Technology and Culture Fuse

Technology and culture lead the way in one of the country's top places to live and do business. A vibrant, amenity-filled town center and innovative high-tech infrastructure have made Lafayette, Louisiana a launching pad for entrepreneurs of all stripes.

The city is the center of a multi-cultural and multi-industrial region, and is surrounded by a unique, publicly- owned fiber optic loop. "From oil and gas extraction to crawfish farming, we've created unique industries while developing technologies that are now the global standard," states Gregg Gothreaux, President and CEO of the Lafayette Economic Development Authority.

Wireless technology was pioneered right here, as a way for oil and gas companies to communicate with their production rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Lafayette's entrepreneurs drive our economy, and as we move into a technology-driven economy, our local technology leaders and the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise stand to continue our growth far into the future. This ability to embrace and apply technology became clearly evident in 2005, when Lafayette voters approved the financing needed to extend fiber connectivity to every home and business within the city.

The city boasts a full complement of traditional economic development incentives, but its real selling point is its workforce and quality of life. The region's Cajun and Creole music and culture are known around the globe, and Lafayette's cuisine and joie de vivre are legendary. No matter how you look at it, this cool city is home to an atmosphere of warm collaboration.

Advancements in Infrastructure

Fiber-to-the-Premise - Lafayette Utilities Systems (LUS) is building on the success of its initial 65-mile, 96-strand fiber optic backbone, which offers carrier-class Internet access to businesses, government, and educational entities throughout the region, to extend the power of fiber all the way to 60,000 homes and businesses within the city of Lafayette.

LITE - Lafayette is home to the $27 million, 70,000 square-foot Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise which is one of only a handful of facilities in the world that combine high-performance computing capabilities with advanced visualization, available for use by both the private and public sector. LITE's resources include a powerful high-performance computer with 4.1 terabytes of main memory and 160 cores, an SGI Altix 350 cluster with 352 processors, and four separate visualization venues including a six-sided digital immersive cube. LITE's staff includes visualization and high-performance computing experts, technical artists and developers to assist in guiding your project from concept to fruition. LITE's fiber optic connectivity includes access to LONI, National LambdaRail and StarLight-state, national and international high-performance computing networks-which enable data to be sent around the corner or around the globe at the speed of fiber.

Education - Lafayette educators have designed contiguous technology- focused curriculum that extends across various levels of education. The Academy of Information Technology at Carencro High School prepares interested students for a professional career in information technology. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, South Louisiana Community College, and Louisiana Technical College offer studies in concentrations such as Video Game Development and Design, Cognitive Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, Media Arts and Scientific Computing.

LONI - The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative is a fiber optic network that connects supercomputers at Louisiana‘s major research universities, allowing computation speeds greater than 1,000 times the rate previously possible. LONI connects Louisiana to the National LambdaRail, a 15,000-mile, nation-wide fiber network dedicated to research. Two entities in Lafayette, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the LITE facility, are connected to LONI.

Find out more by contacting LEDA's Technology Department at (337) 593-1407 or by emailing William Ness.