BC + AI Hackathon

Last Week to Build + August 27 Meetup

Author

Kris Krüg
August 08, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

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.

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.

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The goal: build public-interest AI infrastructure for BC, center people (not just products), and make sure our ecosystem reflects local values like creative excellence, environmental stewardship, and cultural respect.

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.

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