes
- not an alternate reality game: nothing is hidden from participants about what they are taking part in
- not a retreat, though participants live under one roof
- not a members' club, a residency or a pop-up city
- not training, coaching or schooling: nobody is there to teach the participants anything
- not a token launch, a DAO or a blockchain project
- not an investment: patrons are founders in the older sense, not shareholders

## Terms

- &PROTO / ETPROTO: the name. "et" is Latin for "and", and & is its two letters joined; "proto" is Greek for "first". Each edition is a prototype. Written ETPROTO or &PROTO, never ET&PROTO.
- ludic foresight: thinking about possible futures through play, roles and rehearsal rather than through forecasts or reports.
- edition: one gathering, with its own question, curator, authors, place and staging.
- house rules: what never changes from edition to edition (see House rules).
- staging: everything set anew for each edition (see Staging).
- organiser: the permanent company that carries the format between editions.
- curator: a person or team chosen for one edition, who sets the question and selects the authors.
- authors: published, working thinkers, each recording the full case for one position for that edition alone.
- artists: makers from the host region, in whatever medium that edition calls for.
- cast: a small company of actors who check in as guests.
- cohort: the participants of one edition.
- standing, token: the right to attend, earned or given, never sold, spent to confirm a room.
- welcome dossier: what reaches a confirmed participant weeks before the edition: the question and the pre-arrival task.
- pre-arrival task: homework that must be completed before a room key is handed over.
- the network: the people &PROTO has connected: everyone who has attended, written, made, curated or held standing. A network of people, not a social platform.
- founders, founding circle: the first patrons, whose names stand at the beginning of &PROTO.

## House rules [settled]

- full disclosure of the premise: only the staging and the installations are a surprise
- content first, theatre second
- a small cohort from several countries
- standing that can't be bought
- a permanent organiser
- a new curator for every edition; nothing stops a curator from returning
- the pre-arrival task: no task, no token, no room key

## Staging [staging]

Set anew for each edition, and allowed to differ widely between them:

- the question, the curator and the authors
- the location and the venue
- the artists, the installations and the scenes
- how guests move, communicate and meet

Staging ideas under trial, one edition at a time, none of them a rule:

- a shared live audio feed through headphones, sometimes with music to bring the rooms into step
- headphones-off moments by contrast: corridor talks, meals, a sauna, a fire pit
- a remote-attendance tier: neither rejected nor prioritised, pending a study of why audio-room platforms faded and of how much &PROTO's value depends on scarcity [open]

## An edition, in order

Before
- The curator sets the question and invites 6 to 9 authors. Authors may take part remotely, possibly only remotely. [settled; remote-only open]
- Each author records the full case for their position, made for this edition alone and finished weeks ahead. [settled]
- Confirmed participants receive the welcome dossier: the question, the pre-arrival task, what to bring and suggested projects. The authors' recordings aren't in it. [settled]
- The location is reachable but undisclosed until a place is confirmed. [settled]

Checking in
- Fee paid, token spent, pre-arrival task completed. Then the room key. [settled]

On site: four layers, staged as one
- content: the authors' cases are heard on site only, through headphones; sometimes privately, sometimes the whole house on one feed. Nothing is kept after the edition, so the material is used while it is fresh. [settled]
- art: artists from the host region take over the larger rooms and shared spaces with installations drawn from the authors' ideas. Artists study the authors' work and need never meet them. There are no pairings of artist to author, actor or anyone else; one edition may have a single painter, the next a musician, another ten local makers across mediums. Artists who are present are not hidden among the guests. [settled]
- theatre: a small international company of actors checks in as guests and mixes with the cohort. Everyone knows it's theatre; nobody knows who is cast. Actors never reveal themselves and may return edition after edition. [settled]
- cohabitation: everyone under one roof, nights included. The hotel's staff are trained by the organiser. [settled]
- Some deliverables and suggested projects are known in advance; the rest is spontaneous. [settled]

After
- Participants leave with what they made: ideas, ventures, proposals and partnerships, alone or with others. [settled]
- An optional fund may back projects that surface after an edition. [open]

## Who does what [settled]

- organiser: a permanent company, the game makers. It carries the format and the craft of building the room between editions, and holds the network, the software, the licences and the contracts.
- curator: chosen for one edition, a person or a team. May work fully remotely. Selects the authors; others may suggest names, the curator decides.
- operator: the host hotel, responsible for the days on the ground only.
- founders: patrons who make the first edition possible. They don't own the organiser, by design, so that capital and content stay apart.

## Standing [settled, mechanics open]

- Standing is earned (by contributing) or given (by someone who holds it). It is never sold.
- It is spent to attend.
- Unspent standing elects the curator of the next edition.
- Mechanics beyond this are [open].

## First edition

- question: can making everyone richer make you richer, too? [settled]
- what it tests: whether investing seriously in public goods and open infrastructure, instead of treating scarcity and precarity as a fixed cost of doing business, can leave a benevolent investor materially better off within their own lifetime, even if it looks like a loss on paper at first. [settled]
- authors: economists, monetary theorists, historians and designers who have worked on the question for years, chosen across positions rather than from one camp. Names are [open], and no one has been approached.
- place: South America, pilot. [open]
- date: [open]

## Why it works: the evidence base

- generation effect (Slamecka and Graf, 1978): material people produce themselves is remembered better than material they are handed. [verified]
- liminality and communitas (Victor Turner, after Arnold van Gennep): removal from usual roles and status opens people to change and binds those removed together. [verified]
- front stage and back stage (Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life): sustained performance is effortful; shared living wears it down, which tends toward franker exchange. [verified for the concept; the application is the author's]
- fresh start effect (Dai, Milkman and Riis, 2014): temporal landmarks and new beginnings prompt aspirational behaviour; the author extends this to new places. [verified for the study; extension from_memory]
- play (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1938; Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, 1958): Caillois's four modes, competition, chance, role-play and vertigo, serve as a design vocabulary. [verified]
- fast and slow thinking (Daniel Kahneman, 2011): reading feeds deliberate thought; rehearsal trains the quick response. [verified for the source; the pairing is the author's]
- meaning through action (Viktor Frankl): meaning is found in what a person does. [verified]
- forecasting games (Institute for the Future and partners: World Without Oil, 2007; Superstruct, 2008): public, transparent games about possible futures, the closest precedent for ludic foresight. [from_memory]

## Rehearsal before reality: precedents

- US Naval War College interwar games: Admiral Nimitz later said the war with Japan had been played in the game rooms so often that nothing surprised them except the kamikaze tactics. [verified]
- Legislative Theatre (Augusto Boal, Rio de Janeiro, 1993–1996): audiences rehearsing proposed city laws as scenes; about 13 became law. [verified]
- Kriegsspiel (Prussia, 1824): the war game adopted for officer training. [from_memory]
- Shell's early-1970s scenarios, which prepared the company for the 1973 oil shock. [from_memory]
- Apollo 11's program-alarm simulation before the landing. [from_memory]
- Mont Fleur scenarios (South Africa, 1991–1992). [from_memory]
- flight simulators and medical crisis simulation. [from_memory]

## Lineage

Immersive art and theatre:
- Fluxus event scores (1960s): an instruction on a card asking a stranger to do one small, specific thing.
- Legislative Theatre (Rio de Janeiro, 1993–1996).
- You Me Bum Bum Train (London, since 2004): one participant at a time, through scenes built by volunteer performers.
- The Jejune Institute (San Francisco, 2008–2011): a fictional institute that drew some 10,000 people into a city-wide game.
- Sleep No More (New York, 2011–January 2025): a hotel turned into a stage.

On screen, for the feeling only: The Game (1997), The Truman Show (1998), Inception (2010), The Institute (2013, documentary), Dispatches from Elsewhere (2020, 10 episodes).

Deliberately excluded: puzzle hunts and mentalist shows whose effect depends on deceiving participants, which is incompatible with full disclosure.

## Comparables [from_memory unless tagged]

Axes: form | length | where the content comes from | recorded? | how you get in

- Peer-advisory memberships (Hampton, YPO, EO, Vistage, TIGER 21, Chief, Long Angle): standing groups | year-round | members' own experience, aimed at business performance | private | membership fee and vetting. Hampton, founded 2023: core groups of about 10, member veto, a refund window, a no-solicitation policy.
- Renaissance Weekend: retreat of discussions | a long weekend | participants, no paid speakers | off the record | invitation.
- Satoshi Roundtable: insiders' gathering | a few days, resort buyout | participants | off the record | invitation.
- Aspen Executive Seminar: seminar on assigned readings | about a week | classic texts and moderators | private | application and fee. The closest precedent for pre-reading with leaders.
- Edge dinners; Sun Valley: invited conversation | an evening; a week | participants | private | invitation.
- Oslo Freedom Forum: themed forum | days | speakers on stage | public | ticket.
- Private layers at Davos, Milken, SALT: side rooms of conferences | days | speakers and networking | partly public | status and fee.
- Zuzalu, Edge City, Network School: residencies or pop-up cities | weeks to months | residents, with crypto or longevity gravity | public | application.
- Lighthaven: a hotel rebuilt for conversation | venue | its events | varies | event by event.
- Esalen; Soho House: retreat centre; members' club | varies | programme; members | private | fee; membership.
- Summit Series; Further Future: cautionary cases of gatherings whose scale or spectacle outgrew their purpose.

Where &PROTO differs: one question per edition; authored content made for that edition and heard only there; participants act rather than listen; theatre and art as instruments, disclosed; entry by standing, never by price alone.

Borrowed from peer-advisory practice: an outcomes record, risk reversal, a no-solicitation policy and peer veto. [open as to form]

## Founding and funding

- Founders are patrons in the older sense: their names stand at the beginning of an institution. They are not shareholders and don't own the organiser. [settled]
- What founders receive: their name attached to having made &PROTO exist, early standing in something small enough to matter, and access that money can't buy elsewhere. [settled in principle; terms open]
- Funding sources: patronage, participant fees, sponsorship, and an optional fund for projects that surface after an edition. [settled as sources; amounts open]
- There will be one founding circle, formed now, by invitation. [settled]
- contact: [open]

## Common misreadings

- "Token" here means standing, like a membership earned rather than bought. It doesn't mean a cryptocurrency.
- "Network" means the people connected through &PROTO, not a social app or a members' club.
- "Workshop" means people working on a question together, not a training course.
- The actors are disclosed. &PROTO has no hidden game and no reveal.
- The first edition's question is a test, with no answer decided in advance; it isn't advocacy for a political position.
- Items tagged [open] are undecided. An answer about them is a guess unless it says so.