Opening night of Futureproof Festival is Wednesday, October 28, at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. Here's how it runs, so you can plan your afternoon accordingly. Times can still move, and the program page always has the latest.
4:00 pm: badges. Main badge pickup starts at four. Opening-night doors and staffed booths open at five.
5:00 pm: the party. Doors and staffed booths open at five, with a bar. Ninety minutes to arrive, get a drink and find your people before anyone says a word from the stage. The sushi and dessert are hosted, and so are the drinks.
6:30 pm: welcome to the territory. Anthony Joseph of the Squamish Nation opens the festival with a welcome to Squamish territory. It is the first thing said from this stage, before any of the rest of it.
6:45 pm: Amber Case. Amber Case wrote the book on calm technology, and the first talk of the festival is hers: Calm Technology in the Age of Loud Machines. What AI should feel like when it is built for people instead of markets, and what it costs us when it is not. Then ten minutes of questions from the audience.
7:25 pm: the AI Builders Fellows. Two builders from the AI Builders Fellowship, Internet Archive Canada's program with BC + AI, get ten minutes each to show what they built after six weeks inside the Government Publications collection. Jacob Ortiz presents The Archive Argues With Itself, then Daniel Shavit presents What happened on your street? Vancouver through time, from the Archive's records. Five minutes of questions, and props to Internet Archive Canada, our founding sponsor, for backing them.
7:50 pm: Brewster Kahle. Then the man who built the Internet Archive takes the stage. Brewster Kahle gives Public memory, and who it belongs to: the open web, libraries, and what a civic AI owes the people who have not been born yet. Thirty minutes on stage, then fifteen of questions.
8:40 pm: the creative AI live set. Artists with AI as their instrument: generative visuals, live-coded sound, and a crowd that gets louder as it goes. Philippe Pasquier, who directs the Metacreation Lab at Simon Fraser University, is on stage. Twenty-four minutes, then the set hands the night to the party.
9:04 pm: the open social. The bar, and all the conversations the talks just started. Stay until they turn the lights out, and go home with people you'll still be texting in March.
Thursday morning we start again with Making sense of it together. The whole program is here.
Your festival ticket includes opening night, both program days and the closing party. Get yours here, and bring someone who should be there with you.
Understand AI. Shape what comes next.
Updated October 26, 2026: main badge pickup now starts at 4:00 pm; doors and staffed booths open at 5:00 pm, with the stage program at 6:30 pm. This replaces the earlier noon pickup listing.
Updated October 25, 2026: times matched to the program, the fellows named, and the live set timed at twenty-four minutes.
Space Centre photo: Michelle Diamond.
