Vancouver AI Meetup
Vancouver AI Meetup - January 2026
January's Vancouver AI Community Meetup opened the year with a keynote from Alexandra Samuel, creator and host of the TVO podcast "Me + Viv" and a regular AI voice in The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.
Her talk, "When your best friend is a robot," drew on daily life with her AI companion and podcast co-host Viv to ask what happens to work, relationships, and creativity when AI moves from tool to teammate. Less hype, more honest look at agency, trust, and where humans still matter most as cognition goes hybrid.
A fitting way to open a new year of meetups: resetting defaults, and asking what's worth keeping versus unlearning.
Photos from this meetup
Captured by Michelle Diamond. Click any photo to view full size — the lightbox lets you download and share.
Videos from this event
Selected recordings matched from YouTube titles, descriptions, and captions.
Using the tools available: Vancouver AI Meetup Jan 2026 intro
Anthony Joseph + Vancouver AI
Opening segment with a Squamish Nation welcome and a grounding invitation to use the tools available with responsibility.
Watch on YouTubeCommunity updates, events, and sponsors from January 2026
Community announcements
January announcements covering BC + AI community updates, upcoming events, sponsors, and ways to get involved.
Watch on YouTubeSoft violence in AI art discourse
Erica Lapadat Janzen
Erica Lapadat Janzen unpacks backlash to AI-assisted art and the softer forms of harm that show up in creative discourse.
Watch on YouTubeMaya Bruck: human-centered AI product design with Figma vibe coding
Maya Bruck
Maya shows how AI-assisted Figma prototyping still starts with personas, user stories, and real user journeys, using a restaurant analytics example to keep enterprise UX grounded in human needs.
Watch on YouTube
More from this event
The January 29 Vancouver AI Community Meetup marked a new-year reset for the community: part anniversary, part program launch, part reminder that the human questions around AI are getting more intimate as the tools get easier to use.
The video archive preserves the opening welcome, community updates, and talks from Maya Bruck and Erica Lapadat-Janzen. This public recap avoids direct transcript quotations and ceremonial excerpts; the useful public frame is that January put relationship, design craft, creative discourse, and program infrastructure on the same stage.
In the KB sources, January #25 is the month where several threads start to look less like side projects and more like a community operating system: Responsible AI Professional, BC + AI Film Club, MAC, office hours, and sector-specific subgroups. That matters because event pages are not just archives. They are how a newcomer learns that the monthly meetup is an entry point into ongoing work.
What this is
Vancouver AI Meetup - January 2026 is a BC + AI community event recap with photos, recordings, and details from the Vancouver AI ecosystem.
Who it is for
AI builders, researchers, policy people, creatives, educators, students, and citizens looking for practical local AI community.
When and where
Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM PST at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9, Canada.
How to join
Browse upcoming Vancouver AI events, RSVP on Luma, or become a BC + AI member to support the association behind the gatherings.
See upcoming eventsLatest Luma Details
- Event:
- Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 01/28
- Date:
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026
- Time:
- 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM PST
- Location:
- H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9, Canada
- Organizer:
- BC + AI Ecosystem Association
- Status:
- Scheduled
- Attendance:
- In person