Inside BC’s Growing Grassroots AI Ecosystem: How Vancouver’s AI Community Grew Into Something Beautiful. 2,400 participants, 13 meetups, and the birth of a provincial AI innovation community association that puts people before profit
It’s a peculiar experience to see yourself written about in the third person. As co-author of our recently published research in BC Studies Journal, “Building a Grass Roots AI Community of Practice” and simultaneously its subject, I’ve found myself in an unusual meta-position—documenting a community movement while actively building it.
This reflection begins with the introduction of a Vancouver-centric AI community as a use case to explore what we might learn about the capacity of generative AI to support community building
When Place Matters in a Placeless World
Our research challenges one of the most pervasive myths in AI discourse: the notion that technology impacts all places uniformly. This “placeless narrative” imagines AI as a universal force landing identically in Vancouver, San Francisco, or Mumbai—ignoring the critical variances in infrastructure, culture, and community that shape technology adoption.
Drawing on Heraclitus’ ancient wisdom that “you cannot step into the same river twice,” we recognized that our Vancouver AI community had to be rooted in local context. What works in Silicon Valley won’t necessarily translate to East Van. As Indigenous scholars Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson argue through their concept of “grounded normativity,” knowledge isn’t abstract or universal but “deeply rooted in place and context.”
This isn’t academic posturing—it’s the foundational understanding that allowed our community to flourish. As our research states, most “media reports about AI are often placeless, due to universalizing narratives and an underlying assumption of digital homogeneity.” We rejected that assumption from day one.
The Vancouver AI Experiment: Raw Numbers
What began as a handful of curious minds has exploded into something remarkable. Throughout 2024, we’ve hosted 13 monthly meetups with over 2,000 total attendees. Our gatherings draw 120-250 people, packing venues from my old Future Proof Creative headquarters at the Vancouver Biennale to the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre.
But the magic isn’t in attendance figures—it’s in the wild diversity of who shows up. Our meetups bring together “entrepreneurs, researchers, teachers, start-ups, representatives from medium and large organizations, visual artists, poets, musicians, fashionistas, designers, 3-D artists, programmers, dancers, foodies, accountants, lawyers, project managers, clothing designers, and educational leadership.” This cross-pollination creates an energy you won’t find in siloed tech meetups or academic conferences.
The Fractal Growth Pattern
What wasn’t captured in our academic article (submitted before it happened) is how this single community has fractured into a beautiful array of specialized groups. We’ve seen the organic emergence of Surrey AI, Womxn’s AI, Squamish AI, and Mind AI & Consciousness meetups—all inspired by the original model but adapted to specific contexts and interests.
This wasn’t planned or orchestrated. It happened naturally as participants recognized the value of our approach and adapted it to their own communities. The result? A de facto grassroots BC+AI ecosystem emerging from below, not imposed from above by industry initiatives or corporate takeover.
The Experimental Laboratory
The projects emerging from our community would make William Gibson proud. One participant created an experimental beef bourguignon by analyzing recipes from six different LLMs. Another hacked a VR headset to combine computer vision with ChatGPT’s API to “read the room” with AI-generated commentary.
We’ve witnessed “unusual and ritualistic dance performances involving experiments with AI,” poetry performances with live generative video using TouchDesigner and ComfyUI, and geo-mapped sonic tours triggered by your physical location around event sites.
These aren’t polished demos aimed at investors—they’re messy, weird experiments happening at the intersection of art, technology, and human experience. And they’re possible because our community lowers the barriers between disciplines that typically don’t intermingle.
The Community Playbook: What Actually Works
Our research identified several key factors driving our community’s success:
- Regular monthly gatherings create rhythm and expectation, allowing “community members to update each other on the state of their experiments and how their thinking about the technology is changing.”
- Obsessive documentation through photos, videos, and blogging creates artifacts that both celebrate achievements and attract new participants.
- Open-mic sharing breaks down hierarchies and “nurtures potential collaborations” across unlikely pairings of disciplines and expertise levels.
- Group Chat bridges the gap between physical gatherings, creating continuous connection where “ideas are circulated, experiments shared, and valuable insights offered.”
- Physical space dedication provides a reliable home base that participants can count on, month after month.
- Zero gatekeeping generates an atmosphere of “friendliness and openness appealing to individuals of all backgrounds and ages.”
Embracing The Full Spectrum
One of our community’s most valuable characteristics is its ideological diversity. We don’t run an AI cheerleading squad; we make space for critical voices alongside enthusiastic adopters.
Our meetups include people building with public generative AI models alongside others who exclusively use private, narrow AI systems due to concerns about “inherent biases, ethical violations, unauthorized use of content, and the unsustainable energy consumption” of large language models.
This tension isn’t hidden away—it’s deliberately surfaced. The community “serves as a platform for critical discussion, debate, and collaborative problem solving” where people develop guidelines for responsible AI use and share strategies for mitigating bias.
What Comes Next
While our academic paper acknowledges it’s “too early to definitively state that generative AI is fostering long-lasting Communities of Practice,” the early indicators are promising. As our ecosystem expands geographically across British Columbia, we’re watching how these communities maintain their local specificity while building interconnections.
The most fascinating insight may be that generative AI functions as “a conversational catalyst for communities that are not necessarily associated with one another.” While big institutions move at “glacial” speed trying to develop AI policies and strategies, our grassroots community moves at the speed of curiosity—experimenting, failing, learning, and building connections that transcend traditional boundaries.
That’s the real innovation happening in Vancouver—not just new applications of technology, but new ways of coming together around technology. It’s messy, imperfect, and profoundly human. And that’s precisely the point.
Discover more from Kris Krüg | Generative AI Tools & Techniques
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