An overview of the Khlongs & Subaks workshop, and how it led to South Beast Asia

The Khlongs & Subaks Workshop

South Beast Asia (SBA) was imagined out of the Khlongs & Subaks workshop on open distributed AI and blockchain protocols in Southeast Asia.

The workshop was hosted at CMKL University in Bangkok in April 2025 and brought together about 30 participants from diverse backgrounds and over a dozen cities and countries.

Over the course of a week (Apr 21-25), our program spanned two halves:

• Research: Keynotes (including Kevin Kelly on public intelligence), lightning talks, online and on-site libraries, and a field trip (where we visited khlongs, paddies, and irrigation systems)
• Studio: Creating protocol design fiction together, and making videos (with AI help!) out of it.

In the space of a week, we went from introductions on Monday to a full field trip Tuesday, to screening 30mins of videos (and having a name for it all) by Friday evening. Quite a week.

Field trip day

Closing panel at the finale screening at the Bangkok Kunsthalle

Creating The World of South Beast Asia

Our workshop was conceived as a protocol design fiction studio, so this logic shaped much of the second ‘studio’ half of the workshop.

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💠 Protocol Design Fiction

Inspired by design fiction but with a protocol-first lens, protocol design fiction is about imagining new possible worlds, shaped by strange new rules, and made tangible through the design of fictional artifacts (which can take the form of institutions, policies, and roles, not just objects or technologies).

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Workshop concept: a protocol design fiction studio

We also developed a custom framework called the Protocol Design Fiction Canvas (above; also now released for broader use) which we used as the backbone of our creative process: