Hey friends,
A quick invite for folks in the Comox Valley.
Our next AI Community Meetup is happening Wednesday, May 6 at the Florence Filberg Centre in Courtenay.
AI is reshaping work, creativity, education, and public life fast, and most of us are processing it alone in browser tabs. This meetup is the opposite of that. It’s a local, in person room where we can be honest about what’s useful, what’s risky, and what’s changing under our feet.
Meetup details
Date: Wednesday, May 6
Time: 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Location: Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Ave, Courtenay
Tickets: $20 standard, free for BC + AI Ecosystem Association Members
RSVP: https://luma.com/comox
A couple short talks, then conversation
Quanah Parker on data sovereignty and local AI, and why running models closer to home matters. Practical tradeoffs, privacy, cost, reliability, and what it means to build on infrastructure you actually own.
Steve Jones with a short talk called All Juice, No Pulp about skipping the addictive chatbot wrapper and using AI tools like Claude Code or Codex to build personal, custom software that does what you want. Plus a quick demo of two open source projects.
Comox Valley AI is a regional chapter of BC + AI, a registered Canadian nonprofit building community-driven AI spaces across British Columbia. Lourdes Gant and I are co-hosting this one.
Also, huge gratitude to the folks helping us make the night work, including Colin Fitzgerald and Anyssa at Natural Pastures, who have been leaning in as early supporters.
If you know someone in Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland, or Hornby who should be in this conversation, forward this.
See you Wednesday,
Kris Krüg
[email protected]
BC + AI Ecosystem Association
https://bc-ai.ca
P.S. If you’ve been orbiting the community, membership is how this stays alive. It funds the rooms, the experiments, and the humans doing the work. Members also get free tickets to events like this. Join here: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/
P.P.S. Responsible AI Professional (RAP) Certification launches May 22. Four weeks, real frameworks, real scenarios, built for people making real decisions. Info: https://luma.com/ai-ethics
P.P.P.S. Web Summit week is coming fast, and we have three Vancouver side events lined up. The clean hub is here: https://luma.com/vancouver-ai
