WhatsApp Source — April 2, 2026 Festival Announcement

Programming Tracks

Vancouver's first week-long festival of AI.

BC + AI Festival Week is a multi-day celebration of AI innovation, ethics, creativity, and community, anchored by the second annual BC + AI Film Festival.

Status: Early planning / vision stage. Publicly announced April 2, 2026. Target timing: last week of October / first week of November 2026.

The vision has been developing internally since the January 12, 2026 team meeting and is now formalized here as a canonical planning page in Notion.

Proposed core structure:

• 2nd Annual BC + AI Film Festival — 2-day anchor event
• MAC (Mind, AI & Consciousness) Day
• AI & Education Day
• AEFL Summit / Ethics Day
• Squatchies Awards closing ceremony
• Rival Technologies Hackathon
• AI Job Fair (proposed, potentially with DAMA and Creative Pulse)

Pricing concept from the Jan 12 meeting: about $250/day or $1,500 for the full week, with a member discount of about $500 on the week pass.

Key decisions still needed:

• Lock exact dates
• Confirm venue strategy across tracks
• Finalize pricing and ticketing platform
• Decide whether the AI Job Fair sits inside festival week or in November as a separate but related event