Thirty months in a row.
That still sounds kind of fake to me, but here we are.
Vancouver AI is back at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre on Wednesday, June 24, 2026. This is the monthly room for builders, artists, researchers, students, public servants, founders, skeptics, educators, the AI-curious, and the beautifully confused.
We started this thing in a room full of people trying to figure out what was happening with AI. People who were excited, people who were worried, people who were both.
Mostly both.
You can build with AI and still care about artists, water, power, kids, consent, Indigenous data sovereignty, public memory, and who gets paid. You can be curious without joining the cult.
That is the Vancouver AI lane. Both hands full.
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Time: Doors at 6:00 PM, program at 7:00 PM, everybody out by 10:00 PM
Place: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver
RSVP: luma.com/june-vanai
Builders in the lobby. Community vibes. Weird demos. Robots if they behave. Robots if they do not. People showing the things they are actually making.
FFeatured Conversation: From Research To The Marketplace Without Losing The Plot
Honourable Rick Glumac
Minister of State for AI and New Technologies
Rick Glumac brings a tech-sector and computer engineering background to government, with experience across animation, video games, mobile apps, and public technology policy.
He’ll speak about what he has witnessed over the past year as B.C.’s Minister of State for AI and New Technologies: research moving toward market-ready companies, responsible AI, and how to grow the ecosystem without losing the plot.
He has worked across animation, video games, mobile apps, and public technology policy, and will speak about B.C. research moving toward market-ready companies, responsible AI, and how to grow the ecosystem without losing the plot.
Opening Ceremony: Grounding The Room
Anthony Joseph and Jonny Williams: Squamish Nation
Anthony Joseph and Jonny Williams bring the opening grounding for Meetup #30, centering local relationship and respect for where we gather before the room accelerates into demos, policy, and future-talk.
Youth Power, Creative Production, And Community Care
Anthonia Ogundele: Ethos Lab / Blackathon
Community AI Charters, Youth Power, And The Blackathon - Anthonia Ogundele is the founder of Ethos Lab, a STEAM innovation hub serving youth in K-12 education
Her work sits at the overlap of educational technology, equity, community values, and young people becoming creators and decision-makers, not just users of tools designed somewhere else.
Mayumi Rollings: Tiny Ghost Studios
Creative Production, AI Animation, And The New Studio Layer: Mayumi Rollings is a Tiny Ghost Studios founder and Chief Executive Officer, bringing operational finance, people-first leadership, and creative studio infrastructure into the AI animation and production conversation.
The Story So Far
Vancouver AI is a monthly gathering where builders, researchers, artists, educators, founders, public servants, students, and the AI-curious trade demos, tools, ethics, and hard questions.
January was Alexandra Samuel and Viv, Maya Bruck keeping vibe coders honest, and Erica Lapadat-Janzen naming the soft violence hiding inside so-called ethics discourse.
February was MAC night, where we let the consciousness people take the wheel and asked what love, embodiment, synthetic empathy, and "real" even mean when language gets cheap.
March was Both Hands Full. AI is extractive, biased, thirsty, dangerous, powerful, useful, weird, and making a lot of us more creative than ever. All true.
April was ethics with teeth: care, fairness, scams, governance, street-level wisdom, and what happens when we stop pretending productivity is the only thing worth measuring.
May was the AI commons: Internet Archive Canada, Rachel Horst's anti-slop machine, Gabriel George opening the room, public memory, creative systems with fingerprints, and the reminder that the commons does not build itself.
June is the checkpoint.
No aggressive pitching. No AI worship service. No doom panel cosplay. No gatekeeping.
Just real people trying to keep their ethics, creativity, humour, and agency intact while the machines get louder.
If you are building, come.
If you are skeptical, come.
If you are confused, perfect.
If you have got a robot, absolutely bring the robot.
Get Involved
BC + AI is the province-wide layer: a community-driven, nonprofit industry association built to create public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia.
Join or support the ecosystem through BC + AI membership.
See you at the Space Centre,
Kris Krug & the Vancouver AI Community
P.S. Futureproof Festival is becoming real. Dates are locked. Venue is locked. The first international speakers have said yes. Earlyworm tickets are on sale now, and the first brave weirdos have already bought in.
It is no longer a theory, a sketch, or a sleep-deprived group chat hallucination. It is fucking happening. More soon, but if Vancouver AI is the monthly campfire, Futureproof is our signal flare to the world!
