Futureproof Festival of AI

Understand AI. Shape what comes next. AI thought leadership, education and creative practice. October 28–30, 2026, at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver. Opening night and two program days to examine the evidence, challenge your assumptions and sharpen the decisions ahead. The decisions you make about AI will outlast this year's tools. What should you adopt? What deserves scrutiny? What must remain a human responsibility? Futureproof Festival brings researchers, founders, artists, educators and policy leaders into the same program. Learn from their work, question their assumptions, and bring the challenge your organization or practice is facing. The program includes keynotes, focused talks and audience Q&A. Who this is for Futureproof Festival is for people making consequential choices about AI: business leaders and founders, researchers and technologists, educators and public servants, creative directors and independent artists. If you build, fund, commission, teach or govern work that AI is changing, this program is for you. Bring a real challenge. Give it your full attention. You don't need to write code or arrive convinced. Bring the question you need a better answer to, and examine it alongside people approaching AI from different fields. Visit the Futureproof website: https://www.futureproof.website/ What the three days look like Wednesday, Oct 28 — human-centered technology and the open web. Badge pickup opens at noon; the opening party begins at 5:00 PM. Anthony Joseph opens the stage at 6:30 PM with a welcome to Squamish territory. Amber Case follows with calm technology, the AI Builders Fellowship shares its work, and Brewster Kahle examines public memory. Both keynotes include ten minutes of questions. Philippe Pasquier's creative AI performance leads into the evening social. Thursday, Oct 29 — AI in consequential work. Examine AI in drug discovery with Simon Haworth, infrastructure with Sev Geraskin, and safety science communication with Kristen Delphos. Brett Gaylor brings a filmmaker's perspective on who gets to tell the story; Stephanie Dick asks who decided what counts as knowledge. Taleeb Noormohamed joins Kris Krüg for the closing fireside at 4:25 PM. The day finishes at 5:20 PM. Friday, Oct 30 — what we choose to build. Naomi Klein opens the stage at 9:30 AM in conversation with FanTrust President Catherine Warren, followed by Ana Serrano and Prem Gill on AI, creativity and cultural policy. The day brings together community, planetary resilience, practical work, creative ownership, Indigenous language and data, and Ben Shneiderman's closing keynote. The closing ceremony ends at 5:40 PM. Take time for dinner on your own before the included closing party, 7:30–10:00 PM. All audience Q&A blocks are ten minutes. Full-hour lunches and coffee breaks are included in the schedule. A FanTrust Conversation with Naomi Klein Friday, October 30 · 9:30–10:30 AM Join us for an intimate conversation with international bestselling author and climate justice advocate Naomi Klein. FanTrust President Catherine Warren sits down with Naomi to discuss her worldview and new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, co-written with Astra Taylor. Oligarchs, tech bros, and populist politicians may look like strange bedfellows, but they share an AI ethos and a common toolkit. Together, we’ll unbox it. From harrowing to hopeful, hear how Naomi’s work traces systems of power, who profits from them, and where the rest of us can still push back. Explore the full program, speaker profiles and current session times. Built from the community already showing up Futureproof is presented by BC + AI and grows out of the rooms already forming around AI in British Columbia: Vancouver AI Meetups, film nights, hackathon stages, ethics conversations, creative experiments, and people who keep showing up before the answers are tidy. We started this thing in a room full of people trying to figure out what the hell was going on with AI. Artists, coders, founders, teachers, researchers, skeptics, people who were excited, people who were worried, people who were both. Mostly both. This did not appear overnight. It is an extension of a thriving creative technology community already gathering, questioning, building, teaching, experimenting, and debating together in public. Partners already in the room Presented by BC + AI. H.R. MacMillan Space Centre Ethọ́s Lab Friends Quarters Sons of Vancouver SFU Metacreation Lab CreativeMornings Vancouver Data for Good Vancouver Rival Technologies DAMA-Vancouver BC + AI Film Club Multimodal Media Lab Internet Archive Canada is Futureproof Festival's Founding Sponsor, backing the AI Builders Fellowship alongside BC + AI. BC + AI membership BC + AI membership supports the community infrastructure around the festival: in-person events, scholarship seats, documentation, and the work that keeps people connected after the ticket lands. Active BC + AI members save 25% on Futureproof Festival tickets. Join BC + AI membership: https://bc-ai.ca/membership/ Kris Krüg is the Festival Director and Founder/Executive Director of BC + AI. He runs the Vancouver AI Meetups and has been building Futureproof Festival from the physical community first. Plan your visit Your festival ticket covers opening night, both program days, the performances and the closing party. Certification days are separate, through BC + AI. Travel details · Ticket details · Festival questions · Latest news Featured speakers The speakers and contributors joining the festival. Naomi Klein, Author & Journalist, UBC Centre for Climate Justice Naomi's speaker profile Catherine Warren, Founder & President, FanTrust Catherine's speaker profile Amber Case, Founder, Calm Tech Institutehttps://www.futureproof.website/speakers/amber-case/ Ana Serrano, President & Vice-Chancellor, OCAD Universityhttps://www.futureproof.website/speakers/ana-serrano/ Prem Gill, Senior Policy Fellow, Cultural Policy Hub, OCAD Unive