Vanessa Gonzales and Makaidea Gonzales
Vanessa Gonzales and Makaidea Gonzales
Squamish Nation
A welcome, a song, and a blessing to open the evening on the territory this gathering takes place on.
vancouver-ai-meetup-32.exe
Vancouver · gathering no. 32
Vancouver AI Community Meetup: Data for Good
Three encounters with the same question: who is this technology actually for? A nonprofit data clinic, a conversation about federal AI direction, and a live performance, all in one room under the dome.
- Date
- Wednesday, August 26, 2026
- Time
- 6:00–10:00 PM PDT
- Place
- H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
The running order
Four things happen, in this order.
Doors at six. The room stays open for conversation until ten.
Welcome from the Squamish Nation
Vanessa Gonzales and Makaidea Gonzales open the night with a welcome, a song, and a blessing.
Data for Good, in the open
A fifteen-minute tour of what the chapter has actually shipped, then a ten-minute working session on live nonprofit data challenges. Real problems, in the room, out loud.
A featured conversation on responsible AI
Taleeb Noormohamed joins the room to talk about where federal AI direction meets the people building here.
Fragmenta, live
Misagh Azimi closes with an audio-visual performance driven by generative models he trained himself.
The August lineup
Who is in the room.
Nine people, four practices, one shared question about who benefits when the data gets used.
Opening
Featured conversation
Taleeb Noormohamed
Taleeb Noormohamed
Member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville · Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation
Federal AI direction meets a local builder room. We talk about what responsible innovation means when the people affected by it are sitting in front of you.
This is a community conversation. It is not a sponsor slot, and it is not an endorsement in either direction.
Parliamentary profile ↗Data for Good Society
Gordon Hamilton
Gordon Hamilton
Chapter Lead, Data for Good Vancouver · President, DAMA Vancouver
Fraser Uitdenbosch
Fraser Uitdenbosch
Chapter Lead, Data for Good Vancouver · Data and Analytics Leader, National Bank of Canada
Amanda Calvo
Amanda Calvo
Project Lead, Data for Good Vancouver · Technology Portfolio Specialist, TransLink
Dhavide Aruliah
Dhavide Aruliah
Project Lead, Data for Good Vancouver · Principal Scientist, MKDA Consulting
Performance and host
Misagh Azimi
Misagh Azimi
Interdisciplinary artist and creative AI researcher · Metacreation Lab for Creative Artificial Intelligence
Creator of Fragmenta. His closing set is built from generative models he trained himself, which makes it a rare chance to watch the tooling and the art arrive together.
Kris Krüg
Kris Krüg
Executive Director, BC + AI Ecosystem Association · Founder, Vancouver AI
Your host for the night, keeping the room moving and making sure the people who should meet each other actually do.
vancouver-ai-community
Why we gather
For people who are paying attention.
Artists, researchers, builders, students, founders, skeptics, teachers, organizers, and curious weirdos are all welcome here. We gather to work through what AI is doing to our tools, our jobs, our stories, our culture, and each other.
We are not here to clap for every new model or pretend the machine is magic. We are here to learn in public, share what is real, test ideas, ask better questions, and build relationships with people who care where this goes.
- Short community talks and live demos
- Room for questions and unfinished ideas
- Open networking with Vancouver’s AI community
- A local, grounded alternative to hype-only tech events
event-details.txt
The practical bits
Wednesday night at the Space Centre.
- When
- August 26, 2026 · 6:00–10:00 PM PDT
- Where
- H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
- Format
- Welcome, working session, featured conversation, live performance, and open networking
- Tickets
- Earlyworm and Community tiers on Luma, while they last
what-to-bring.txt
What to bring
A question you cannot shake. A demo that is not quite ready. An experiment, a doubt, a project in progress, or a friend who should be in the room.
If you work with a nonprofit that is sitting on a data problem, bring that too. The working session is the place for it.
The Space Centre and the city of Vancouver are on the shared, unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Who makes this possible
Partners and sponsors.
This meetup is free to attend because these organizations decided a room like this was worth paying for.
In partnership with
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Our host under the dome, and one of the places this city goes to look further ahead than next quarter.
Sponsored by
Internet Archive Canada
The non-profit digital library keeping the public record readable, which is the least glamorous and most important data work there is.
Sponsored by
IntellOmx and Simon Haworth
AI for novel biological molecular discovery, built here in British Columbia.
see-you-under-the-dome
August 26, doors at six
Come find out who it is for.
BC + AI is a community-driven nonprofit association turning local meetups into practical, public-interest infrastructure for British Columbia. Multi-modal, multi-cultural, radically local, and future-facing.