This is adapted from the keynote Sev Geraskin and I delivered at the Data Administration Management Association (DAMA) Annual Conference on October 22, 2024. The event brought together nonprofits, data professionals, and AI builders to talk about artificial intelligence for public good. We told them about the organic growth of BC + AI over 22 months, Sev demonstrated his AGI data interfaces, and we talked about the infrastructure crisis that just hit BC. Here's the story.
This week I got to tell a story that's never been told before, mainly because it just happened. Three months ago we became a nonprofit society. Twenty-two months ago we were hosting our first meetup in my studio. Three years ago I was on a farm on Galiano Island having my mind completely blown apart by Midjourney.
And yesterday, literally yesterday, Minister Adrian Dix announced that BC is limiting AI data centers to 100 megawatts every two years while spending $6 billion on a power line for the mining industry.
British Columbia proposes new power rules for AI, data centres, prioritizes jobs
Premier David Eby’s response to criticism? "If voters don't like it, they can vote me out next year."
No consultation. No industry input. Just done.
So let me tell you how we got here and why this matters more than you think.
I need to back up to 2017 first. Got absolutely destroyed by a Bitcoin hack that year. Not just financially, it broke my relationship with the internet. I'd been living this pretty public digital life, and suddenly I was like, nope, I'm out. Retreated to Galiano Island. Started farming. Withdrew.
Fast forward to mid-pandemic. Friend comes to visit, shows me Midjourney. Within five minutes my mind is set ablaze. I start sleeping less. Can't stop thinking about what this means for creative industries, for work, for everything.
And here's the weird part: I feel this pull back to the digital world, but I'm not ready to just throw myself into Discord channels that feel like hacker dens. So I spin up my own Discord server that first day, invite like 200 friends from web one and web two, and we all start exploring together. Going down rabbit holes. Sharing learnings. True grassroots collaboration.
That was my re-entry point. That's where this starts.
I moved back to Vancouver, started getting booked for AI talks, got into the Google AI Lab accelerator in September 2023. Took it seriously, built out The AI Upgrade Academy w/ Peter Bittner, we've been doing six-week AI certifications for different sectors for two years now.
But I was also going to every AI event I could find, looking for real-life community that felt like that Discord energy. And I kept finding very specific pockets. LangChain users group, UBC AI security, various technical meetups. All good. All necessary.
The AI Upgrade – Where Professionals Harness AI Together
But nobody was holding both things at once: the critical questioning AND the optimistic building. The "this is amazing" and "this is dangerous" in the same conversation without people thinking you're confused.
That philosophical tension felt essential. Still does.
So we started hosting meetups in my studio. Eighty people showed up to the first one. Now we're 22 months in, about 250 people each time, at the HR MacMillan Space Centre. And what's happened isn't just growth, it's emergence.
Subgroups have sprung up organically. Surrey AI and other AI meetups, people taking the spirit and adapting it for their communities. And then topical groups that just go deep.