About

The most honest AI conversation happening this year has a home. It's in Vancouver.

BC + AI exists because people deserve more than mysticism, panic, and vendor decks when the tools start moving under their feet. Futureproof brings the people whose lives are changing into a festival honest enough for critique, curiosity, culture, and practical work.

Most AI conversations want you to pick a side. Boosters or doomers. All in or all out. A festival refuses that frame. It welcomes in the teacher who can't normally make a tech conference, the doctor wondering what AI means for their practice, the citizen who wants a voice in policy decisions — not just the people already inside the industry.

One shared arc supports one honest conversation. Everyone in the room meets the same ideas and has to live with them together for a minute. That's what a panel can't do. What a conference can't do. A focused founding room moving through one frame — that's the thing worth building.

“There is a latent need. I need to understand. I need to be part of and have a voice in what's happening to us.”— Loki Jorgenson, MAC Day Track Lead

We walk forward with both hands full — critique in one hand, curiosity in the other. Genre-smashing, silo-busting. Ethics with engineering. Film with research. Policy with poetry. A little mischief, because the future has been taking itself far too seriously.

Kris Krüg, Festival Director
Festival Director
Kris Krüg

I've long dreamt of an avant-garde festival of the future — a mix of culture and business and science and art. I didn't start these meetups to start a meetup. I wanted to have this big event, but I didn't have any community yet. So we started hosting meetups. And the meetups took on a mind of their own. It led to the nonprofit. It expanded. Which brought us here.

2026 is the focused proof of concept. H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, opening night plus two program days, and everything we know how to do distilled into a shape we can actually make excellent instead of merely impressive. We launch the full week in 2027.

Core principles

Human-centric

"Where is the human-centric fork in this?" — Kevin Friel

Genre-smashing, silo-busting

Cross-pollinating disciplines beyond AI-specific silos. Ethics with engineering. Film with research. Policy with poetry.

Resiliency through community

Building together, not just observing. The festival is a place to show up as a participant, not a well-dressed tab hoarder.

Both/and thinking

Critique in one hand, curiosity in the other. We refuse the false choice between boosters and doomers.

Who we're for

AI professionals & researchers

The original community.

Teachers & educators

AI in the classroom, AI for the classroom.

Healthcare workers

Clinicians, researchers, patients.

Citizens

A voice in what's happening to all of us.

Youth & students

Entering an AI-transformed world.

Filmmakers & artists

Creative AI as a practice, not a gimmick.

BC + AI Ecosystem Association

Founded in Vancouver in 2024, the BC + AI Ecosystem Association has spent 28 months building what AI conversations mostly skip: genuine public participation. It runs the monthly Vancouver AI Meetup, hosts community hackathons, and supports the educators, researchers, and practitioners working at AI's intersections. Futureproof is where that work puts on better shoes and becomes a festival with international pull.

Vancouver AI community →BC + AI events →
28 months of community

The community, before the festival.

Vancouver AI Meetups. Ethics community sessions. Data storytelling hackathons at the Space Centre. 1,000+ members who keep showing up because the stakes are real and the gathering is not boring.

Data storytelling hackathon stage at Vancouver AI Meetup
Community proof

Builders, artists, data people, and the questions that keep the room from floating away.

Photo: Michelle Diamond - Vancouver AI Meetup

Packed auditorium at Vancouver AI Meetup inside H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Community proof

A real Space Centre gathering, already full of people paying attention. Rare and useful.

Photo: Michelle Diamond - Vancouver AI Meetup - 2026

BC and AI ethics community sitting in a discussion circle
Community proof

The ethics layer is not a slogan here. It has chairs, faces, and homework.

Photo: BC + AI Ethics Community

Audience member applauding at Vancouver AI Meetup
Community proof

Public participation, not passive attendance in nicer shoes.

Photo: Michelle Diamond - Vancouver AI Meetup - 2025

Exterior of the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and Museum of Vancouver in Vanier Park
Venue proof

The venue has a body: planetarium dome, civic weirdness, water nearby, and enough sky to make the conversation behave differently.

Photo: Socratic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Come to Vancouver this October.

It's worth the trip. Bring a notebook.

A focused founding festival. Opening night plus two program days. October 28-30, 2026.

Get ticketsSee the program →