AI Keynote Speaker Kris Krüg

AI keynotes, workshops, and culture-shifting rooms

I help audiences meet AI with courage, taste, and usable imagination.

I am an AI keynote speaker, creative technologist, photographer, and community builder. My talks mix live demos, field stories, creative rebellion, practical workflows, and the hard questions about power, taste, trust, memory, and what we refuse to automate.

The goal is not hype. The goal is a room full of people who leave with better instincts, stronger language, and a concrete sense of what to try next.

Kris Krug speaking on stage at LaSalle College Vancouver
  • World AI Film Festival
  • CreativeMornings Vancouver
  • Whistler Institute
  • LaSalle College Vancouver
  • ChannelNext
  • Bass Coast Brain Stage
  • CBC Radio Early Edition
  • Horizons by Compass Datacenters
  • Podcast guest appearances
  • Event host / emcee
  • SXSW Interactive

Bring me in when the room needs courage, clarity, and a little voltage.

I speak to leaders, creators, students, associations, festivals, cultural organizations, and community builders who know AI is already changing the ground under their feet.

My sweet spot is the space between creative practice, civic responsibility, community organizing, and hands-on AI adoption. I can make the future feel less like a compliance memo and more like a set of choices people can actually make.

Common formats

  • 45-60 minute keynote
  • Keynote plus moderated Q&A
  • Half-day AI mindset workshop
  • Executive or board briefing
  • Creative team working session
  • Podcast, broadcast, or video guest
  • Host, emcee, or moderator
AI adoptionPractical demos, workflows, and shared language.
Creative cultureAgency, taste, authorship, and artistic rebellion.
Responsible techTrust, governance, consent, and public-interest AI.

Keynotes

High-energy, story-rich talks for conferences, festivals, associations, colleges, and leadership audiences.

Book a keynote

Workshops and custom trainings

Hands-on AI mindset sessions, practical workflows, team experiments, and creative implementation support.

Explore services

Podcast and video guesting

Big-production interviews, niche shows, panel conversations, and fast-moving AI explainers with a human pulse.

Podcast EPK

Hosting, emcee, and moderation

Room energy, connective tissue, speaker bridges, sharp questions, and enough live signal to keep an audience with you.

Ask about hosting

Signature keynote topics

These are modular talks. Each one can become a keynote, a keynote plus workshop, or a custom session for your audience.

Both Hands Full keynote portal graphic
AI and creativity

Both Hands Full

For filmmakers, artists, and creative leaders trying to stay human while AI gets very good at making everything.

Visit the portal

Punk Rock AI CreativeMornings Vancouver keynote banner
Creative rebellion

Punk Rock AI

Agency, taste, sovereignty, and making culture with the tools without becoming a content machine.

Visit the portal

Developing an AI Mindset keynote graphic with Guy Kawasaki
Teams and leaders

Developing an AI Mindset

A practical keynote/workshop for teams that need confidence, shared language, and a humane starting point.

Visit the portal

Kris Krug speaking at a creative AI keynote
Archives and memory

Compost AI

Turn archives, stories, decisions, and relationships into sovereign creative soil instead of extractive data exhaust.

Ask about this talk

Kris Krug on stage at a Vancouver AI Community Meetup
Leadership

Leadership After the AI Point of No Return

For organizations that need to ship useful experiments while holding the line on trust, safety, and consent.

Ask about this talk

Kris Krug presenting about AI, taste, and creativity
Human judgment

Power, Taste, and Trust

How human judgment stays visible when AI becomes the layer nobody notices but everyone depends on.

Ask about this talk

Watch selected talks

A few useful proof points from the recent speaking archive: graduation rooms, festival brain stages, channel leadership audiences, and public-interest AI conversations.

LaSalle College Vancouver

Both Hands Full: What Creatives Actually Need to Know About AI

A graduation keynote about judgment, taste, and creative survival in the AI era.

Read the companion post

Bass Coast Brain Stage

Dear AI, Before We Go Any Further… We Need To Talk About Your Soul

Festival-stage AI ethics, culture, intimacy, weirdness, and what we owe each other.

ChannelNext

The Future of Humanity: AI Keynote on Chaos & Creativity

A strategy-forward talk for technology leaders trying to navigate the AI shift without losing the human plot.

Whistler Institute

Inside Vancouver’s AI Boom (and why it matters)

A long-form public conversation about Vancouver’s AI ecosystem, civic responsibility, and what this moment asks of us.

Keynote portals

Some talks become more than a stage slot. I rebuild them as standalone websites with scripts, exercises, resources, prompts, and tools people can use after the room empties.

Both Hands Full portal preview

Both Hands Full

World AI Film Festival edition for filmmakers working through synthetic media, authorship, taste, and responsibility.

Punk Rock AI portal preview

Punk Rock AI

A CreativeMornings Vancouver keynote rebuilt as a maker-first portal for human agency in the AI age.

Developing an AI Mindset portal preview

Developing an AI Mindset

A foundational AI adoption resource for teams that need practical language and a humane starting point.

Broadcast and recurring rooms

I do not only parachute into conferences. I also host, convene, interview, explain, and keep showing up in recurring public rooms where people are trying to understand AI in real time.

The CBC Radio Early Edition AI Sandbox segments became a useful public-facing version of that work: grounded explanations, human stories, and a little productive mischief for normal people trying to make sense of the machine age.

CBC AI Sandbox with Kris Krug graphic

CBC Radio Early Edition

AI Sandbox brought accessible, locally grounded AI conversations to a mainstream broadcast audience.

Podcasts, interviews, hosting, and emcee work

Not every high-impact room is a keynote. I also show up as a guest on podcasts and video shows, host or emcee events, moderate messy conversations, and help producers make AI, creativity, and community feel human instead of abstract.

Produced interview series

Horizons: Exploring AI Models

A polished Horizons by Compass Datacenters series on AI, creativity, workflows, human-computer interaction, and practical use of generative tools.

Watch the Horizons series

Featured appearance

We Trained AI on Stolen Work… And I’m More Creative Than Ever

A public conversation from Vancouver AI about holding the tension: the tools are compromised, powerful, weird, and still changing what creative people can do.

Podcast guest

I can bring high-signal, story-rich conversation to big-production interview shows, niche creator podcasts, and video series about AI, creativity, photography, community, ethics, media, and the future of work.

Podcast guesting EPK

Host / emcee / moderator

I can shape the room, keep the energy alive, connect speakers to the audience, and make a complex program feel coherent without turning it into corporate oatmeal.

Ask about hosting

Custom training

For teams that need more than inspiration: hands-on AI workflows, practical experiments, creative direction, and a shared language people can use the next morning.

Explore services

Stage energy

Recent rooms include polished keynotes, raw festival talks, meetup stages, student audiences, and civic conversations. The throughline is live presence plus practical translation.

Kris Krug speaking at LaSalle College Vancouver
LaSalle College Vancouver graduation keynote.
CreativeMornings Vancouver Punk Rock AI keynote visual
CreativeMornings Vancouver, rebuilt as Punk Rock AI.
Kris Krug hosting a Vancouver AI Community Meetup
Vancouver AI Community Meetup stage work.
Vancouver AI Community Meetup visual
Recurring AI community rooms and public learning.

Speaker proof

Kris helped shift how my design students see their future. In one hour, he demo’d building client prototypes in real-time, turned lectures into podcasts, and showed them how to be design orchestrators, not pixel pushers.

Jai Djwa

Kris’s talk and event design felt like a masterclass in community organizing.

Ed Kennedy

Visceral, real, and incredibly current. Truly authentic and up to date.

Audience feedback

Past stages and rooms

  • World AI Film Festival, Sao Paulo
  • CreativeMornings Vancouver
  • LaSalle College Vancouver
  • Bass Coast Brain Stage
  • ChannelNext
  • Whistler Institute
  • CBC Radio Early Edition
  • Horizons by Compass Datacenters
  • Podcast and video guest appearances
  • Host, emcee, and moderator roles
  • BC + AI Ecosystem events
  • Vancouver AI Community Meetup
  • Social Media Camp Victoria
  • TEDx Shanghai
  • South by Southwest Interactive
  • UN Global Youth Summit on HIV
  • Emily Carr University
  • Vancouver Institute of Media Arts
  • WebVisions
  • Gnomedex
  • PechaKucha Night Vancouver
  • Hollyhock Summer Gathering
  • Private executive AI sessions

Field notes and deeper artifacts

The best talks keep producing artifacts after the applause: transcripts, scripts, portals, companion essays, prompts, and follow-up resources.

Both Hands Full

Standalone portal for the World AI Film Festival keynote and related creative AI resources.

Punk Rock AI

CreativeMornings Vancouver keynote portal about AI, culture, and agency.

Book Kris for a keynote, workshop, podcast, or hosted event

If your audience needs a keynote, workshop, training, podcast guest, moderator, host, or emcee who can make AI feel practical, alive, and culturally literate, let’s talk. I can tailor the format for creative teams, leadership audiences, associations, festivals, schools, and community networks.