Hey all -

Quick one: Animation Accelerator: AI-Powered Filmmaking starts next week.

Animation Accelerator: AI-Powered Filmmaking

A two-session intensive where you'll build a complete 30-40 second animated short using the AI-powered production pipeline from Tiny Ghost Studios.

luma.com/anime

This is a two-session online intensive where you build a complete 30–40 second animated short using the AI-powered production pipeline Tiny Ghost Studios uses on paying client work.

Dates: Mon Mar 2 + Mon Mar 9
Time: 6–9pm PST (Zoom)
Work between sessions: 10–16 hours (required to finish)
Leads: Luke Minaker + Mayumi Rollings
Cost: $650 CAD (+ ~$50 credits/subscriptions)
Seats: 20 max

​Led by Luke Minaker (30 years in animation, directing since age 21) and Mayumi Rollings, this workshop teaches the actual workflow they use on paying client work

Optional bonus: screening slot at BC + AI Film Club (250 industry attendees - Mar 12).

AI Film Club: 03/12

Monthly screenings, technical deep-dives, and creative experiments with AI tools transforming film and media production.

luma.com/cgi

If you’ve been meaning to stop theorizing and actually test a real pipeline, this is the cleanest way I know to do it.

Tickets: https://luma.com/anime

— Kris & Luke & Mayumi

Two Monday evenings (March 2 & 9, 6-9 PM online), with 10-16 hours of guided production work between sessions. You'll leave with portfolio-ready work and an optional screening opportunity at BC + AI Film Club.

​About BC + AI Ecosystem Association

​BC + AI is the province-wide layer: a community-driven, nonprofit industry association built to create public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia.

​Not a corporate lobby. Not a think tank. A commons where meetups turn into working groups, prototypes turn into shared tools, and community values turn into governance.

​Vancouver AI was just the start. The ecosystem keeps growing across BC... Surrey, Victoria, Kelowna, and beyond... each node bringing its own culture, needs, and experiments.

​Join / support: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/

I didn’t ask for this. None of us did.

One day you’re a photographer, designer, writer, filmmaker building a career on skills you spent years developing. The next day, someone in Silicon Valley has scraped your work into a dataset, trained a model on it, and is selling the ability to generate something “like yours” to anyone with twenty bucks a month.

My work is in there. I released thousands of photos on Flickr under Creative Commons over the past two decades, and when I checked a dataset search tool, I found roughly 1,800 of my images in a major training corpus. That doesn’t mean every AI model used them, training pipelines vary, and the tool shows evidence, not certainty… but it means the consent story around AI is exactly as casual as critics claim.

I’m sympathetic to the people who want to resist. I understand the impulse to refuse, to opt out, to fight back. But I’ve also spent the last two years working with hundreds of creative professionals who are trying to figure out what to actually do in this moment. And what I’ve learned is that neither pure resistance nor uncritical adoption gets you anywhere useful.

So I’m asking you to walk forward with both hands full.

This is for creatives who feel two things at once: anger about the non-consensual training mess, and curiosity about what these tools can do inside a real practice.

The Non-Consensual Moment

Let’s name what’s real. The consent problem is real.

AI systems were trained on the creative output of humanity… photographs, writing, code, music, art… largely without permission. Some of us released work under licenses that technically allowed it. Many didn’t. The fact that companies are now settling billion-dollar lawsuits over training data tells you everything you need to know about how legitimate those practices were.

The junior pipeline problem is real. The entry-level work that used to train senior creatives is disappearing fast. You’d get hired at a studio, spend six months converting approved assets into different formats, and in the process learn the systems, the clients, the back-and-forth. That’s how juniors became seniors. When AI handles that work, we lose the pathway and we don’t yet know what replaces it.

The dependency question is real. If you don’t use a muscle, you lose it. What happens when we stop doing the first stages of creative work ourselves? When we outsource idea generation, research synthesis, early drafts? We’re all participants in an experiment we didn’t sign up for, and the results aren’t in.

These aren’t hypothetical concerns. They’re happening now. Anyone who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is either selling something or not paying attention.

And yet.

I’ve spent two years rebuilding my creative practice around these tools, and I’ve never felt more capable.

Not because the tools are magic, they fail constantly, in ways I’ll get to… but because learning to work with them has forced me to get clearer about what I actually bring to the work. The parts that are mine.

Both things are true. The system that created these tools violated consent on a massive scale, and working with them has made me a better creative professional. I’m asking you to hold that contradiction and keep walking.

The Human Moat

Here’s the part that matters most, and the part that’s hardest to hear: if you don’t know who you are as a creative, AI will expose that.

AI is a mirror. It amplifies whatever you bring to it. Bring confusion, get generic slop. Bring clarity about your perspective, voice, and values, get something that actually sounds like you.

The people I’ve watched thrive with these tools aren’t the most technically sophisticated. They’re the ones who can answer questions like: What do I believe about this work? How do I make decisions? What would I never say? What do I notice that others miss?

This is the human moat. Not “creativity” in some abstract sense, everyone claims that. The moat is judgment. Taste. Discernment. The ability to look at ten options and know which one is right, and be able to articulate why.

Close your eyes for a second. Think of one thing you do in your creative work that you would never give up to AI. Not because you couldn't automate it, but because it's the part that makes the work yours. That thing? That's your creative DNA. That's the piece worth protecting.

HERE'S HOW WE PRACTICE THIS

This is exactly what Peter Bittner and I teach in AI Upgrade for Creative Professionals.

Over 100 graduates across 7 cohorts. Writers, designers, photographers, strategists, filmmakers. People who showed up skeptical and left with agency.

Cohort 8 starts February 5th. Three spots left.

AI Upgrade for Creative Professionals – 6-Week Certification Course

Join globally-recognized tech-artist Kris Krüg and new media innovator Peter Bittner for an immersive journey into the cutting-edge tools and transformative strategies reshaping creative industries.

www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-creative-professionals

This isn't about tool hype or twelve-subscription stacks. It's about workflows that give you clarity about who you are as a creative in a moment when AI will expose everyone who doesn't know.

What you'll build:

• Week 2: Your own ‘Second Brain’ knowledge base… built from your work, trained on your material, reflecting your judgment

• Week 3: Prompting frameworks that capture your voice, not generic AI slop

• Week 4: AI assistants that amplify your creative DNA instead of flattening it

• Week 6: A capstone project that proves you can hold both hands full and keep walking

Six weeks. 90-minute live sessions every Thursday (12-1:30pm ET). Two personal coaching calls with me. Hands-on labs. Professional certification.

The investment is $1,499. What you're actually getting: clarity about who you are as a creative in a moment that didn't ask your permission.

THE INVITATION

The most critical voices on AI… the skeptics, the resistors, the people with genuine concerns about consent and labor and dependency… those are exactly the people we need engaged in this conversation.

If the most thoughtful critics opt out, the decisions about how this technology develops get made by the people who are all-in. The governance. The norms. The policies. They're being shaped right now by whoever shows up.

I'm not asking you to abandon your critique. Keep it. The fears are real. The problems are real. The non-consensual nature of this whole situation is real.

But engage anyway. Learn enough to know what you're criticizing. Get in the room, because the room is making decisions whether you're in it or not.

Both hands full. Left hand holds the critique… the stolen work, the collapsing pipelines, the genuine uncertainty about what we're creating. Right hand holds the curiosity… the workflows that might give you back some agency, the clarity about your own creative identity that the mirror forces you to develop.

Walk forward. The moment didn't ask your permission. Neither did any of the other moments that reshaped creative work… the printing press, photography, digital tools, the internet. Creatives have always had to navigate new capabilities that threatened to commodify their work. The ones who thrived learned to use the new tools while holding onto what made them irreplaceable.

This moment is no different. Harder, maybe. Faster, certainly. But not different in kind.

Both hands full. Keep walking.

Enroll here: https://www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-creative-professionals

— KK

P.S. Peter and I co-teach this. I bring the creative practice and philosophical framework. He brings 8 years as a UC Berkeley journalism lecturer and his work with New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg. The combination works.

P.P.S. If you're reading this thinking "finally someone gets it"… this course is where we actually do the work.

Learn how to use cutting-edge AI tools to enhance your storytelling, generate stunning visuals, streamline workflows, and push the boundaries of creative expression.

Hey friends, here's what we're talking about in BC + AI Ecosystem right now:

What do I tell my teenager about jobs? This came up in our last BC + AI Office Hours. Multiple parents with kids aged 14-20, and none of them know what career advice makes sense anymore. Entry-level positions are disappearing… but those are how people become seniors. Trades? Philosophy? Gap year? Nobody has answers, but at least we're asking the question out loud.

When your best friend is a robot: That's Alexandra Samuel's talk on January 28. She spent a year building a relationship with a custom AI named Viv and turned it into a podcast (Me + Viv).

Me + Viv

How does a smart, capable woman handle a midlife crisis in today's world? She hatches her own Al coach.

podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/me-viv/id1847891375

The documentation is honest. The questions are uncomfortable. She's keynoting our 25th monthly meetup at the Planetarium. ~30 tickets left.

​What does it actually mean to go full cyborg? Not the chrome-plated fantasy, not the LinkedIn productivity cosplay, but as a daily practice, with all the mess that implies?

The soft violence of AI discourse: Erica Lapadat-Janzen works with SFU's Metacreation Lab on artist-led model training. She's asking about extraction, consent, and who gets to set the terms. Not the usual AI event fare.

AI discourse is full of soft violence: extraction dressed up as innovation, and fear dressed up as morality. ​Erica cuts through it with craft, showing what happens when you train on your work and own the weird outcomes.

Design thinking for vibe coders: Maya Bruck is bridging the gap between "ship fast" and "ship well." UX fundamentals for the rapid prototyping era.

​Maya Bruck brings UX fundamentals to the vibe coding era, showing how to prototype rapidly with AI without sacrificing usability, accessibility, or user research.

All three are speaking January 28 at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. All-women lineup.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 01/28

If you’ve been quietly building something, bring it. If you’re wrestling with how AI is changing you, bring that too.

luma.com/liftoff

The reset is real. I said something in BC + AI coworking last week that I keep coming back to: "Anyone learning Claude Code now has as much advantage as anyone else. Everyone kind of got reset."

That's what it feels like. Nobody's behind. The floor shifted under everyone's feet.

250 members. 35% women. Weekly coworking running. AI Film Club launched. The community is asking real questions. Interconnecting. Doing the work.

Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

All of this…. the office hours, the coworking, AI Film Club, Mind, AI & Consciousness, the meetups, the Braintrust Groupchat… runs on membership. 250 people have joined so far. $340/year for individuals, $115 for students.

What you get: members-only WhatsApp, 25% off meetup tickets, coworking invites, weekly calls with me and the team, and early access to whatever we're building next.

What we get: the ability to keep doing this without chasing sponsors or selling your attention.

If this community is useful to you, membership is how it stays alive: bc-ai.ca/membership

Come through if that sounds like your people.

This week:

Jan 22: AI + Education at Ethos Lab (free)

​The ED + AI initiative inside BC + AI brings people together to slow down, compare notes, and design with care: consent‑first, equity‑minded, place‑rooted.

Jan 22: Mind, AI & Consciousness (MAC) Deepdive #9

Today’s LLMs (like GPT) spit out human-like prose, but do they mean anything by it? Or are they just statistical puppets mimicking patterns without a shred of comprehension?

Coming up:

Feb 12: AI Film Club #2 (sound & audio)

​We combine film screenings with technical deep-dives, creative experiments, and real talk about how AI is changing production, post, distribution, and storytelling itself.

Feb 25: Vancouver AI: Mind, AI & Consciousness (MAC)

​This month is hosted by MAC our Mind, AI, and Consciousness crew. They’re the people in the BC + AI ecosystem philosophy special interest group where people have been grappling with questions that don't have clean answers.

See you in the chat, at coworking, or at the Planetarium!

Kris Krüg (KK)
Executive Director
BC + AI Ecosystem

P.S. Recent videos worth your time:

The Squatchie Awards: Six awards for the people who made this ecosystem more real in 2025. Not for followers. For showing up and building.

AI Film Club: Launch Night: The first meetup for filmmakers, animators, and creative technologists exploring how AI is transforming film, video, and work itself. Monthly. In-person. Vancouver.

Sev Geraskin: Community Spotlight: A founder's journey from hackathon prompt to nonprofit AI work. What happens when you build with soul instead of scale.

Gabriel George Sr. Welcome & Peace Song: Elder Gabriel George Sr. of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation opened Meetup #24 with teachings on land, water, and relatives. This is how we start.

I've been thinking about why BC + AI feels different.

It's not the perks. It's not the programming. It's the operating system underneath… the values we chose before we built anything else. That’s why BC + AI looks the way it does:

Ethics by default. Bias isn't a PR problem to spin. Privacy isn't a checkbox. Climate impact isn't someone else's concern. These are design constraints that make our work better.

We chose transparency over hype. You've never seen me promise AGI timelines or market dominance. You've seen me document what's working, what's breaking, and what we're learning in real time. Our wins. Our L's. All of it.

Lateral intelligence over top-down control. The 500-member group chat that actually works. The office hours where anyone can show up. The subgroups that self-organize around what matters to them. This is infrastructure for collaboration, not compliance.

Built in public. We share workflows while they're still messy. Open datasets so more people can ask better questions. Document what worked and what died so the whole network learns faster than any one person grinding alone. Knowledge doesn't compound when you hoard it.

In three months, 200 people became Founding Members. For conversations that cut through bullshit. For peers who actually build. For shared context that makes the work less lonely. For the ability to build together instead of solo speedrunning through somebody else's terms of service.

Tonight at midnight, the Founding Member chapter closes. You can join BC + AI after that. Same community, same direction. We’re just switching chapters, and the Founding rate ends.

If you're already in, thank you. You backed this when it was messy, unproven, and running on volunteer energy. You showed up to early meetups when we were still figuring out basic logistics. You funded the network before we had proof it would matter. That faith built what exists now.

If you’re not joining, that’s completely valid too. Thank you for reading. Thank you for paying attention. Thank you for being part of the ecosystem even from the edges.

The future isn’t something we predict. It’s something we prototype together.

Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

See you in 2026,

Kris Krüg
778. 898. 3076
Executive Director
BC + AI Ecosystem Association

PS. FOUNDING MEMBER RATES (Midnight Deadline, December 31)
Individual: $240/year | Student: $80/year | Team (5 seats): $600/year

Permanent founder badge + launch-year recognition
→ bc-ai.ca/membership

2026 is going to be weird.

The tools are mutating faster than anyone can track. Systems are under pressure. The gap between people who get it and people guessing is widening every week.

Your advantage won't be the newest model. It'll be the people in your network and the context you're building with them right now.

BC + AI is a nonprofit professional network for people working at the intersection of AI and impact across British Columbia. We're researchers, builders, creatives, educators, founders, public sector innovators, life sciences teams, and policy makers. Different domains, shared stakes.

BC + AI Ecosystem | Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

The mission is simple: BC builds its own AI future instead of importing everyone else's defaults.

What you get as a Founding Member:

• WhatsApp Lounge + Discord for daily signal, collaboration, real talk

• Quarterly member calls with guest experts and ecosystem updates

• Weekly Member’s ‘Office Hours’ Zoom and direct access to the community

• 25% off Vancouver AI Community Meetup monthly tickets

• 25% off TheUpgrade.ai workshops and training

• Coworking access + HR MacMillan Space Centre discounts & perks

175 members across sectors have already joined in our first three months. We're building this in public, together.

Join BC + AI as a Founding Member

Deadline: Tuesday, December 31 at midnight. After that, the Founding Members chapter locks and this window closes.

P.S. Need an invoice for your company? Hit reply and I'll send one over.

Kris Krüg
Executive Director
BC + AI Ecosystem Association

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

Hey friends,

It’s Monday morning, second week of December.Sun’s up, birthday around the corner (mine)… and our community’s birthday too. Our little Vancouver AI experiment is officially TWO YEARS OLD!

For 24 months in a row, on the last Wednesday of the month, we’ve dragged some of the most creative, sharp, technically-fucking-astute humans in this city into the same room…. people who care about where this is all going.

Every month has been a silo-busting, genre-smashing good time exploring what it means to be human in an age of synthetic everything. We explore what this wave of AI makes possible and we ask the tough q’s:

• Where are we actually headed?

• Where do we want to be headed?

• And what are we going to do when we get there?.

In the next couple of weeks, we’ve got four events queued up, including our December 17th community meetup… the official 24-month mark.

December Vancouver AI Community Meetup

It's dark December in Vancouver. The solstice approaches. Two years ago, we started gathering trying to figure out what AI meant for the work we make and the…

luma.com/awards

Check out the upcoming event list and our draft calendar for next year including the themes we’re digging into, the formats we’re experimenting with and the collaborations we’re lining up! :)

We’ve already sketched out a full year of programming. We’re not winging it. We’re building it on purpose.

Upcoming Events Calendar

The heartbeat of BC’s AI community: Vancouver AI gatherings and every people-powered breakthrough across the province.

lu.ma/vancouver-ai

This year, we turned the meetups into a nonprofit and started building real infrastructure around the community; so far, 150 people have stepped up as founding members, and together we’ve been piloting programs, partnerships, and new formats to see what this thing can really do.

Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

We’re keeping the Founding Member drive open for 3 more weeks. After that, we close this chapter, the price goes up, and we lock in the next phase of our program.

We’re organizing to be more than the sum of our parts.

• To go after projects bigger than what any of us could pull off solo

• To make Vancouver the centre for AI in Canada

• To do it with rigor, ethics, creativity, and a sense of humour

And we’re not doing it alone.

With partners across creative tech, space and science, and the indigenous technology worlds, we’re already pushing on what’s possible and what’s responsible.

YOUR MOVE

If you’ve been orbiting the community, coming to the odd event, or lurking on the edges thinking:

“Yeah, I should really get more involved…”

This is the nudge.

Membership - BC + AI Ecosystem

Join BC+AI as a member to become part of a grassroots-driven, ethical AI community in British Columbia. Access exclusive events, connect with innovators, and contribute to shaping a responsible AI future.

bc-ai.ca/membership

Lock in the early chapter with us. Help shape what this becomes, not just watch it from the outside.

https://bc-ai.ca/membership/

Upcoming events are listed below. I’d love to see you at one of them… or in the chats, on office hours, or inside a project we haven’t even named yet.

Mind, AI, and Consciousness Deepdive 12/11

Topic: The Case for Embodied AI

luma.com/MACdeepdive8

BC + AI Members Holiday Social: 12/13

Cozy Christmas chaos at Parker Street Studios.

luma.com/festivus

Vancouver AI Meetup: 12/17

It's dark December in Vancouver. The solstice approaches.

luma.com/awards

Surrey AI Meetup #10: 12/23

Surrey AI Community at The Royal Canadian Legion Branch

luma.com/slurrey

See you out there,

Kris Krüg (KK)
Executive Director
BC + AI Ecosystem

Join the association → bc-ai.ca/membership/

P.S. If you're already a member, forward this to someone who should be in the room. We're building the network. You know who else belongs here.

Vancouver AI

/ / / We don’t do panels. We do portals. / / / Welcome to Vancouver AI... BC’s grassroots AI collective where technologists, artists, researchers, and storytellers build the future together. We gather monthly across disciplines, territories, and modalities to explore how AI can serve culture, community, and creativity. We host workshops, hackathons, and hard conversations all grounded in a radically local, ethically bold, and creatively ungovernable approach to AI. 🔧 Real tools. 🧠 Big questions. 🌀 Distributed power. 📍Based in Vancouver, BC pulsing across the province and beyond. 🎥 Event archives, AI keynotes, community talks, live rituals, immersive provocations & more. 📡 Tap in: https://lu.ma/vancouver-ai 🌀 Join the BC + AI Ecosystem: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/ 🖤 Subscribe and ride the wave with us.

www.youtube.com/@van_ai

Friends,

Every prompt costs water. Every image generation burns coal somewhere. We've been building in the cloud pretending it's ethereal, but the cloud has a ground truth and it's thirsty as hell.

Nov 26 we're getting specific about solutions.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 11/26

AI's Real Cost: Creative Power vs. Planetary Limits The machines are thirsty. While AI transforms how we create content, it's consuming water like never…

luma.com/vai23

Liz Marshall - Documentary filmmaker investigating AI’s water and energy footprint and the human-planet health link, from Great Lakes data center buildouts to right-to-water movements.

Kei Baritugo - Montreal AI Ethics Institute strategist highlighting power gaps and pushing for AI as an assistive tool, transparency, and policy that protects creative labor.

Kevin Friel - AI filmmaker advancing ethical, local-first production workflows, from edge compute to heat reuse, and championing accountable tools like carbon impact tracking.

Amanda Silvera - Amanda founded the Society for Original Biometric Identity Rights (SOBIR) and Sobir Technologies (SOBIRTECH), two initiatives focused on protecting human voice identity and building ethical frameworks for biometric rights.

Catherine Warren (moderator) - Entertainment and innovation leader with climate physics roots, former CEO of Vancouver Economic Commission, and founder of Fan Trust, steering ethical AI and sustainability across media.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 11/26 · Luma

AI's Real Cost: Creative Power vs. Planetary Limits - The machines are thirsty. While AI transforms how we create content, it's consuming water like never…

luma.com/vai23

Earlyworm $50 (9 left) | Standard $60 | BC + AI Members save 25%

This isn't another panel where everyone agrees AI is "transformative." This is about reconciling the creative revolution with planetary reality.

Bring your questions, your skepticism, and your ideas for what we build next.

Kris
778.898.3076

PS: Vancouver AI is just one node. BC + AI Ecosystem is building province-wide infrastructure for ethical AI development. Membership gets you into the real conversations, not just the public ones.

Membership - BC + AI Ecosystem

Join BC+AI as a member to become part of a grassroots-driven, ethical AI community in British Columbia. Access exclusive events, connect with innovators, and contribute to shaping a responsible AI future.

bc-ai.ca/membership

What We Do

Education & Skills Training: Our programs upskill professionals and newcomers alike, bridging technical and creative communities, and supporting lifelong learning.

Policy Advocacy: We champion responsible, ethical, and inclusive AI development, advocating for policies that reflect BC’s distinct values: environmental stewardship, creative excellence, and cultural respect.

Partnerships: We work with academic institutions (UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, Northeastern), Indigenous organizations, industry, and government to co-create solutions and avoid duplication of effort.

Public-Interest Infrastructure: We are building distributed public infrastructure for AI: shared tools, data ethics frameworks, and policy prototypes that serve the public good.

Celebrating Innovation: Through initiatives like the BC + AI Awards and creative hackathons, we recognize and support talent from all corners of the province.

We built BC + AI for exactly this moment.

Ottawa created a Minister of Artificial Intelligence and just launched a national task force to shape the country’s next AI strategy. The conversation is happening right now about who gets compute, who sets the rules, and whose future this technology will serve.

Our new feature, Growth vs Guardrails, is already making the rounds in those rooms. The message is simple: if Ottawa’s foot is on the gas, BC is the steering wheel and the brakes. We can model a clean, ethical, community-led path that keeps power with people and place

Open Letter to The Honourable Evan Solomon, P.C., M.P., Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, and to the Members of the AI Strategy Task Force

This is the time to show up together. Not as scattered voices, but as a connected movement with purpose, vision, and political gravity.

Over the past few months, almost 100 of us have joined as the new BC + AI Ecosystem Association non-profit as Founding Members. Builders. Artists. Researchers. Investors. Educators. Policymakers. People who believe that tech should serve communities, not the other way around.

Now we’re opening the door wider. Join and you’ll be part of the core group that built this from the ground up. Your membership is declaration that British Columbia deserves to shape its own AI future with ethics, creativity, and care.

If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, this is the time to lean in.
We don’t do panels. We do portals. And this is the biggest one we’ve opened yet.

See you inside,

Kris Krüg
Executive Director
BC + AI Ecosystem Association
kk@bc-ai.ca | bc-ai.ca

Surrey AI Community Meetup #8 · Luma

Join Matthew Schwartzman, Kris Krüg & the Surrey AI Community at The Royal Canadian Legion Branch #8 on October 14th (6 PM – 9 PM) for an evening packed with…

luma.com/surrey-AI

Surrey AI #8
Royal Canadian Legion Branch #8
Tuesday, October 14 | 6–9pm
2290 152 St, Surrey, BC

Come curious, leave with collaborators and next steps.

No gatekeeping. No posturing. Just community, craft, and momentum. This is for people who learn out loud. Show up with something real and we'll help you make it cleaner, faster, or weirder… in a good way.

6:00–6:30: Arrive, eat, connect
6:30–8:00: Live conversations, Q&A, surprise insights
8:00–9:00: Small groups, real work, honest feedback

Your ticket includes: Drinks + food at the Legion's restaurant.

Thanks to our sponsors:
Kassandra Linklater & Dimitri Schwartzman—community builders investing in spaces where ideas thrive.

RSVP Now

👉 GET YOUR TICKET 👈

Tickets: $29.40 (includes drinks + food
Tomorrow. 6pm. Legion Branch #8.

— Kris Krüg & Matthew Schwartzman
Surrey AI Community | Part of BC + AI

​BC + AI represents a collective, province-wide effort to democratize AI knowledge, innovation, and opportunity. ​Become a Member → Grow Community Infra: Join BC + AI

Hi friends, A quick pulse check as we slide into fall: the September Vancouver AI meetup is around the corner, the dataset just landed, and BC + AI is taking a clear shape.

1) Sept 24 Vancouver AI Meetup: Just around the corner!

Twenty‑one gatherings in a row and still getting weirder, deeper, kinder. We’re back at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre on Wed, Sept 24, 6–10 PM. It’s a night where code meets culture and nobody postures… short field reports, honest demos, hallway debugging, a few tricks up my sleeve.

If you’re coming, grab a spot so I can get the headcount right; I want the food generous and the bar properly stocked when the ideas start flying.

Got something brewing? Bring it.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 09/24

Vancouver AI warmly welcomes all members of the community passionate about shaping the future of AI - researchers, creatives, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs,…

luma.com/vai21

2) AI Hackathon Round 4 — the dataset just dropped.

1,000 Canadians on music: how we discover it, how formats shaped us (vinyl → cassettes → CDs → streaming), and how it feels when AI‑generated songs slip into the mix. Not just stats—stories, theme songs, guilty pleasures, resistance. We cleaned it, mapped sentiment across 3,000+ text entries, and kept the edges so you can read the grain. Turn it into something useful: an agent that argues for/against AI tracks, a generational format map, a memory palace of theme songs, a zine, a visualization, a performance.

Submissions due Oct 15.
Awards + demos Oct 29. Prize: $2,500.
Repo → https://github.com/WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004
Email “I’m in” → vanaihackathon@gmail.com

In partnership with Rival Technologies.

WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

A dataset with 1,261+ survey responses about how people discover music, what formats they use, and how they feel about AI-generated music. - WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

github.com/WalksWithASwagger/vanai-hackathon-004

3) BC + AI Association: Membership as infrastructure.

We’re formalizing what’s already alive: a member‑led commons for BC: coastal, cultural, carbon‑smart. Multi‑modal, multi‑cultural, radically local, future‑facing. It’s community infrastructure you can touch: a Funding Directory (200+ programs, updated and battle‑tested), an Ecosystem Map to find collaborators fast, the ongoing AI Hackathon series and resources, a members‑only WhatsApp lounge for the real talk, a monthly newsletter that’s signal over noise, and an open line when you’ve got questions, leads, or constructive rants.

Join if you want to help steward public‑good tools, connect across regions, and grow a people‑first AI culture rooted in this place.

BC + AI Ecosystem | Building a Responsible & Inclusive AI Future for British Columbia

Discover BC + AI: a multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing AI ecosystem built on ethics, creativity, and community.

bc-ai.ca

See you under the UFO roof on the 24th,

KK & the BC+AI crew

Think of this as a check-in with reality. We’ll trace what British Columbians said about AI, show what our builders made from it, and leave with an institution sturdy enough to carry the work forward.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 08/27

​Technology isn't neutral and neither are we.

Vancouver AI is assembling the brain trust of BC's AI ecosystem... researchers with revolutionary vision, artists with computational minds, and builders who question what they're building.

lu.ma/vai20

On Wed Aug 27 at the Space Centre, we’ll do four things well:

1) Two keynotes

Jos Duncan-Ase (Love Now Media). 
Story, justice, and what “care” means when machines are involved.

Media producer, storyteller, and product strategist with 15 years helping communities use technology and narrative to advance social justice.

Chief Executive Officer at Love Now Media | Business & AI Consultant | Filmmaker | Griot

Peter Bittner (TheUpgrade.ai). 
Practical playbooks for AI literacy and adoption inside real teams.

Educator, newsroom technologist, and co-founder of The AI Upgrade who turns generative AI into safe, useful practice for real teams.

Co-Founder @ The AI Upgrade | Upskilling

2) Top builds + the winner reveal (Round 3)

We’re showing a tight set from the top projects, then announcing the winner. Expect:

• A cinematic, data-grounded short where ordinary choices (breakfast, commute, clinic visit) get automated before morality catches up.

• A voice-first, choose-your-own-journey interface where narrative, charts, and AI commentary adapt as you explore.

• A “policy weather” tool: type a proposal, see support vs. drama by region, toggle riders (audits, plain-language summaries), and read attributed quotes that explain the shifts.

• 3D semantic maps of 1,001 open responses… clusters you can rotate/zoom… plus roundtable audio where each cluster speaks as a single representative voice.

• A civic sentiment map that turns raw comments into clear, riding-level signals for policymakers and communities.

• An AI-music dashboard that translates sentiment into lyrics and tracks—analytics you can actually listen to.

We’re shipping, not pitching. Kick the tires.

3) AI Industry Asssocation Launch

We’re formalizing the BC + AI Ecosystem industry association non-profit… grassroots, member-driven, with real governance and and a public roadmap funded as we go… a mycelial network where poets and programmers co-shape the work, and Indigenous leadership and community protocols are built in from day one.

How it runs (short version): open working groups, transparent budgets, public roadmaps, and lightweight charters you can challenge and improve.

Founding member drive opens that night (Individual, Student, Enterprise). The first 100 help set the charter, stand up the working groups, and lock priorities for the next 12 months.

4) The long conversation

Open networking under the dome. Swap datasets, form working groups, trade stickers. If you’ve got a project that needs air or critique, you’ll find both.

Details

• When: Wed Aug 27, 6:00–10:00 PM (doors 6:00, program 7:00)

• Where: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St

• RSVP: https://lu.ma/vai20

• Access: Fully accessible. Transit + parking.

• Contact: kk@theupgrade.ai

If you’re curious, come. If you’re skeptical, especially come.

Kris Krüg

Hey friends,

Big update for all you AI enthusiasts, builders, and curious minds… this month’s Vancouver AI community meetup is shaping up to be our biggest night yet. If you’ve been following the buzz around the BC + AI Data Storytelling Hackathon, this is your chance to see the province’s collective AI pulse come alive, connect with new collaborators, and help launch a new era for our tech community.

AI Data Storytelling Hackathon

At the August 27th meetup, we’ll be announcing the winner of the BC + AI Data Storytelling Hackathon Round 3. This round is all about British Columbians’ attitudes and perspectives on our relationship with AI. We surveyed 1,000 people across the province… not just tech workers, but students, aunties, coders, land protectors, and kitchen-table inventors.

Their stories, hopes, and concerns are the raw material for the hackathon, and teams are remixing that data into tools, art, policy proposals, interactive stories, and more. The top projects will be demoed live, with a $2,500 prize up for grabs. If you want to know how BC really feels about AI - and what we can do with that knowledge - this is the night to find out⁠⁠.

This survey maps how British Columbians feel about AI’s role in our economy, communities, and future.

Official Launch: BC + AI Ecosystem

We’re also officially launching the BC + AI Ecosystem industry association… our grassroots, member-driven, ethics-first network connecting government, Indigenous leadership, industry, academia, and research labs.

We’ll be signing the association charter live, and the first 100 members get to help set the agenda for the year ahead⁠⁠.

Special Guests & Cross-Border Collab

We’ve got out-of-town brainpower flying in for this one: Jos Duncan-Ase (Google News Initiative AI Lab, Philadelphia), Peter Bittner (TheUpgrade.ai, Seattle), and others bringing fresh perspectives from across North America. Their keynotes will spark new conversations and cross-pollinate ideas between east-coast newsroom AI, west-coast startup grit, and everything in between⁠⁠.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 08/27

Technology isn't neutral and neither are we. Vancouver AI is assembling the brain trust of BC's AI ecosystem... researchers with revolutionary vision, artists with computational minds, and builders who question what they're building.

lu.ma/VAI20

Schedule Highlights:

6:00 PM: Doors Open
7:00 PM: Keynotes (Jos Duncan-Ase, Peter Bittner)
7:40 PM: Hackathon demos & awards
8:20 PM: BC + AI Association launch
8:45 PM: Open mic & collab calls
9:15 PM: Hang, scheme, planetarium selfies

Bring your critical mind, an unfinished idea, and a few stickers to trade. It’s a night for scheming, sharing, and helping steer the future of AI in BC⁠⁠.

Let’s make this a night to remember. Hope to see you under the saucer roof!

Kris Krüg

P.S. Earlyworm tickets are only available until midnight tonight. Move fast if you want the best deal⁠⁠.

To everyone building the future with one hand and flipping the bird with the other…

The Space Centre thinks it's hosting a meetup. Really, we're conducting a séance for the future Vancouver that could exist if we stop outsourcing our imagination to venture capitalists.

Part solarpunk R&D lab, part community potluck, all heart, no gatekeepers.

Meet Your Disruption Dealers

Lionel Ringenbach returned from Montreal carrying numbers that hurt. His VS Code extension is a confession booth for coders… every prompt tagged with its water bill, every model run stamped with its carbon receipt. He built a mirror that shows us what convenience actually eats.

Lionel is a computational experimental artist and interactive designer who merges technology and art to create unique, participatory experiences.

Michael walks us through what it really looks like to explore a dozen AI ideas, stand up real products, and make sharp calls about where to go deep. Expect tactical takeaways, code-level thinking, and a mindset that balances intuition with iteration. What makes a world-class builder isn’t code. It’s discernment.

Michael’s talk is a look inside the decision engine of an AI engineer who’s built more in a year than most do in five.

Peter Bowles thinks meditation apps are bullshit. So he built one. Then he'll birth it live on our stage and immediately feed us to it like digital lab rats. No beta test. No safety net. Just raw human consciousness meeting fresh machine logic. What could go wrong?

Peter is fusing AI-tailored meditations with stage-lighting artistry to unlock human potential.

Michelle Diamond will be there. She’s straight up the most badass photographer in our city... putting our faces and our futures down on the permanent record.

Book Diamond for your event: 778.989.7344

Hackathon: The People's Data Speaks

1,000 British Columbians told us what they really think about AI. Not the polished version. The 3AM version. The ‘I don’t know if my job survives this’ version. Now we need you to make sense of it. Turn fears into insights and hopes into prototypes.

Full dataset and details: hackathon.bc-ai.net

Here's the deal:

• $2,500 prize for the best submission

• Hack from home on your own schedule

• Never done a hackathon? Perfect. Start here.

• Free GitHub workshop next week

• Deadline: August 13

A website. An app. An interactive story. A data visualization. A game. A tool. Whatever makes the truth impossible to ignore.

Step up and show off your hacker ingenuity, creative coding chops, and data storytelling prowess in a no-holds-barred challenge that’s all about community, open-source maker culture, and real, tangible innovation.

The Real Infiltration Strategy

Space Centre thinks we’re hosting a networking event. We’re actually running a mycelial intelligence op… smuggling radical futures past the firewall of “AI for business.” Nurses teaching empathy to machines. Indigenous youth resurrecting languages in neural networks. Teenagers building games that run on REM cycles instead of RAM.

The heartbeat of BC’s AI community: Vancouver AI gatherings and every people-powered breakthrough across the province. Multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing.

Wednesday’s Transmission Protocol

Every tech revolution starts with people in a room refusing to accept the official story. That's us. That's BC + AI…. we're building antibodies to the future they're selling.

BC + AI Events · Events Calendar

View and subscribe to events from BC + AI Events on Luma. The heartbeat of BC’s AI community: Vancouver AI gatherings and every people-powered breakthrough across the province.

lu.ma/vancouver-ai

Everyone's racing to build AI products. We're building AI culture. 

One that speaks in our accent, dreams our dreams, and knows that efficiency without ethics is just automated colonialism.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 7/30

Vancouver AI serves as BC's cross-disciplinary gathering point where, within the vibrant BC + AI industry ecosystem, diverse participants—from coding novices…

lu.ma/julio

H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. July 30. 6-10pm. Come ready to summon something better…

KK

P.S. If you’ve never been to an “AI event,” good. This one’s for you. Hackathon deadline is August 13. No coding experience needed. No excuses accepted.

Co-conspirators: Dimitri Schwartzman (funds the unfundable), SEGEV LLP (legal cover for rebels), METACREATION Lab (where machines learn to dream), TheUpgrade.ai (corporate rehabilitation services)

Yo, dreamers and model-trainers

The future isn’t imported. It’s made here:
Coffee shops, forest domes, punk venues, planetariums.
We build it. We break it. We remix it. Here’s what’s next:

1. Mission 19 meetup at our spaceship HQ (you know the one)

2. Hackathon Round 3 - $2,500 up for grabs. Real stakes. Real story. Launches tooday.

3. SIGGRAPH “Calm Before the Storm” community mixer. no velvet ropes. Come as you are.

4. An annual Vancouver AI ticket pass: a 12-month ticket into the heart of our independent movement

5. Four Vancouver AI viral YouTube talks you have to binge (and boost)

No pressure—just the future of AI, culture, and community in BC.
Ready? Let’s fucking go.

1 ▶︎ Mission 19 — Build the Future, Don’t Download It

​Vancouver AI serves as BC's cross-disciplinary gathering point where, within the vibrant BC + AI industry ecosystem, diverse participants—from coding novices to seasoned researchers—connect to share insights, showcase applications, and collectively shape responsible AI development through monthly in-person exchanges.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 7/30

Bring half-finished code, shoes you can dance in, and a question that scares you—there’s always a seat at the fire.

2 ▶︎ Hackathon Round 3 Drops Today — “BC’s AI Story”

We’ve just collected a 1,000-voice survey with RIVAL and Angus Reid Forum on how BC feels about AI—students, aunties, coders, land protectors. Remix that raw signal into anything—interactive viz, prototype, short doc, zine, interpretive VR rant. Free to participate, all welcome…. $2500 up for grabs → Download the Dataset

Round 2 winners & demos

Round 1 winners & demos

3 ▶︎ SIGGRAPH “Calm Before the Storm” - Community Pre-Party

Global graphics royalty lands in YVR the beginning of August. Before they vanish into expo halls, we’re giving them a softer, wilder landing pad: micro-talks, ambient art, zero velvet ropes.

Calm Before the Storm #SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH’s halls will be buzzing with billion-pixel dreams; this is the warm-up jam where indie devs, VFX wizards, sustainability hackers, and curious…

lu.ma/siggraph2025

🗓 Saturday, August 9th 4pm
📍 Alibi Room, Vancouver
🔗 https://lu.ma/siggraph2025

4 ▶︎ YouTube Channel Went 🚀 — Amplify the Signal

We shoved our best talks into the algorithm and it snapped awake. Your clicks extend our collective voice beyond the dome. Start here:

Morten Rand-Hendriksen on why Anthropic's MCP should terrify you.

Allen Pike: on interfaces that don't suck.

Kevin Friel: on AI filmmaking revolution.

Kushal Goenka on Aaron Swartz's open access legacy.

Watch them. Share if they're actually good. Argue if they're wrong.
Full channel → https://www.youtube.com/@van_ai

Bonus reading that pairs with Morten’s talk: Empire of AI by Karen Hao → https://amzn.to/4nmmMB9

5 ▶︎ Annual Vancouver AI Membership — Lock in that Earlyworm! 🪱

Annual Vancouver AI Membership: $480/year

All meetups for 12 months. Private community chat. Your own member number.

The Vancouver AI community invites everyone interested in AI, including researchers, artists, and entrepreneurs, to engage in various activities, events, and resources aimed at building a grassroots AI community in the region - multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing.

Your dues keep this independent. No corporate sponsors dictating our agenda.

Join if you want to steer, not just consume.

See you under the UFO roof—or lighting up the comments.

Grit, glitter, glitch, gratitude,

Kris Krüg
CEO, BC + AI Ecosystem
778-898-3076

We support British Columbia’s transition into ethical, inclusive AI—by helping public institutions, businesses, and community leaders build the knowledge, skills, and partnerships they need to navigate emerging technologies.

Why Build Your AI Company in Vancouver?

We sit at a cultural intersection, with ties to Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We’re close enough to SF to be relevant, but far enough away to do it our own way.

We’ve built an ecosystem that’s small enough to be intimate and flexible, but big enough to matter. We have high-trust communities, deep pockets of talent, and a shared understanding that AI isn’t just a technical field—it’s a social, ethical, and creative force.

vancouver.bc-ai.net/why-build-ai-in-bc

Over the past year, I've watched creative pros, comms disruptors, and media builders turn curiosity into workflows, wild ideas into projects, and isolation into real connection.

Things are moving fucking quick. This fall is the time to dig in.

Here's some of the magic our alumni have cooked up:

Most people teach you how to “adapt” to the future.

We invite you to punch holes in it, remix it, and build something nobody saw coming.

What's Coming Up

We’re back at it—more brains, more questions and an invitation to keep exploring, building, and experimenting together:

Transformative Training for Teams
Bring your crew, your problems, and your wildest use-cases. We'll help you build workflows that fit your world, not someone else's template.

Custom AI Trainings, Workshops & Keynotes

Your industry, your problems, your weird edge cases. We've done this with nonprofits in NYC, agencies in Texas and companies around the world. Your turn!

www.theupgrade.ai/custom-AI-trainings

AI Upgrade for Creative Pros
Six weeks with the designers, writers, film makers, photographers and professional creatives getting their hands dirty, remixing tools, and hacking together new forms of creativity.

Unlock Creative Superpowers with AI

September Cohort Starting Sep. 9, 2025
October Cohort Starts Oct. 28, 2025

www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-creative-professionals

AI Upgrade for Media & PR Pros
Step into the next era of strategic communications with media innovator Peter Bittner, award-winning journalist Pete Paschal, and systems designer Kris Krüg. Storytellers, strategists, content-makers: this is about building workflows that support your voice—not replace it.

Join the Fall CohortSupercharge Your Strategic Impact

September Cohorts Starts Sep. 9, 2025
November Cohorts Starts November 4, 2025

www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-pr-and-media-professionals

AI Upgrade for Journalists
For the newsroom vets, the side-hustle reporters, and the ones who can't not chase the story. AI for research, sourcing, and staying sharp.

AI Training for the Future of Reporting

Master the workflows that let you dig deeper, track more, report faster, write smarter, and protect credibility in a rapidly evolving media landscape. 

www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-journalists

AI for Sales Leaders
If you're tired of the hustle-for-hustle's-sake, let's build automations that put your time where it matters: on people, not spreadsheets.

Sales is Evolving – Don’t Get Left Behind.

Learn to automate outreach, personalize buyer experiences, optimize CRM workflows, and become exponentially more efficient.

www.theupgrade.ai/courses/ai-upgrade-for-sales-leaders

That's the lineup, but the real magic is what happens when you bring your own flavor to the mix.

We’re not here to teach you to follow someone else’s playbook.
We’re here to help you write your own.

If you want to learn, teach, tinker, or just be part of a room that stays weird, human, and generous—you’ve got an open invitation.

Come hungry, come skeptical, come curious—just come as you are.

Want to talk it out first? Peter or I are always happy to jump on a 15-minute call and help you figure out if this is the right fit—no pressure, no pitch.

Bringing a whole crew? We offer volume pricing for teams, and special discounts for nonprofits and freelancers. If that’s you, hit us up.

Just reply or drop us a note anytime. We’ll make it work.

With gratitude from the lab—
Kris, Peter, Pete, Melissa, Shane, Robert and the entire AI Upgrade crew.

P.S. — We're all just here to see what's possible together. If you want the details or to connect, drop us a line. If you want to lurk and learn, that's good too.

Keep lighting it up. Keep asking better questions.

Everyone loves talking about AI's potential, but few dive deep into the gritty reality of actually building personalized AI systems. I've spent the past two years creating 50+ custom GPTs for entrepreneurs, artists, indigenous communities, and corporate disruptors—systems that know them, their voice, and their mission.

The bloodbath is real. Customer service reps, software developers, graphic designers—AI is kicking over tables across entire industries. But here's what nobody's saying: Microsoft's production code is already 25% AI-written. Sam Altman says most of OpenAI's important functions are AI-generated. We're not talking about the future anymore.

Not every invitation is gentle. Some are a dare. You know that feeling when it’s time to throw out the old playbook and walk right into the unknown?

Last week, I stood naked on a stage in Niagara Falls—no slides, no script, nothing to hide behind. I finally surrendered to the possibility that the only way forward is to show up as you really are. What happened next changed me, and it’s changing how I see the future we’re building together.

I learned that sometimes the deepest truths come not from prep, but from surrender. For fifteen years, public speaking scared the shit out of me. I hid behind scripts, slides, props. Then, finally, on that stage, I let go. I allowed the goddess of inspiration to take over, and something different happened—something human, vulnerable, real. Without crutches, I connected in ways I’ve been chasing for a decade.

Now, as we stare down the relentless acceleration of artificial intelligence, I see the parallels clearly. AI right now feels like public speaking once did—uncomfortably exposed, dizzyingly fast, and overwhelming. Everyone’s gripping tightly to frameworks, guardrails, safety checks, and marketing hype. It’s all scripts and slides, predictable and safe.

Let’s face it: Web Summit Vancouver and events like it are often AstroTurf—polished, neat, synthetic. They mimic the appearance of grassroots movements but lack real roots. Real AI ecosystems—the mycelium we’re cultivating here in BC—aren’t manicured. They’re messy, complex, alive. They’re built in hackatons, coworking spaces, and meetups. They honour Indigenous sovereignty, environmental stewardship, creative expression, and human dignity. They’re nourished by genuine community, not VC funding rounds.

AI Events Calendar

The heartbeat of BC’s AI community: Vancouver AI gatherings and every people-powered breakthrough across the province. Multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing.

lu.ma/vancouver-ai

I’ve seen it firsthand. At Vancouver community meetups, lightning talks become prototypes overnight. PR folks, journalists, salespeople, and creative professionals are stepping into AI through TheUpgrade.ai cohorts—not because they’re chasing trends, but because they understand these tools are part of a profound cultural shift. More than hustle culture… this is humans learning to jam with machines, building a future that actually reflects our values.

Bass Coast 2025 is my next intervention. On the ‘Brain Stage’, I’m hosting a ritual conversation titled “Dear AI, We Need To Talk About Your Soul.” No decks, no pitches, just a collective reckoning. It’s a soul-check séance for technology, asking not just what AI can do, but who it will serve, what it might cost, and how we ensure it remembers our humanity.

Hack the Machine: AI for Humans Who Refuse to Comply - July 11-14, Merritt BC

We’re gathering the artists, misfits, and edge-runners for a campfire interrogation of where AI ends and soul begins.

We’ve also launched the BC + AI Ecosystem industry association—Canada’s first grassroots AI industry body.

Our survey results and ecosystem mapping are showing clearly: People crave leadership that prioritizes ethics over extraction, community over commercialization, and soulful integration over mindless adoption.

If you're growing something weird, beautiful, hard-to-explain—reach out. Let’s surface the signals beneath the noise.

This moment isn’t just about the technology we’re building. It’s about the people we’re becoming. It’s about reclaiming our voices, our communities, our souls, in an age of profound technological possibility and profound human risk.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 6/25

We're the intersection where diverse disciplines, backgrounds, and interests converge to explore our shared humanity in the age of AI.

lu.ma/VAI18

That’s the real upgrade. Let’s build it together.

Kris Krüg

PS— Between gigs and gatherings, I've been building something new. WhisperForge —it transforms your voice recordings into living content ecosystems through AI that feels more like aurora than algorithm. Still weird, still brewing, still learning to breathe. I'll share more when it's ready.

An advanced AI-powered agent designed to reinvent how I process, analyze, and retain wisdom and knowledge from audio transcripts.

Hello signal chasers & story-hackers,

Trump’s still floating the “51st-state” idea. Up here, we just voted in a new Prime Minister—who turned around and named the world’s first federal Minister of AI. Feels like the right moment to pause, breathe, and ask a simple question:

With help from our hackathon partners at RIVAL Technologies we polled 1,000 people coast-to-coast. The answers don't line up neatly—and that tension is where the real work lives. Raw social data that captures a country trying to figure itself out while the world shifts beneath our feet.

Step up and show off your AL/ML hacker ingenuity, creative coding chops, and data storytelling prowess in a no-holds-barred challenge that’s all about community, open-source maker culture, and real, tangible innovation.

What does a country in flux feel like?

This round of the Vancouver AI Data Storytelling Hackathon is where you take raw social inputs and build something alive.

Emotionally intelligent artifacts.

Take that civic hum and shape it into something people can feel: a short film, an interactive space, a choir of synthetic personas—whatever medium helps the data speak. Insight is the floor; emotion is the ceiling.

Your Toolkit

Just suggestions. Use whatever tools move you. Open-source is a plus. Weird is welcome.

Use what you know. Learn what you don’t.

What Would Actually Work

Skip the "AI poetry about maple syrup" approach. The dataset lives at canada.bc-ai.net—but the real data is in the contradictions:

• Build something that shows how Canadians define themselves against America while consuming American culture

• Create agents that embody different regional perspectives and let them argue in real-time

• Map the linguistic fault lines—how does "Canadian identity" translate across French/English/Indigenous languages?

The winning project won't be the prettiest. It'll be the one that makes people uncomfortable about what they thought they knew.

The Stakes

• Submission Deadline: June 11, 2025 @ 11:59PM PT

• Prize: $2,500 + featured slot at the June 25 event

• Team Size: 1–3 people

• Dataset: canada.bc-ai.net

• Register Now: Hackathon Round 2

Last month Sev Geraskin’s “Hot Dogma”—an agent-driven, 3-D riff on the eternal hot-dog-vs-sandwich debate—took the $2 500 purse and proved the cheques clear. Twelve other projects ranged from AI comics to voice-cloned docudramas. The bar is set.

The Deeper Game

This hackathon is actually asking: Can AI help a country remember who it is?

That's not a tech question. That's a cultural survival question.

The real innovation isn't in the tools—it's in using those tools to surface stories that traditional media won't touch. Stories about what happens when a country's identity gets stress-tested by fascist neighbors and rapid technological change.

Don't build for the judges. Build for the future Canadians who need to understand what happened during this moment.

What story about Canadian identity in 2025 are you brave enough to tell with code?

— Kris Krüg
BC + AI Ecosystem | Vancouver Hackathon Crew

Speaking of Canadian identity work—we're exploring these questions live this Wednesday. While Web Summit fills hotel ballrooms with networking theater, we're gathering the curious minds who love to tinker, question, and create.

May 28th at the Space Centre. Carol Anne Hilton opening minds with Indigenomics AI. Gabriel George Sr. connecting us to the land beneath all our code. Kushal Goenka showing how AI reads between your keystrokes.

Vancouver AI: May 28 #WebSummit

​Technology isn't neutral and neither are we. Vancouver AI is assembling the brain trust of BC + AI ecosystem—researchers with revolutionary vision, artists with computational minds, and builders who question what they're building.

lu.ma/websummit-vancouver

This isn't another Web Summit satellite event—it's where BC + AI community shows up to share what actually matters. Raw insights from people knee-deep in the work they love.

​Indigenomics AI: Mapping Indigenous Economic Intelligence

​Kush rips the lid off search, live-demoing how embeddings read between your keystrokes to surface what you mean—not just what you type.

​Gabriel George Sr | Director of Treaty, Lands, and Resources at Tsleil-Waututh Nation

​I asked AL/ML builders what BC + AI scene needs — they told me what’s working, what’s missing, and where we go from here.

Hey friends,

Last week we launched something I never thought I’d have to: the BC + AI Ecosystem Association.

Not because I love acronyms.
Not because we needed another org.

But because someone had to ask the hard questions while everyone else was busy training AI to print money. Questions like: Who gets to decide what "intelligence" means when you're working on unceded territory? or… 

What happens to a creative economy built on human skill when machines can mimic that skill faster and cheaper?

This isn’t theoretical. We gathered 225+ people who’ve been quietly building the future while everyone else argues about it on LinkedIn. Indigenous technologists. Software developers. Startup weirdos. AI Researchers. Educators. Designers. The kind of folks who debug code at 2am and question capitalism over coffee.

They showed up because they know the truth: BC has one of the most functional creative economies in the world… and AI is already destabilizing it from the inside.

Behind those towers in Olympic Village are decades of coordination—DigiBC defending tax credits, Vancouver Film School training talent, game studios turning this place into a global VFX hub. But now? The pipelines are shifting.

Generative models can do in seconds what professionals spent years learning.
VFX artists. Game devs. Songwriters. Animators. Poets. All feeling the heat. All watching the ground shift beneath their feet.

This moment demands more than reactive policy. It demands community-coded infrastructure. Built with place, equity, and cultural intelligence at the center.

We’re not trying to out-Silicon Valley Silicon Valley. We’re building something they can’t: An AI ecosystem rooted in values that actually mean something here.

But too often, the future of AI is being shaped somewhere else—by legacy institutions, by extractive economic models, by hype machines.

This association is our tactical response. It’s a living system. A distributed commons. A refusal to wait.

It’s a shift:

• From acceleration to alignment

• From proprietary to participatory

• From policy done to us to infrastructure built with us

We’re not here to slow AI down. We’re here to steer it somewhere worth going.

BC + AI Is Live — and We’re Building the Future We Actually Want

We just launched Canada’s first grassroots AI industry organization. Not because we love meetings, but because someone has to ask the hard questions while everyone else is busy printing money on artificial intelligence. Like: Who gets to decide what “intelligent” means when you live on unceded territory?

kriskrug.co/2025/05/18/bc-ai-is-live-and-were-building-the-future-we-actually-want

Want in?

→ Watch the launch video
→ Read the blog post
→ Join the groupchat
→ Hack with us
→ Explore the movement

Or just hit reply and tell me what you're building. I read every email.

If you’re building tools that serve more than just yourself, you’re already part of this.
If you’re holding questions that don’t fit in a pitch deck, we want to hear them.
If you’re tired of watching the future get designed by people who’ve never lived in the places they’re reshaping—

Come build it with us.

The revolution won’t be optimized. It will be intentional.

To Our Friends at Web Summit Vancouver

If you’re participating in Web Summit, you’ll hear a lot about disruption, scaling, and acceleration. Great. But here in BC, we’re doing something different. We’re prototyping what comes after.

We’re not selling AI tools—we’re weaving the infrastructure that will govern them.
We’re not building fast—we’re building with care.
We’re not asking “who will win AI?”
We’re asking what kind of intelligence deserves to exist here?

If that resonates—come find us.

Our next Vancouver AI meetup is May 28th during Web Summit Vancouver.

Come argue with us about the future. Bring your hardest questions. We're not afraid of them.

Vancouver AI: May 28 #WebSummit

​Technology isn't neutral and neither are we. Vancouver AI is assembling the brain trust of BC's AI ecosystem—researchers with revolutionary vision, artists with computational minds, and builders who question what they're building.

lu.ma/websummit-vancouver

With care, context, and chaos,

Kris Krüg
 
BC + AI Ecosystem Association
778.898.3076
bc-ai.net

Building a Grassroots BC AI Industry Association

Inside BC’s Growing Grassroots AI Ecosystem: How Vancouver’s AI Community Grew Into Something Beautiful. 2,400 participants, 16 meetups, and the birth of a provincial AI innovation community association that puts people before profit

kriskrug.co/2025/04/19/vancouvers-ai-how-grassroots-innovation-is-reshaping-british-columbias-tech-future

Not a conference. Not a brand activation. This is grassroots tech running on rebellion and sushi. Culture forged in real time. Signal over noise. Community over capital. And yeah, we just torched the whole damn scene.

Vancouver AI Meetup #16 Recap → Blog Post: Photos, Videos, Recaps, Transcripts & More

We cracked open post-chat design futures with Allen Pike of Forestwalk Labs. 6000++ views and achieved escape velocity on YouTube.

We heard ancestral tech prophecy from Gabriel George of the Slə́lwəta̓ʔ Nation.

We got an academic deep dive on how this thing grew from 12 weirdos to 1000+ humans from Professor Patrick Parra Pennefather.

We watched hackers and artists remix data into AI-driven storytelling tools and crown a $2,500 winner.

And we documented it all — to share, remix, and remember.

MAY 28 — VANCOUVER AI x WEB SUMMIT

On May 28, in the middle of the marketing maelstrom of Web Summit Vancouver,
we're hosting a rally point for indie builders, radical researchers, and rogue tech leaders— the ones hunting signal through the noise.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup Web Summit Edition

Vancouver AI is assembling the brain trust of BC's AI ecosystem—researchers with revolutionary vision, artists with computational minds, and builders who question what they're building.

lu.ma/websummit-vancouver

Our community is a patchwork quilt of creative resistance. A field node. A local beacon. A gathering of misfits and makers co-creating an ecosystem built on trust.

👁️‍🗨️ GET YOUR TICKET →
Real humans. Real tools. Real talk.

Vancouver AI: May 28 #WebSummit · Luma

Vancouver AI warmly welcomes all members of the community passionate about shaping the future of AI - researchers, creatives, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs,…

lu.ma/websummit-vancouver

VANCOUVER AI CORE ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP

What powers this movement isn’t venture capital. It’s real people showing up with real care. Support the ecosystem. Get all-access earlybird tix. Unlock the fire private chat where new projects spark weekly.

Join Vancouver AI Community

So here it is: the Annual Community Membership for $480/year. Same price you'd pay for a years-worth of earlyworm tix anyway, plus your own OG Member Number and entry to our private CORE Members groupchat.

core.bc-ai.net

🧬 Become a CORE Annual Vancouver AI Member →

FEATURED VIDEOS

Allen Pike – Post-Chat Interfaces and the Return of Delight

→ "The next obvious thing." AI-powered UX beyond the prompt window.

Gabriel George – Tech Prophecies from the Slə́lwəta̓ʔ Nation

→ Oral histories that foresaw the internet. "Webs across the world" as ancestral architecture.

Patrick Pennefather – How a Scene Becomes a Movement

→ Values, practice, and the humans who built Vancouver AI into a living system.

Vancouver AI Hackathon – Round 1: Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich?

→ Multi-agent pipelines. Visual storytelling. Experimental media meets community data.

🎞️ All videos + transcripts: See the Full Drop →

Vancouver AI Meetup #16

A monthly open-source mixtape of BC + AI knowledge, culture & collective intelligence from the bleeding edge of the Pacific Cascadian AI underground.

kriskrug.co/2025/05/11/vancouver-ai-meetup-16-where-tech-creativity-and-community-collide

We’re not here to get famous.
We’re here to get free.
To build tech that holds soul.
To leave better tools for those who come next.
You feel that pull? That tug in your ribcage? That’s the future calling.

Answer it. Together.

— Kris Krüg
Vancouver AI & BC + AI Ecosystem

PS. Want to help us build the next meetup? Bring gear? Speak? Sponsor? Holler.

BC + AI | Creativity across disciplines. Diversity across cultures. Innovation rooted in place. Futures shaped together.