Last week I tuned into Road to Web Summit Vancouver: Beyond the Pitch. Bright lights. Polished panels. Buzzwords flowing like complimentary wine.

But under the surface?

Something else was humming—something raw, real, and unmistakably ours.

A backchannel pulsing through the room: indie founders, cultural glitchworkers, artists-with-algorithms, and community tech organizers syncing in quiet defiance. You could feel it in the side-eyes. The side chats. The side quests.

Highlights from the Dispatch

The Map Is Glitching: The official program tells you to “network.” We’re here to rewire signal. You’ll find the real conversations not on the main stage, but at the Vancouver AI community meetups, BC+AI salons, and micro-assemblies where people talk about what matters—not just what scales.

Borrow the Mic, Shift the Payload: Yes, pitch. Yes, take the meetings. But don’t perform their version of the future. Say what they wouldn’t print on the brochure. The spotlight is theirs, but the message? That’s yours to weaponize.

Hack the Platform, Don’t Get Absorbed: The PR loop says: be lean, be clear, be palatable. Nah. Be rooted. Be weird. Be urgent. Every media moment is a chance to plant an unexploded truth bomb. Your radical honesty isn’t just good journalism—it’s the only strategy left that still cuts through the noise.

Rebuild Legitimacy From the Ground Up: Legacy press is collapsing. Gatekeepers are glitched. Build your own pipes. Pop-up labs, rooftop studios, dark social loops. Validation from above is fragile. Community trust is resilient.

Rethink the format. Reframe the question.

While panels talk pipelines and “impact metrics,” we’re busy asking better questions—like: Is a hotdog a sandwich?

At the Vancouver AI Data Storytelling Hackathon, we flipped the script: raw data turned into living stories, protest visuals, AI-powered performances, and zines that actually made people feel something.

This isn’t your average analytics exercise. It’s a culture jam. It’s open-source mischief. It’s what happens when Rival Technologies drops a custom dataset and the community gets to remix the signal.

We’re not looking for dashboards—we’re looking for dispatches from the edge. Work that reframes the questions, reveals the hidden patterns, and makes the invisible felt.

→ Register for Round 1

Prize money: $10K across 4 rounds
Deadline: April 16
Theme: Culture, consumption, and computational absurdity

Your dataset? Hot takes from a real Rival-powered community pulse.
Your mission? Make the data sing. Or scream. Or glitch.

→ Full Hackathon Guide

If you’re building with heart, hacking with intent, or just trying to make sure this summit doesn’t rewrite our ecosystem in someone else’s image—holler. Let’s sync signals.

—KK
🎛️ @kriskrug
📡 Vancouver AI | BC+AI | TheUpgrade.ai

🔗 Join the Vancouver AI Core Membership →

All welcome, no gatekeeping. Bring your projects, your questions, your wild ideas—this is where the future gets built together.

Our next Vancouver AI community meetup is coming up soon at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. You in?