FuckUpNights YYC launched in 2019, founded by Shahr Smed and Amanda Ovaici—two friends who were tired of hearing only polished success stories. They wanted the real conversations, the messy middle, the missteps and the lessons. Fast forward to today, the platform has evolved into a powerful local community in Calgary, where founders, creators, and professionals gather to share the failures that shaped them—not as cautionary tales, but as catalysts for growth.
This speaker series challenges the outdated notion that failure is something to hide. Instead, it reframes it as an essential ingredient in innovation and leadership.
FuckUp Nights YYC challenges the outdated notion that failure is something to conceal. Instead, it positions failure as a critical component of innovation, strategic growth, and effective leadership. By normalizing setbacks, the platform fosters an environment where entrepreneurs and professionals can extract meaningful insight, accelerate learning, and build more resilient, enduring organizations.
The stage isn’t about perfection. It’s about honesty.
What to Expect at a Fuckup Nights Event
A beautiful venue , catered food and drinks
A curated networking scene for 200 guests
Calgary leaders sharing one defining failure moment
Fast-paced 7–10 minute talks with storytelling
A community built on connection, conversation & fun
@FuckupNightsYYC
April 30, 2026
Tickets available on Showpass
MEET our speakers
amanda hamilton
amanda hamilton design
Tenacious, vibrant, and unapologetically bold, Amanda Hamilton is an award-winning creative entrepreneur and interior designer based in Calgary, AB. She is the founder and creative director of Amanda Hamilton Interior Design and Three Foot Nothing Construction, where her unorthodox approach to design and business has made her one of Canada’s most sought-after creative voices, featured in numerous national publications.
Her accolades include Western Living’s Interior Designer of the Year (2021), WXN Top 100 Most Powerful Women of Canada (2020), Calgary Influential Women in Business Emerging Leader Award (2020), Women of Inspiration Trailblazer Award (2019), AWE Entrepreneurship Upsurge Award (2018), and Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 (2017).
Amanda holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Interior Design from Mount Royal University, is NCIDQ certified, and a LEED Accredited Professional. In 2016, she established an annual scholarship through her alma mater to support design exploration and education.
Passionate about elevating entrepreneurial voices and sharing the realities behind success, Amanda hosts collaborative initiatives including Hard Bar Friday, the After Hours Podcast, and the community-driven Office Hours: Open Source Learning. Her Amazon bestselling memoir, Not That Likeable: And Other Stories I Told Myself, was released in October 2022.
chris jones
eos worldwide
Chris Jones knows exactly what it feels like when things fall apart because he has lived it, rebuilt from it, and kept going anyway.
Across more than 30 years of entrepreneurship and six companies, Chris has experienced the full spectrum of business ownership, from breakout success to hard pivots, crushing setbacks, and seasons where one crisis seemed to roll directly into the next. More than once, he faced moments where walking away would have been easier and had every reason to quit.
He didn’t.
Instead, Chris built a reputation for getting back up relentlessly. That mindset became the foundation of his best selling book, Relentless AF, and reshaped how he builds businesses and approaches leadership and failure.
Today, Chris is an Expert EOS Implementer and growth coach helping founders and leadership teams turn chaos into clarity, align vision with execution, and build companies that create real freedom, not just revenue. Known for his direct approach and hard earned perspective, he helps entrepreneurs confront the uncomfortable truths that often stand between struggle and scale.
Chris believes something many entrepreneurs struggle to accept. Failure is not the opposite of success. It is often the prerequisite.
At Fuckup Nights, Chris is pulling back the curtain on the mistakes, the miscalculations, and the hard lessons that changed everything, and why the failures we try hardest to avoid are often the ones that move us forward the most.
graeme edge
energy disruptors & scaleblaze
Graeme Edge is a Scottish-born entrepreneur who has built companies the hard way, through mistakes, near misses, sleepless nights, and more than a few moments of self-doubt.
He is best known as a co-founder of Energy Disruptors, a global platform and summit born in Calgary that set out to challenge how the world thinks and talks about energy, climate, and innovation. What began as a risky idea outside the mainstream has grown into one of the most unconventional business and leadership gatherings in the world, often described as the Burning Man of the corporate world or Coachella for geeks.
Along the way, Graeme has worked alongside world-class thinkers and leaders, but his journey has never been linear, safe, or tidy. Like most founders, he has navigated failure, conflict, hard decisions, broken partnerships, and moments where walking away would have been easier.
Beyond Energy Disruptors, Graeme is the founder of ScaleBlaze, an executive search firm helping founders and scale-ups grow across energy, climate, and industrial innovation, many of whom are living through their own version of the messy middle.
At Fuck Up Nights YYC, Graeme isn’t here to talk about polished success stories. He’s here to share what really happens behind the scenes when you bet on yourself, and what you learn when things don’t go according to plan.
Phil robertson & sebastian sztabzyb
Phil & sebastian Coffee roasters
Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founded P&S in 2007 in Calgary, Canada, driven by a shared obsession with building better coffee from seed to cup. With an engineering mindset and relentless curiosity, Phil designed the company’s one-of-a-kind roasting machine and developed proprietary systems that power nearly every aspect of the business. From roasting operations to technology, strategy, and growth. Equal parts builder and innovator, he continues to push the boundaries of quality and craftsmanship while sourcing coffee directly at origin across Africa.
Working alongside him, Sebastian brings operational precision and entrepreneurial vision to the company’s evolution. Leading café operations, managing company finances, and traveling throughout Central and South America to source exceptional green coffee, Sebastian balances hands-on leadership with long-term strategy, helping scale P&S into a respected name in specialty coffee.
Together, they’ve built more than a coffee company, they’ve built a culture rooted in experimentation, resilience, and constant improvement. From factory floors to global sourcing trips, their journey has been shaped by risk, reinvention, and lessons learned the hard way, proving that real success isn’t built on perfection, but on persistence, partnership, and the courage to keep going when things didn’t go as planned.
