Meet the first voices joining Futureproof.

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.

Meet Amber Case →

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.

Meet Ana Serrano →

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.

Meet Lynda Brown-Ganzert →

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?

Meet Zaro →

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.

Meet Kris Krüg →

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.

Meet Mayumi Rollings →

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.

Meet Peter Bittner →

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.

Meet Kevin Friel →

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.

Meet Brewster Kahle →

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.

Meet Jos Duncan-Asé →

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.

Meet Sara Blenkhorn →

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.

Meet Brett Gaylor →

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.

Meet Sarah Downey →

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.

Meet Philippe Pasquier →

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.

Meet Simon Haworth →

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.

Meet Loki Jorgenson →

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.

Meet Alexandra Samuel →

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.

Meet Sev Geraskin →

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.

Meet Stephanie Dick →

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.

Meet Taleeb Noormohamed →

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.

Meet Michael Running Wolf →

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.

Meet Shane Gibson →

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.

Meet Kristen Delphos →

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.

Meet Kerris Hougardy →

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.

Meet Raj Parmar →

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.

Meet Dean Shev →

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.

Meet Suzy Easton →

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.

Meet Ashley Smith →

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.

Meet Ben Shneiderman →

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.

Meet Lane Becker →