Leadership

Steve Lafontaine is the founder and President of LCT Services, a technology and consulting company focused on training, systems integration and Internet development.

Prior to LCT Services, Mr. Lafontaine held a number of senior academic and administrative positions at Canadore College of Applied Arts and Technology including; Acting Dean, School of Industrial and Information Technology, Executive Director of the International Centre for Information Technology Training (ICITT), Manager of Microcomputer (Labs) Support, Manager of Software Services, Director of Computer Services and Senior Information Technology Consultant.

While at Canadore Mr. Lafontaine played a lead role in the conception and development of the Information Technology Support Analyst (ITSA) program for the Ministry of Education, Apprenticeship Branch and he founded a "centre of excellence" at the College called the International Centre for Information Technology Training (ICITT). He designed, developed and implemented the Canadore College Notebook Initiative. This project was described, as "a Canadore Success Story" which was one of the first projects of its kind in Ontario and Canada.

Mr. Lafontaine is an information technology (IT) professional who has been recognized as a leading systems consultant. He has successfully managed professional services teams from organizational inception to full service offerings and has acted as the lead consultant on multi-million dollar and international projects.

He has successfully completed a wide range of projects including the analysis and design of a variety of information systems solutions and the implementation and ongoing support of various business and accounting systems in for-profit and not-for-profit settings including Federal and Provincial agencies.

Mr. Lafontaine has consulted internationally, including a CIDA sponsored project delivered through a consortium of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC), Delotte & Touche Management Consultants and Coastal Associates for the Department of Technical Education and Vocational Training in Zambia, Africa.

He has co-consulted with Bell Canada's Advanced Communications Group to design, develop and deploy one of the first and largest district-wide frame relay networks in Ontario and developed a full-featured revenue generating help desk service based on a partnership with the Nipissing District Public School Board to deliver help desk services to over 30 locations and hundreds of users.

Mr. Lafontaine was responsible for the technical management of the $3.4M NipNet WAN DSL project which was completed on schedule, under budget and with a substantial footprint increase.

He developed the Canadian Ecology Centre's "Technology in the Forest" theme which saw the integration of innovative new technologies (including a GIS lab and "wired" cabins) into all aspects of programming and guest services. Mr. Lafontaine conceived and led the technology development of the CEC's highly successful Expo 2000 exhibit in Hanover Germany, and identified and promoted Geocaching as a Northern Ontario ecotourism opportunity.

For over ten years, Mr. Lafontaine has been helping businesses and organizations strategize and implement dynamic, personalized, community-building Web sites. On Monday, September 27, 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) released the first public version of its graphical World Wide Web browser, Mosaic. Three days later, Mr. Lafontaine launched Canada's first community college website, a website that was later featured by Microsoft Corp on their website. Soon after he oversaw the development of the City of North Bay's first community website (portal) which received a number of municipal marketing and economic development awards for innovation.

Mr. Lafontaine managed the CIP Project, a web-based community information portal system that seamlessly integrated content management, data management and Internet mapping into an innovative new service for Northern Ontario communities. In January 2002 he was recognized by the Township of Bonfield for his work in promoting the Township of Bonfield as a Smart Community.

He continues to provide advanced web development services to a wide range of businesses and organizations and has a large number of international clients primarily in the United States and Britain. He is currently offering an online web development course to Canadian and US learners. The course focuses on the use of the open source technologies Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP).

Mr. Lafontaine has delivered a variety of speeches, seminars and college-level courses to a diverse audience including professional associations such as the Municipal Information Systems Association of Ontario and the Professional Engineers of Ontario. He has written a weekly technology column called "Tech Matters" for the daily newspaper The Nugget and has a blog called NorthernTelework.ca where he promotes telework and telecommuting in Northern Ontario.