GATHER | Web Summit Vancouver 2026 x Global Tech Conference

"We meet at a critical moment in the history of technology."

Physician/author Dr. Gabor Maté and Twitch political streamer Hasan Piker

Waterfront—(May 11 to 14, 2026) For the second year, Web Summit Vancouver's annual multi-day global conference, known as the "Olympics of Tech," gathered 20,235 attendees (up from 15,727 in 2025) spread across three levels of the Vancouver Convention Centre, once again hosted by the titular Dublin-based technology events company.

SCENE | Mitch and Murray and Kelli Ogmundson Do No 'Harm'

"Must be all the scissoring!"

Photo credit | Shimon Karmel

Fairview Slopes—Starring the appealing former Animal Control actress Kelli Ogmundson, Mitch and Murray Productions stages the North American premiere of British playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell's gripping but deeply unsettling one-woman play. Harm is a powerful solo performance that requires the proper stamina and emotional range to truly express our toxic culture of digital discomfort and warped social realities through a single person's experiences.

SCREEN | Lily James Gets Side–'Swiped' x TIFF 2025

"I don't want to sell people things they don't need."

Toronto International Film Festival

Lily James stars as tech (co-)founder Whitney Wolfe Herd in director Rachel Lee Goldenberg's telling of the true-ish, The Social Network-esque story of scandal and triumph behind both rival dating app giants, Tinder and Bumble. In the recent popular trend of the biographical business drama, Swiped tracks the dual rival apps' shared history of development, controversy, and success in the tech industry.

GATHER | Web Summit Vancouver 2025 x Global Tech Conference

"Vancouver is one of the world's most beautiful cities, with a flourishing tech community."

NBA champions Metta World Peace and JaVale McGee

Waterfront—(May 30, 2025) It sure felt like almost everyone was at the inaugural Web Summit Vancouver multi-day global conference, replacing Collision Conference's five-year run in Toronto. Long considered the "Olympics of Tech" and hosted by the Dublin-based technology events company, the gathering took over three levels of the Vancouver Convention Centre for as many days at the tail end of May.

GATHER | Baiting Ziwe x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I rarely get asked to do [racism] p*rn."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(March 13, 2025) Talented mononymous Nigerian-American late night comedian/interviewer and Black Friend author Ziwe (Fumudoh) brought her stylishly hilarious insights to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's accidentally hyper topical ongoing speaker series on the politics of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

SPOTLIGHT | Jia Tolentino x "Who's Afraid of Eating the Rich?" x UBC

"Capitalism is a machine for capturing descent."

Photo credit | Justin Man

UBC—(January 25, 2024) Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based culture critic and The New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino paid a visit to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of The Phil Lind Initiative's speaker series discussing political life through pop culture. Her half-hour talk, "Who's Afraid of Eating the Rich?" dissected our cultural obsession with the trend of popular entertainment dramatizing the sad depravity of being ultra-rich (think Succession and the like).

VIFF 2023 | ESPN on Public Shaming – 'I'm Just Here for the Riot'

"You have to kinda put yourself in the mindset of 2011."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2023—ESPN relives the infamous hockey riots that started after the Vancouver Canucks' devastating game seven home loss in the 2011 NHL Stanley Cup Final. Co-directed by local documentary filmmakers Kathleen S. Jayme (a two-time VIFF Audience Award-winner) and Asia Youngman, I'm Just Here for the Riot dissects public shaming through our city's disobedient history of disappointing hockey losses.

GENRE | 'Searching' for a 'Missing' Person on Screen(s)

"I'm not giving up on my mom."

Stage 6 Films / Screen Gems

From the same creative team behind the sharp 2018 "screenlife" mystery thriller Searching comes a standalone sequel, the appropriately titled Missing. Written and directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick, editors of the first film, the follow-up stars Storm Reid as a teenager left alone trying to find her missing mother (Nia Long) after she fails to return from a Colombian vacation with her shady new boyfriend (Ken Leung).

GENRE | 'Zola' Tells A Sordid Tale of Sex Trafficking

"P*ssy is worth thousands, bitch!"

A24 / VVS Films

Indie director Janicza Bravo adapts the gonzo, wild, and partially true story of strippers road tripping down to Florida, then getting in all kinds of trouble based on the 2015 real-life viral Twitter thread (148 tweets-long) recounted by A'Ziah "Zola" King, who also narrates the surreal film. The stylish Zola recreates the experience of telling a story through social media with internet language embedded into its filmmaking techniques.

WORDS | 'Trick Mirror' – Jia Tolentino Maps Out Our 'Self-Delusion'

"I'm capitulating to everything I hate." ¹

Photo credit | Andrew Jacobs

The New Yorker staff writer and culture critic Jia Tolentino, sometimes hailed as the voice of our current social media generation, has so eloquently captured the inherent lie and con behind both the internet and the greater culture's duelling perceptions or realities of millennial life. Her first book, a collection of nine varying but intrinsically linked essays called Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, is a thoughtful and measured retelling of her experiences covering a culture of self-deception, contemporary feminism, conflicted political identities, and modern life as a digital native.

GENRE | 'Searching' for John Cho on Screen(s)

"I know my daughter."

In Searching, everything plays out on computer screens and devices like Unfriended (also from producer Timur Bekmambetov) or that one episode of Modern Family. First-time director Aneesh Chaganty uses this gimmicky yet very contemporary storytelling trick to slowly unfold a family drama into a crackling mystery thriller starring John Cho as an increasingly worried father looking for his missing teenage daughter.

REEL | Aubrey Plaza Faves 'Ingrid Goes West'

"Tupac said there'd be days like this."

Comedian Aubrey Plaza (also a producer) continues her streak of twisted but strong, interesting roles in a variety of dark independent comedies. She and first-time director Matt Spicer frame Ingrid Goes West as a sharp, incisive look at the perils of social media and modern technological life, intertwined with issues of mental illness.

SPOTLIGHT | Later x Why Instagram Makes Me Hungry

Crafting a visual media strategy for your personal or professional brand can take a lot of hard work, time, and energy. Through my own self-titled blog, Tumblr journal YVArcade and of course, two Instagram accounts (@rickchung and @yvarcade) I’ve developed locally-focused lifestyle content centred around food, drink and dining culture in Vancouver.

WANDER | Worldwide InstaMeet 12 x A Pleasant Meet

Mount Pleasant—(October 3, 2015) As part of Instagram's Worldwide InstaMeet 12, local photographers/Instagram'ers Chris Wong and Lucy Yun hosted a little meetup photo walk dubbed "A Pleasant Meet" in the titular neighbourhood. The day's theme was portraits and highlighting new people (via #TodayIMet). We gathered at Juice Truck's shop before touring around the area while snapping shots of each other. (Student Brandon Wu hanging out on the roof.)

WEEKENDER | Food Cart Fest 2015 x Olympic Village

Olympic Village—(September 6, 2015) Over Labour Day weekend, I was invited by local tech startup Latergramme (the app that lets you schedule your Instagram posts) to speak at their Latergrammers Meetup with fellow Instagram'ers at the last Food Cart Fest of the summer.

Interview: Ovey Yeung Loves You Back.

"The things I want to do wouldn't have been possible without your support. Thank you."

Life After Getting Hit By A Car. You probably know Ovey Yeung. I do. (Facebook tells me we have seventy mutual friends in common.) She's a popular person and a regular social butterfly. On August 4th, 2014, she was the victim of a serious hit-and-run car accident. What followed was a roller coaster ride of emotions for her friends and family that played out all over social media and in the local news.

Vancouver Daze #96: Interview – Cheryl Hickey x ET Canada

Vancouver Daze, Volume 96: Interview with Cheryl Hickey from Entertainment Tonight Canada at Shaw TV studios in Coal Harbour on November 19, 2012. Published in Vancouver Is Awesome.



I met and interviewed the lovely (and very pregnant) Cheryl Hickey, host of ET Canada. She's in town to shoot a week of shows for their annual west coast tour. It was a fun, charming chat with some interesting takeaways.

The Social Medium: Branding x Social Media: The New PR

[SMA/SMN] Social Media: The New PR at The Network Hub in Gastown on October 30, 2012.



I spoke last night on behalf of the SFU Student Marketing Association and The Social Media Network on the topic of social media branding, along with Nicole Freeston from Magnolia Communications and Chris Mathieson (above). Here are my thoughts on PR and branding moving online and what I talked about. Enjoy.

TEDxVancouver 2012 x Confluence x Orpheum Theatre

2012 TEDxVancouver: Confluence conference at the Orpheum Theatre on October 21, 2012.



Two bodies of water joining together, "confluence". It's hard to believe this past weekend's independently organized and annual TEDxVancouver was my third already and fourth ever. Twenty-three hundred attendees packed the beautiful Orpheum, doubling last year's total.

From Hootsuite to Lunch x Deacon's Corner Diner x Gastown

Tweetup/HootUp lunch at Deacon's Corner diner on Main Street in Gastown on August 16, 2012.



A bunch of us made the  trip to the edge of Gastown bordering Chinatown and Railtown to meet up with a few of Hootsuite's worker owls to grab lunch. I was impressed and overwhelmed by the lengthy menu and hearty all-day breakfast service.