Dr. Stephen Gomes
Co-Founder, Kinship Earth & Gaia's Game
By invitation · 20–21 September 2026
Protocols of Place — Leaders Workshop
Building the Digital Infrastructure for Bioregional Coordination and New Earth Economics
Atlan Collective Ecovillage, White Salmon, Washington · A post–Turtle Island Bioregional Congress gathering
By invitation
A rare, peer-to-peer working session — not a conference. A small, focused gathering of leaders working at the intersection of bioregional regeneration, ecovillages, digital infrastructure, network weaving, regenerative economics and flow funding.
The essentials
Everything you need to join us
Convened by Dr. Stephen L. Gomes (Co-founder & Chairman, Kinship Earth) and hosted by Keala Young (Co-Founder, Atlan Collective).
- 20–21 SeptSunday 20 – Monday 21 September 2026Sunday all day · Monday morning optional
- AtlanAtlan Collective Ecovillage37 Nestor Peak Road, White Salmon, WA 98682
- No feeModest reimbursement of food costs$20 per night camping, Sunday night
- 10:00Monday’s global equinox uplinkOpen to everyone, everywhere
Getting there and staying. 37 Nestor Peak Road, White Salmon, WA 98682. Phone (425) 466-9022 — please text before calling. Open in Google Maps ↗
This is a remote setting and menu options are very limited. Please bring any specialty foods you require — chances are they will not be available locally.
The working conversation
What we’ll work on
Moving from promising but largely separate initiatives toward practical collaboration.
The essential functions of cross-silo digital bridge-building infrastructure
Practical interfaces among SEEDS, SEMO, LocalScale, ecovillages, and bioregional networks
Shared protocols for identity, needs and offers, resource exchange, evidence, and governance
A collaborative implementation pathway, including pilot demonstrations and flow-funded core support
With leaders associated with Kinship Earth, Atlan Collective, SEEDS, the SEMO Network, LocalScale, Regenerate Cascadia and the wider Protocols of Place and bioregional movements.
The flow
Two days, held loosely
The agenda is set up to be flexible and to promote cross collaboration and interactive discussion with the workshop presenters.
All day
Sunday 20 September
Day 1
- 8:30 am — Arrival
- 10:00 am — Workshop begins
- 12:30 pm — Networking lunchuntil 1:30 pm
- 1:30 pm — Workshops resume
- 5:30 pm — Dinner breakuntil 6:30 pm
- 6:45 pm — Final workshop, then Q&A and open discussionuntil 8:45 pm
Optional morning
Monday 21 September
Day 2
- 8:00 am — Breakfastuntil 9:00 am
- 9:00 am — Workshop
- 10:00 am — Global equinox uplinkA global call, open to everyone, wherever they are
- 11:00 am — Departure session — recap and final Q&A
- 12:00 pm — Lunch
- 2:00 pm — Departure
Open to everyone
The global equinox uplink
Monday 10:00 — a live uplink with the SEMO, SEEDS and Kinship Earth networks. A global call, open to everyone, wherever they are.
- 10:00 PDTLos Angeles
- 13:00 EDTNew York
- 18:00 BSTLondon
- 19:00 CESTAmsterdam
- 01:00 PHTManila · Sep 22
- 03:00 AESTSydney · Sep 22
Indicative flow, drawn from the convener’s invitation — the final programme is shared with everyone who confirms.
Featured leaders
The people building this
Real dialogue among the people building this infrastructure.
Syd Griffith
Executive Director, Kinship Earth
Benjamin Life
Author, “Protocols of Place”
Bart Elbertse
Founder, SEMO Network / SEEDS Alliance
Keala Young
Founder, The Atlan Collective
Brandon Letsinger
Executive Director, Regenerate Cascadia
Stephan Osmont
Founder, LocalScale
Kaliya Young
Founder, Internet Identity Workshop
Drummond Reed
Founder, First Person Project
Convened by Dr. Stephen L. Gomes, Co-founder & Chairman, Kinship Earth.
Hosted by Keala Young, Co-Founder, Atlan Collective. Sponsored by KinshipEarth.org & The Atlan Collective.
Before you come
Please read these first
Three articles are transmitted with the invitation as background for the discussion. Reading them beforehand helps us arrive prepared to identify concrete bridges we can build together.
Cross-Bioregional Digital Infrastructure as a Distinct, Critically-Necessary, Bridge-Building Focus
The regeneration movement does not lack vision, gatherings or projects — it lacks connective digital infrastructure. Centralised platforms extract from communities; bespoke tools trap value in silos. Both reproduce separation. What is needed is a federated, open-source digital commons through which distinct initiatives can discover, trust and collaborate with one another.
The seven functions a bridge layer must perform
- Make the field abundantly more visible
- Create portable identity and trust
- Connect needs, offers, knowledge and opportunities
- Coordinate portfolios, not just projects
- Move value across boundaries
- Build a shared evidence commons
- Preserve collective memory and governance
Discusses SEEDS and the SEMO Network by name — the most directly relevant of the three to this site.
Protocols of Place: An Urgent Call to Develop Open Protocols and Renew Our Social Fabric
A protocol is any pattern of interaction among agents — compact enough to share, specific enough to be useful, flexible enough to adapt. If TCP/IP let machines that share no trust coordinate at planetary scale, the same design principles applied to human coordination could equip communities to respond to crises that overwhelm every centralised institution. Protocols are social DNA: shareable, forkable, and adapted to the place that enacts them.
“The protocols of place are waiting to be written, shared, and enacted. The best time to begin was yesterday. The second-best time is now.”
Why Coherence (Infrastructure of Connection) Must Precede Our Strategies for Social (and Climate) Change — Part 1
Forty years of community building taught one lesson: the good was already there. Farmers, churches, nonprofits and activists are all already doing it — but each from inside its own world. Strong communities become islands of coherence in a culture of separation, coherent within themselves while unable to recognise the good beyond their boundaries. Bridge-building is a distinct social function, and the first task is not to create coherence but to recognise it.
“The relationship precedes the network.”
Let us know
An early reply helps us plan
Because this is an intimate working session, replying early helps the hosts plan food, accommodations, and the workshop process.
Please tell the convener
- Whether you’ll attend Sunday, Monday, or both
- Whether you expect to camp, arrange nearby lodging, or commute
- Any allergies
- Menu preferences — in particular, are you primarily vegetarian?
Hold the weekend
Both days land in your calendar — Sunday’s full session and Monday’s optional morning — with the venue address and the flow of each day already filled in.