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The demo floor is the heart of every Vancouver AI Community Meetup. This is the landing page for builders, artists, researchers, and students who want to show their work, and for attendees who want to know what they are walking into.

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What the Demo Program Is

Since January 2024, every monthly Vancouver AI Community Meetup has featured live demo stations alongside talks and performances. Demos are the core of the night. Doors open at 6:00 PM, and the first hour is dedicated to hands on time at the demo tables before the program kicks off at 7:00 PM.

A demo is not a pitch. It is a working piece of technology, art, or research that attendees can see, touch, question, and remix. Prototypes, half baked experiments, research projects, student work, and professional tools all belong on the floor. The rule is simple: show the work, not the slide deck.

Who Demos Are For

We pick demos that move the room. Typical fits:

• Builders shipping something new in generative AI, agents, computer vision, voice, or robotics
• Artists and performers using AI as a creative medium
• Researchers and students from UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, Northeastern, and beyond
• Startups and indie hackers with a product to put in front of real users
• Community projects where AI is in service of a public good use case

If it plugs in, runs in a browser, lives on a headset, projects on a wall, or plays through a speaker, it can probably demo.

What to Expect on the Night

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Format

• Setup from 5:00 PM. Doors at 6:00 PM.
• Interactive demo stations run 6:00 to 7:00 PM and stay live through the mingle breaks.
• 125 to 225 people typically attend at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre.
• Photo and video documentation by the Vancouver AI media team. </aside>

Demos get a table, power, and a crowd that actually engages. Bring your own hardware, laptops, headphones, screens, signage, handouts, and stickers. Wifi is available but not guaranteed to be fast, so offline modes are a good idea.

A Sampling of Past Demos

The demo floor has hosted a wide range of work over the past two years. A few that defined the format:

• CompoVision by Lionel Ringenbach. A real time visual system using three computer vision cameras, TinyUI, and TouchDesigner. Objects placed in front of the cameras became prompts and generated live wall projections.
• Jarvis Vision Pro Cap by Prajwal. A wearable AI cap with integrated speaker, Wi Fi, Bluetooth, Raspberry Pi, and vision sensor. Live poetry generation and real time interaction.
• SAGE Project by Jericca Cleland. Leveraging video games for mental health support, incubated through South by Southwest and GTC.