Don't Abdicate Your Seat: Inside Future Proof Festival

Meetup #32 landed on BC + AI's first anniversary. The nonprofit launched at this meetup a year earlier, and here Kris Krüg describes what it has become: a professional network of about 300 people working on AI across the province, with subgroups for life sciences, education, and founders and funders.

Most of the clip is about the Futureproof Festival, with around 20 speakers, many of them flying in, at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. He names Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive for the opening keynote, along with Amber Case and Philippe Pasquier of the MetaCreation Lab for Creative AI. He is also plain about the money. BC + AI is funded by its members, "which means I don't sell you to sponsors."

Then the line the clip is named for. Kris asks the skeptics and the worried to come anyway: "Don't abdicate your seat at the table. We need your critical voice there." Every AI conversation tries to push people into a booster camp or a doomer camp. He argues you can be curious about the technology and still hold companies and governments to account, and that BC can do this its own way.

Futureproof runs October 28 to 30, 2026. See the festival page, the Meetup #32 archive, or watch this part of the full recording from 12:05.