The WiFi was great. That's not why I came.
Your BitBakery update for May 2026
I’m still processing the last week.
Over the seven days, I found myself at a tech conference with over 20,000 people and an event focused on one of the most important health issues of our time.
(I also went to a wedding filled with familiar faces I hadn’t seen in years.)
Here’s what stuck out to me—at these events, technology was never the headline. People were.
That contrast has been sitting with me ever since.
Spending time with 20,000 friends at Web Summit
Web Summit Vancouver wrapped up last week. The global conference drew more than 20,000 attendees from over 100 countries to the Vancouver Convention Centre. It was a 29% jump from its inaugural year.
The stages were full of conversations about AI infrastructure, agentic systems, and the future of software. Impressive, necessary stuff.
But what I’ll remember most wasn’t a keynote. It was the hallway conversations. The chance encounters over coffee. The moment someone handed me a business card and said, “I’ve been thinking about exactly the same problem.”
One line from the summit captured it well: “Technology moves at the speed of innovation and citizens move at the speed of trust.”
We build all of this—the tools, the platforms, the agents—but trust still travels at a human pace. And trust is built between people, not models.
Connecting families to farmers
In April, we were proud to be part of the launch of the ON Farm Fun app, developed for Agritourism Ontario.
On the surface, it’s a beautiful, functional mobile app. ON Farm Fun is an all-in-one platform connecting people with the more than 800 Ontario agritourism operators. These farms cover 79 products and 61 on-farm activities, from seasonal pick-your-own produce and farm tours to seasonal festivals and family-friendly attractions.
Underneath it all, the app works as a connector.
As Agritourism Ontario CEO Kevin Vallier put it, the app “helps bridge the gap between urban and rural communities” and makes it easier for people to experience where their food comes from and support local farms.
We built the technology. But the magic is in what it enables. Families getting off their screens and into a pumpkin patch, kids learning where food actually comes from, and farmers opening their gates to a new generation of visitors. That’s community. Software just made it easier to find.
Old connections renewed
I also attended a wedding this past weekend and found myself surrounded by University of Waterloo Velocity founders I had met more than a decade ago. Some I’d stayed in close touch with. Most I hadn’t. At least not regularly.
It was one of those moments that reminds you how much the relationships you’ve built matter, even when life moves you apart. The connections formed at Velocity ten, twelve, fifteen years ago hadn’t faded—they’d just been waiting.
Seeing how those early communities had grown, shifted, and strengthened was genuinely inspiring.
And I couldn’t help but think about how many of those moments are at risk of disappearing in a world where AI handles more and more of the interactions that used to draw us together.
When gathering itself is the medicine
As luck would have it, the Women’s Brain Health Initiative (WBHI) had an event in Vancouver while I was out west. Its sold-out From Her Lips to Our Ears luncheon at Stanley Park Pavilion in Vancouver featured actress and Alzheimer’s advocate Christina Chang sharing her personal story of caring for her mother through the disease.
WBHI identifies six pillars of brain health that support cognitive vitality as we age and reduce the risk of dementia.
Nearly two-thirds of people with Alzheimer’s are women, and by 2050, it’s estimated that roughly 60% of the more than 1.7 million Canadians expected to be living with dementia will be women. The science behind events like From Her Lips to Our Ears isn’t just about raising awareness—it’s about delivering one of the actual interventions.
Gathering. Talking. Being together.
The thread that runs through all of it
Here’s what a week of being with people reminded me:
AI is accelerating fast. Agents will handle more of our tasks, our communications, maybe even our decisions. Some of that is genuinely exciting. Some of it should give us pause.
Because the things that matter most—trust, belonging, inspiration, care—don’t scale the same way software does. They require presence. They require showing up.
The best technology we build at BitBakery isn’t the kind that replaces human connection. It’s the kind that creates the conditions for it.
If I can help you think about what that looks like for your business or your users, I’m always available for a call.
— Wes