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Amber Case

Founder, Calm Tech Institute

Amber Case, founder of the Calm Tech Institute and author of Calm Technology. She’ll talk about building technology that respects our attention and agency, and what AI should feel like when it’s actually made for humans.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Amber Case. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Ana Serrano

President & Vice-Chancellor, OCAD University

Ana Serrano, president of OCAD University. She’ll talk about culture’s job in shaping technology, and why artists and educators need a real say in what gets built.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Ana Serrano. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Lynda Brown-Ganzert

CEO, RxPx Inc

Lynda Brown-Ganzert, CEO of RxPx. She’ll bring 30 years of digital health receipts and ask whether the technology is actually making life better for patients.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Lynda Brown-Ganzert. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Zaro

Community Futurist, Electronic Arts

Zaro has spent more than 15 years building communities around some of gaming’s biggest global franchises. He’ll share what live-service games learned about earning trust and listening at scale, then ask a simple question: as the machines get smarter, what keeps humans in the loop?

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Zaro. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Kris Krüg

Founder & Festival Director, BC + AI Ecosystem Association

I’m Kris Krüg, founder of Futureproof and executive director of BC + AI. I started this festival to get artists, builders, skeptics, and curious weirdos into the same room to compare notes, disagree, and figure out what the hell we’re going to do with AI together.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Kris Krüg. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Mayumi Rollings

CEO & Co-Founder, Tiny Ghost Studios

Mayumi Rollings, co-founder and CEO at Tiny Ghost Studios. She’ll talk about running an AI-powered animation studio without losing the artists, the craft, or the plot.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Mayumi Rollings. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Peter Bittner

AI Trainer & Consultant, Independent

Peter Bittner, independent AI trainer and consultant. He’ll get practical about teaching AI to working people, especially newsrooms and communications crews, without drowning them in another stupid tool list.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Peter Bittner. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

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Kevin Friel

Festival Director, BC + AI Film Club

Kevin Friel, festival director and founder of the BC + AI Film Club. He’ll talk about what happens when filmmakers quit waiting for permission, make stuff, screen it, and learn together.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Kevin Friel. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

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Brewster Kahle

Founder & Digital Librarian, Internet Archive

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. He’ll talk about saving the web, keeping knowledge open, and what a library owes the people who haven’t been born yet.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Brewster Kahle. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Jos Duncan-Asé

Founder, Love Now Media

Jos Duncan-Asé, founder of Love Now Media. She’ll talk about empathy as a media practice, who gets to tell the story, and what it looks like when communities own their own narratives.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Jos Duncan-Asé. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

• Download Landscape 16:9
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Sara Blenkhorn

Director of Innovation, Buckminster Fuller Institute

Sara Blenkhorn, director of innovation at the Buckminster Fuller Institute. She’ll get into life-centred AI, better ways to govern and own what we build, and institutions that serve more than shareholders.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Sara Blenkhorn. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Brett Gaylor

VP Creative, Hololabs

Brett Gaylor, VP Creative at Hololabs. He’ll bring 20 years of remix culture, surveillance documentaries, and interactive storytelling to the question of who gets to shape the algorithm.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Brett Gaylor. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Sarah Downey

Founder, Sarah Downey Consulting

Sarah Downey, founder of Sarah Downey Consulting. She’ll get practical about AI strategy, policy, and readiness for nonprofits that can’t afford to lose their values in the rush to adopt.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Sarah Downey. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

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Philippe Pasquier

Professor & Director, Metacreation Lab, Simon Fraser University

Philippe Pasquier, professor and director of the Metacreation Lab at SFU. He’ll talk about making art with AI without handing it authorship, and what new forms of expression show up when artists stay in the loop.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Philippe Pasquier. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

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Simon Haworth

CEO, Intellomx

Simon Haworth, CEO of Intellomx. He’ll talk about what AI is actually changing in drug discovery, where the hype runs out, and what builders in BC can do about it.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Simon Haworth. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

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Loki Jorgenson

CTO & Director, Innovation, Circle Innovation

Loki Jorgenson, CTO and director of innovation at Circle Innovation. He’ll get into consciousness, agency, and what it means to build powerful systems when nobody has clean answers.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Loki Jorgenson. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Alexandra Samuel

Technology Journalist & Author, Independent

Alexandra Samuel, independent technology journalist and author. She’ll get practical about working with AI without handing it your agency, judgment or humanity.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Alexandra Samuel. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Sev Geraskin

Co-Founder & VP of Engineering, PolarGrid · Economy of Wisdom Foundation

Sev Geraskin, founding VP of engineering at PolarGrid and president of the Economy of Wisdom Foundation. He’ll get into distributed AI infrastructure, community intelligence and who gets to shape the systems underneath all this.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Sev Geraskin. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Stephanie Dick

Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University

Stephanie Dick, assistant professor in SFU’s School of Communication. She brings the long view on AI: where our ideas about machine intelligence came from, who gets to define knowledge, and what those histories still do to work and public life.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Stephanie Dick. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Taleeb Noormohamed

Member of Parliament, Vancouver Granville

Taleeb Noormohamed, MP for Vancouver Granville and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation. He joins the festival from the federal AI policy table, where implementation, innovation, and public accountability are no longer abstract.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Taleeb Noormohamed. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Michael Running Wolf

Chair, Board of Directors, IndigiGenius

Michael Running Wolf, board chair at IndigiGenius. He builds machine-learning and immersive technology for Indigenous language reclamation and asks who owns the systems, data, and future those tools create.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Michael Running Wolf. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Shane Gibson

Founder & Keynote Speaker, Professional Sales Academy

Shane Gibson, founder of Professional Sales Academy. He’ll turn the art of asking better questions into a practical human skill for working with each other and with AI.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Shane Gibson. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Kristen Delphos

Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs, UL Research Institutes

Kristen Delphos, vice president of communications and public affairs at UL Research Institutes. She’ll show how a team of science writers learned to trust AI by building it, and what happens when the hero’s journey meets the scientific method.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Kristen Delphos. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Kerris Hougardy

Senior Vice President, People, Ting Internet · Tucows

Kerris Hougardy, senior vice president of people at Ting Internet and Tucows. With Raj Parmar, she makes the case for discernment: the one human skill that cannot be automated, and the one that decides whether AI at work helps or quietly erodes critical thinking.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Kerris Hougardy. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Raj Parmar

HR Leader and Business Partner, Tucows

Raj Parmar, HR leader and business partner at Tucows. She builds AI literacy inside companies and bets on the people who know when to stop and say wait, let’s check that.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Raj Parmar. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Dean Shev

CTO and co-founder, VHT.ai

Dean Shev, CTO and co-founder of VHT.ai. He builds ECHNA, a health navigation assistant that has to answer to real patients, HIPAA, and PHIPA at the same time, which is where healthcare AI stops being a demo and starts being somebody’s medical record.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Dean Shev. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Suzy Easton

Musician and technologist, Independent

Suzy Easton, Vancouver musician and technologist. She solders her own pedals, hides the circuits inside repurposed appliances, and treats AI as one more instrument to play rather than a thing to prompt.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Suzy Easton. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Ashley Smith

AI Visibility Strategist, Show Your Proof

Ashley Smith, AI visibility strategist and founder of Show Your Proof. She runs a live check on how you actually show up in AI search, what proof of you is out there, and what to fix first.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Ashley Smith. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Ben Shneiderman

Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland

Ben Shneiderman, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and founding director of its Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He wrote the book on human-centered AI, and he lives in Kitsilano now. He’s coming to argue for AI that keeps people in control.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Ben Shneiderman. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.

Lane Becker

President, Wikimedia Enterprise, Wikimedia Foundation

Lane Becker leads Wikimedia Enterprise. Wikipedia is free; keeping it available takes people, infrastructure, and money. He brings a view from inside the work of sustaining the knowledge that AI depends on.

Editorial use permitted with credit to Futureproof Festival and Lane Becker. Do not crop the speaker out of the artwork.