BCNET has partnered with Wavefront, the national commercialization centre supporting the growth of Canada's wireless companies, enabling technology collaboration between industry and academia to accelerate the commercialization of wireless innovation. 

Advanced Network Testing Environment

FusionPipe, a resident in Wavefront's accelerator program, uses BCNET's high-speed research network for testing and validating their software and setting up a hybrid cloud. They required an advanced network-testing environment to undertake and endorse their research and collaborate with researchers at SFU. Their core product, ThoriumCloud, delivers virtual desktops and secure Intranet access to tablets and smartphones. 

"Through Wavefront's access to BCNET's advanced research network we were able to collaborate with researchers at SFU and quickly move from testing to prototyping," says Peter Luong, Fusion Pipe's CEO. "The high-speed network provides a direct link to transmit large amounts of data to SFU Burnaby where researchers were developing and testing cloud-based disaster recovery solutions using our technology. We're in the early days of our collaboration project with SFU that is building on the advancements of cloud computing and network virtualization. This project will put us at the centre of the future of cloud-computing - a pretty cool place to be."

Low-Cost Networks Bridging Industry and Academia

The cooperation between BCNET and Wavefront is accelerating the commercialization of innovation by bridging low-cost networks between research and industry. Wavefront connects to BCNET's high-capacity network through its Vancouver Transit Exchange, a network services exchange. The Exchange is a network-neutral marketplace that directly interconnects Wavefront through a central router to over 35 research universities and institutes in Vancouver.

Unlimited bandwidth to Academia

Linking to BCNET's Exchange enables wireless start-up organizations at Wavefront with a competitive advantage by providing unlimited bandwidth for transmitting data freely and efficiently with Vancouver's research universities and institutes by bypassing commercial network service providers.

"BCNET can help to foster innovation by enabling low-cost network peering connections between researchers and small and medium sized private enterprises through our Transit Exchanges located in British Columbia," says Michael Hrybyk, president and CEO, BCNET. "Our Exchange offers leading-edge technology that is designed to optimize data traffic for our higher education members, as well as foster community and economic development."

Wavefront received funding through CANARIE's DAIR program, the Digital Accelerator for Research and Innovation, to provision a direct fibre optic network connection between Wavefront's facilities and the BCNET Transit Exchange located at Harbour Centre in Vancouver. The Exchange reduces network costs through peering connections and provides low-cost access to nine commercial Internet service providers.   

"Wavefront and BCNET's partnership provides a robust cloud-based development environment for FusionPipe's technology, speeding up their commercialization - which is what we're here to do," said Alan Swain, VP Technology and Operations at Wavefront.

"Presenting BitNapkin at the conference was a great opportunity to introduce our application to potential beta testers, and network with 500 IT experts in industry and academia" -Vera Lukman, first place winner of BCNET Digital Media Challenge 2012.

Vera Lukman is the winner of the BCNET Digital Media Challenge, a student competition that took place at the BCNET & HPCS Conference on May 1, 2012. Lukman and three student contenders competed for audience votes during a 90-minute plenary session, where they had 15-minutes to present their projects. The audience chose Lukman as the winner of the competition for a $1000 award.

Lukman's project, BitNapkin, is an innovative mobile drawing application that enables users to collaborate anywhere, both visually and verbally, in really real time.

Watch the demo.

"Presenting BitNapkin at the conference was a great opportunity to introduce our application to potential beta testers, and network with 500 IT experts in industry and academia," says Lukman. "The Challenge was a fantastic learning experience about how to present in an easy to understand, simple and concise manner. I enjoyed demonstrating a prototype of BitNapkin, to show how it enables users to collaborate in really, real time through integrated drawing and voice communication."

The Digital Media Challenge is designed to recognize and award students for technology innovation and is open to higher education students from BCNET member institutions. They participate for cash awards and high profile speaking opportunities at the BCNET annual information technology conference for higher education and research. The competition seeks innovative and creative technology applications that are distributed or shared over a network and the project must be part of the students' coursework.

Watch Vera Lukman's Presentation at the BCNET & HPCS Conference

Awards were also presented to three semi-finalists who competed at the Digital Media Challenge during the conference.

Second Place

In second place, conference attendees voted in favour of PhD student, Mahdi Tayarani Najaran, from University of British Columbia's Computer Science Department. He received $500 for TracerMaps, Distributed Framework for Adaptive Quality in Interactive Games. Watch the demo

Third Place

The third place prize of $500 was awarded to Winnie Chung, the team leader for INAMOMENT, an interactive and collaborative performance combining dynamic movements with motion tracking and social media. Chung is the project team lead for INAMOMENT representing students from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University. Watch the demo.

Fourth Place

In fourth place, Kieran Coulter took home $500 for SoundSphere an application that is designed to provide an immersive sound and gaming experience. Coulter is an undergraduate student from Computer Science at the University of British Columbia.
Donald Acton, chair of the Digital Media Challenge and a senior instructor of Computer Science at University of British Columbia introduced the competitors at the conference. Watch the demo.

"The competition helps students to think about the relevance of digital media technology to a wider community and also experience presenting their project in a meaningful way to a diverse audience."

Donald and eight other digital media experts from higher education selected the semi-finalists at a private all-day adjudication day.

Voting for the competition was open to conference delegates who are IT professionals and researchers from higher education institutions across Canada, as well as high tech industry professionals. Over 200 people watched the presentations as well as the live streamed webcast. The audience was asked to vote through text, online or paper ballots.

Nominations for the CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) Board of Directors Election are currently underway. The CIRA Board of Directors has a unique role to play in setting policy and strategy to help CIRA continue to be a leading-edge organization that strives for excellence as a registry and supports Canadians in building their online presence in the global digital economy.

To attract the highest quality and most relevant candidates for the Board of Directors, CIRA providing a package of information about becoming a Director that can be disseminated through traditional and online networks and channels.

Please find attached an information sheet you can forward to any Canadians with governance experience and relevant background in industry, technology or the Internet who might be interested in joining the CIRA Board.

The application period ends June 8, 2012. Additional information is available at http://CIRAelections.ca.

See NCN 2012 - NC.pdf for the brochure.

BCNET, Compute Canada and WestGrid would like to thank our sponsors, community and delegates for making this a successful event!

A record number of delegates (550) registered for the three-day BCNET & HPCS Conference and 477 checked in on May 1-3. To gauge their experience, we asked our attendees to complete an online survey and 109 (23%) responded.

Overall, the survey respondent's ratings were very positive and delegates raved about the opportunities to network and learn through collaboration. On a less positive note, attendees reported that the venue was crowded and the food needs improvement.

Here are some highlights from our survey results:

Top Reasons to Attend

Our conference delegates told us they attended the event to network with peers, learn what other campuses are doing, find out about new technology and trends, and share solutions for common challenges.

"Interesting talks that help me to learn what others (and our University) are working on...talking to people from other institutions, understanding their challenges and sharing information."

Keynote Speakers

This year's program boasted very high profile keynotes including: Leonard Brody, Mike Wesch and John Towns. Our delegates ranked Brody from good to excellent (93%) and found him to be thought provoking, insightful and entertaining. A few delegates questioned the validity of his data.

"Leonard's presentation was relevant, up-to-date and engaging.  A 10 out of 10."

Mike Wesch's keynote was given an all-star rating from good to excellent by 94% of survey respondents and said he was an amazing, inspirational speaker.

"Brings the human perspective to what we do and keeps us grounded."

On day three, John Towns delivered the keynote, and although fewer delegates attended his talk, they (76%) gave Towns a good to excellent rating.

"Very fitting for the HPCS event"

Overall Experience

Our delegates said their favorite experience at the conference were the program, networking opportunities and speakers. The least favorite items were the food, rain, lack of tables for eating and overcrowded facilities.

Feedback for a better event in 2013

Our team will review the evaluations and debrief on improvements for the 2013 conference. We hope to see you again next year!

Once again, we would like to thank our community and sponsors for their contributions and for making this a very successful event!

BCNET today announced that Dean Crawford has been appointed as manager of shared IT services.  

In this newly defined role, Crawford will manage and lead the development of shared IT services for British Columbia's research universities and institutes. He is responsible for determining the types of services that BCNET will adopt and defining a model for selecting and implementing IT services. In this collaborative position, he will consult with BCNET's consortium of higher education members. 

Crawford is a seasoned IT professional with over two decades of experience in higher education and industry. He was seconded from the University of Victoria where he managed the development and support teams for the Continuing Studies in-house registration system. In this role he was successful at bridging partnerships with Canadian universities to share software services. Crawford was previously a partner in Boulevard Technologies, a system for urban planning and development. Crawford has also worked at Ambient Systems, a University of Victoria innovation development company that specialized in laser-based pollution monitoring. He recently became a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a globally recognized credential for project managers.

Crawford was a member of the Canadian Men's Rowing Eight and took the Gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angelos, CA. In 2003, he was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the BC Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Victoria Athletic Hall of Fame.