Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 03/25
Vancouver AI is a neural network of curious humans. We bridge art galleries and research labs, corporate towers and garage workshops, because the future isn’t built in silos.
In a world of black-box algorithms and corporate capture, we are cultivating a commons. A space where prototypes become shared tools and community values become governance. We move from ephemeral noise to perpetual knowledge.
The Movement: BC AI Ecosystem Association: This gathering is a node in a much larger provincial mission. We are building the public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia—ensuring that our local-first intelligence outlives its creators and powers the next era of West Coast innovation. We aren’t just "using" AI; we are defining how it lives here.
March 25: This month, we bring the strategy down to earth, onto wheels, and across the big screen.
The Lineup
Is’gh’li-ya AKA Anthony Joseph AKA Uncle Big Lungs joining us again tomorrow night for Vancouver AI meetup.
Lawrence Okolo (VASI Lead): Beyond the screen. Lawrence is a Senior ML Engineer putting Large Language Models on wheels.
He joins us to demo the latest in autonomous hardware built right here in Vancouver.
Mayumi Rollins (Tiny Ghost Studios): The AI Film Club is exploding.
Mayumi joins us to showcase the best of the BC + AI Film Club contests.... a highlight reel of the first three rounds of community animation... and to launch participation for Round 4.
Kris Krug (theupgrade.ai): Fresh from the Banff AI Summit, KK returns with a dispatch from the peaks.
Expect a high-fidelity synthesis of the national roadmap and a look at our "Coastal Immortality" vision.
Other Upcoming Events in Our Community
Plug into the bigger organism
This meetup is part of the BC + AI Ecosystem Association a member-driven nonprofit where meetups turn into working groups, prototypes turn into shared tools, and community values turn into governance.
Join / support: https://bc-ai.ca/membership
Kris Krüg & the Vancouver AI Community
THE SPONSORS
Big thanks to the folks helping keep the lights on, the doors open, and the community infrastructure real:
Rival Technologies: Vancouver-grown leaders in conversational research + insight communities (aka: turning “surveys” into actual conversations). Market research platform that gave us $10K+ in hackathon prizes and actual BC survey data to train our models on real problems.
Intellomx: Simon Haworth’s crew Intellomx is an AI-powered drug discovery platform that analyzes transcriptomic, genomic, and proteomic data to save up to 90% of pre-clinical development costs (recently joined J&J Innovation JLABS). Huge thanks for backing the ecosystem from the deep science end.
TheUpgrade.ai: AI training company walking the walk on democratizing AI skills: Fortune 500 workshops, creative pro certifications, and corporate training that doesn't treat people like idiots. They help organizations and individuals harness AI to amplify creativity and accelerate learning through practical, hands-on training
Community Partners
Metacreation Lab for Creative AI: Professor Philippe Pasquier and his lab are leading research in AI-driven creative systems, generative art, and computational creativity at School of Interactive Arts & Technology at Simon Fraser University.
Creative Mornings Vancouver: 14 years building Vancouver's creative community since before "community building" was a LinkedIn buzzword, and they let us cross-pollinate networks because they get that rising tides lift all boats.
HR MacMillan Space Centre: Our venue partner who hosts us every month and doesn't kick us out when conversations run past 10 PM. They're Vancouver's gateway to innovation and space education, making science accessible to everyone from kids to cosmos-obsessed adults.
Ethos Lab: Vancouver's Black + Indigenous youth-led studio on Main St where teens ship real products. Running AI Studios + Friday Night AI Experimentation Labs (Jan–Jun 2026) for BIPOC youth (14–24), plus the Blackathon in February honouring Hogan’s Alley.
About Vancouver AI
Vancouver AI is a neural network of curious humans mapping the terrain between technology and consciousness. We bridge art galleries and research labs, corporate towers and garage workshops because the future doesn’t get built in one kind of room.
We run monthly gatherings where builders, researchers, artists, educators, founders, and students trade demos, tools, ethics, and hard questions. No gatekeeping. No outside agenda. Just a self-organizing community that gives a damn about where this revolution goes and who gets to steer.
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/