Touching the Future: SurfNet and the commercialization of surface computing

The Person: Jeff LaFrenz’s background as a computer engineer serves him well in his current post as SurfNet’s business development manager.  Based out of the University of Calgary, SurfNet is a research alliance of academics, industry and government representatives who work together to develop and commercialize software applications for surface computing.

The Project: LaFrenz works with industry partners to develop research-based academic prototypes, created within the SurfNet community, into commercially viable surface computing apps.

“A lot of my role is around connecting industry with researchers, and it’s purely focused on business development because we see so many opportunities for applying the research to solve actual business problems that exist today.”

That commercial opportunity lies in creating new ways for people to interact with data, especially massive data sets, such as those used in the oil and gas sector or in emergency response work, which involve interpreting and interacting with geospatial data.

“Think of any type of environment where people stand around a table and have to made a decision,” says LaFrenz. “We’re taking about maps, inherently,” he says. “People intuitively work with paper maps on tables, and translating that into a digital format or table is fairly easy.”

The Progress: Since SurfNet’s launch in 2010, LaFrenz says the pace of development in hardware has had a major effect on how SurfNet researchers develop their applications.

“The hardware interaction has changed dramatically. In the early days, we had a lot of focus on the fundamentals and, very much, the applied aspects of this. Now we are seeing big progress in multi-device interactions. Touch tables with the ability to interact with smart phones and other devices.”

LaFrenz and others are betting on surface computing becoming a mainstream social networking tool for many types of businesses – from hospitals to vehicle delivery fleets to oil development, and more.

“We’re seeing, for example, a lot of opportunity for interactive technology to support analytics in the energy space.”

The Prospects: The product development cycle for a SurfNet-developed app roughly follows this path: Industry identifies a problem, SurfNet develops the solution – with industry feedback – and Vizworx, LaFrenz’s consulting firm, facilitates the launch of a commercial product.

SurfNet has worked with a variety of commercial interests in various industries, including emergency response and disaster planning organizations as well as pipeline outfits – to create surface computing applications.

“The (early adopters) are organizations with a lot of maps or those with control rooms that require a collaborative environment. In oil and gas, for example, they deal with a lot of geospatial data and have difficulty understanding it and interacting with it.”

The Passion: LaFrenz’s professional fulfillment comes in the form of solving complex problems and working with “brilliant, exciting people.”

“There’s an opportunity to see the new technologies being developed, and to be part of providing solutions to challenges society and industry are running into,” he says. “It’s also great being around really brilliant people doing this work.”

But he also expresses frustration with the conflicting messages some academic researchers receive in pursuing their development of projects with commercial viability, and sacrificing the traditional publishing imperative.

“In academic environments, we strongly require people to produce publications, and we don’t reward commercialization of research or patents that result from the research.”