This page preserves the original full-week ambition as a planning atlas for the site we launch through the 2026 weekend: track leads own full days, audiences enter through the door that matters to them, and Vancouver becomes the festival campus.
6 track-days
City campus
Partner venues
2027 launch
The weeklong model gives each audience its own day while still making the whole thing feel like one festival. In 2026, it appears as a reveal and partner-building surface, not the active production model.
Teachers, students, and the classroom reimagined.
How is AI changing how we learn, teach, and think? Education Day brings together teachers, administrators, youth, and edtech builders for a working day of honest conversation about what's shifting in our schools. Plus a Robot Club youth showcase that will make you optimistic again.
What AI means for medicine, research, and human health.
From drug discovery to clinical decision support to patient-facing tools — AI is already reshaping healthcare. Life Sciences Day is where clinicians, researchers, patients, and builders meet to talk about what's real, what's hype, and what's next.
Data for good, data for work, data as craft. Wednesday's big tent.
Wednesday is the festival's data day. Data for Good showcase talks and DAMA-Vancouver governance sessions run alongside the Data Storytelling Hackathon presentations (Rival Technologies, $5K prize). The evening is the Vancouver AI Meetup's Data for Good takeover edition, with hackathon winners announced live.
The questions nobody else is asking.
What is intelligence? What is consciousness? What does it mean that machines can now seem to reason? MAC Day brings philosophers, neuroscientists, AI researchers, and curious minds together for the conversations that matter most — and an evening of DEFRAG creative AI.
A design jam, not a panel discussion.
Ethics Day is a working design jam, not a lecture. Policymakers in the room with community. Researchers shoulder-to-shoulder with impacted workers. We're building frameworks together, not preaching them. Artist Reception in the evening to decompress.
Where AI meets cinema. Closing night anchor.
The closing night of the festival and the second annual BC + AI Film Festival. Short films, feature screenings, filmmaker Q&As, and the Squatchies Awards to celebrate the year's best AI work across the BC community.
These day labels remain as 2027 planning placeholders. They should not be read as the contracted 2026 public schedule.
| Day | Morning | Afternoon | Evening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | — | — | Opening Party |
| Day 1 | Education + Youth | Education + Youth | Networking |
| Day 2 | Life Sciences | Life Sciences | DEFRAG #1 (2027 plan) |
| Day 3 | Data Nerds + Hackathon | Data for Good Talks | Meetup ★ |
| Day 4 | MAC Day | MAC Workshop | DEFRAG #2 (2027 plan) |
| Day 5 | AI Ethical Futures Lab | Ethics Design Jam | Artist Reception |
| Day 6 | Film Festival | Film Festival | Squatchies + Closing |
Opening 2027 placeholder
Opening Party
Day 2 2027 placeholder
DEFRAG Creative AI #1 (2027 plan)
Day 3 2027 placeholder
Vancouver AI Meetup -- Data for Good Takeover
Day 4 2027 placeholder
DEFRAG Creative AI #2 (2027 plan)