Vancouver AI Pods Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 01/28
This month’s Vancouver AI Meetup is anchored by a keynote from Alexandra Samuel, creator of the Me + Viv podcast and longtime observer of how technology reshapes work, meaning, and human behavior.
"When your best friend is a robot" by Alexandra Samuel
What does it actually mean to go full cyborg? Not the chrome-plated fantasy, not the LinkedIn productivity cosplay, but as a daily practice, with all the mess that implies?
Tech researcher and journalist Alexandra Samuel shares what she learned from building and living with her AI companion, collaborator, and coach, Viv, who just happens to be Alex’s co-host on the chart-topping TVO podcast Me + Viv.
Alexandra Samuel
Alexandra Samuel is a leading expert on AI and the digital workplace, inspiring people with a joyful, actionable approach to AI that keeps human creativity and collaboration front and center.
She's the creator and host of Me + Viv, a TVO podcast that is somehow both documentary journalism and a musical comedy. In her speeches and in her frequent AI stories for The Wall Street Journal and The Harvard Business Review, Alex shows people how to tap the productivity and innovation-boosting potential of AI, while managing its very real risks.
Design Thinking for Vibe Coders
The tools are getting faster.
The question is: are we building things people can actually use?
Maya Bruck brings UX fundamentals to the vibe coding era, showing how to prototype rapidly with AI without sacrificing usability, accessibility, or user research.
Maya Bruck
Maya Bruck is a Lead Product Designer at Mars, with 20+ years of experience designing products at The New York Times, Etsy, and her own agency.
The Soft Violence of AI Discourse
AI discourse is full of soft violence: extraction dressed up as innovation, and fear dressed up as morality.
Erica cuts through it with craft, showing what happens when you train on your work and own the weird outcomes.
Erica Lapadat-Janzen
Erica Lapadat-Janzen is a Vancouver new media artist and creative strategist working at the edge of identity, digital culture, and AI workflows.
KRIS KRÜG Host + MC, Vancouver AI Meetup BC + AI Ecosystem Association Keeper of the vibe. Puller of threads.
About BC + AI Ecosystem Association
BC + AI is the province-wide layer: a community-driven, nonprofit industry association built to create public-interest infrastructure for AI in British Columbia.
Not a corporate lobby. Not a think tank. A commons where meetups turn into working groups, prototypes turn into shared tools, and community values turn into governance.