Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team!
Missed last week’s Coffee Briefing? We’ve got you covered.
What’s new this week
Reddit and Omnicom Media Group announce enterprise partnership in Canada
Reddit has announced its first-ever enterprise partnership with Omnicom Media Group (OMG), which provides brand and advertising services to companies. The country-specific agreement follows the announcement of its U.S. enterprise partnership with Omnicom in March of last year.
This partnership aims to offer clients of OMG Canada agencies – OMD, Hearts & Science, PHD Media and Touché – a range of services that will enhance the value of their media spend on Reddit.
This includes priority access to Reddit’s in-house creative agency, KarmaLab, via a dedicated lead, early visibility into and opportunities to partner on key research projects, and custom data and insights to exclusive platform training
The partnership also aims to uplevel OMG Canada’s clients’ presence on Reddit.
Worlds best pro cycling teams create Road Code – a new digital fan universe
Ten of the best professional cycling teams in the world are building their own community-driven online universe for the pro riders, loyal fans, fantasy league players, and amateur cyclists from around the world. This platform is called Road Code. Velon and the Velon Teams have partnered with The HBAR Foundation to deliver this first ever fan universe for pro-road cycling, built on the Hedera public network.
Road Code is expected to launch early next year and is cycling’s first fan universe, a complete Web3 ecosystem for the sport. Users will get unique access to the riders’ expert knowledge, specialized training programs, an advanced fantasy game that allows fans to play between and during all major pro cycling races. It offers behind the scenes footage from bike-cams of some of the toughest and most beautiful races in the world.
As a first step to accessing Road Code, users need to claim an account. Having an account provides members access to premium content and the ability to hold their digital collectibles and in-game assets before the start of the season next year.
ILX Group finds that investing in employees can increase revenue by 218 per cent
New research from ILX Group reveals that upskilling through learning and development could be the answer to businesses’ concerns around diminishing revenue and stagflation.
The data shows that companies with comprehensive training programs have on average 218 per cent higher income per employee.
It also showed that hiring new leaders and managers costs on average £31,375 (C$50,894) and £14,117 (C$22,899) in direct fees.
The research found that 94 per cent of employees would be more likely to stay with an employer who invested in their career development in some way.
To combat stagflation, experts at ILX argue that enhancing employees skills is the best way to safeguard businesses in this challenging macroeconomic environment. The company suggests that at a time when cost-saving innovations are necessary, skilled workers are required to implement them.
Plume Data Reveals top smart home trends seen in 2022
Plume, a personalized communications service, revealed new insights following an analysis of data from homes powered by its cloud-driven solution throughout the month of November.
The month’s Plume IQ examined the major trends in Plume-powered smart homes this year across the areas of connected device popularity, network performance, cybersecurity, data usage, and brand loyalty
Connected devices: The U.S. leads Europe in device count, with 31 per cent more devices connected to their home networks.
Network performance: Networks are getting better in both the U.S. and Europe at similar rates, with a 24 per cent and 20 per cent increase in internet download speeds respectively.
Cybersecurity: Plume says that cyberthreats increased over the year, driven by the conflict in Ukraine, global inflation, and economic uncertainty The number of threats blocked by Plume was up in both the U.S. and Europe, by 162 per cent and 168 per cent respectively.
Data usage: U.S. households consumed 123 per cent more data on average per month than European households: 794 GB per month vs. 356 GB. The most notable category for increased data consumption was streaming devices.
Brand loyalty: Google added more devices than Apple over the period, with 16 per cent and 10 per cent growth respectively. At category level, lifestyle and IoT devices grew faster relative to other device types, with smart speakers up 30 per cent, e-readers up 33 per cent, and smart light bulbs up 30 per cent.
More to explore
Salesforce leaders make their predictions for 2023
Tech leaders at customer relationship management company Salesforce have shared their top IT predictions, based on market analysis and customers’ perspectives.
Virbela releases enterprise metaverse 2023 predictions
Virbela, a platform that creates virtual worlds for remote work, learning, and events, has released its 2023 enterprise metaverse trends and predictions.
AI and data management at the forefront of SAS’ 2023 IT predictions
IT predictions for 2023 are echoing one main message: 2023 will be plagued with the consequences of global supply chain issues, rising inflation and interest rates as we attempt to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Supply chain disruption: why it’s happening and how to tackle the problem
At Project Production Institute’s ninth annual symposium, Todd R. Zabelle, founder and president of Strategic Project Solutions Inc, and Hunter Newby, owner of Newby Ventures, broke down ways that data centres can tackle supply chain disruptions, and what exactly is causing these issues.
Meta to pay US$725 to U.S. Facebook users over Cambridge Analytica scandal
The fallout from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to follow Facebook and its parent, Meta Platforms.
It’s fashionable these days to be cynical about government. But we spend a lot of time researching and telling stories about government.
Digital real estate is gaining popularity as brands look to enter the metaverse
The rise of metaverse technologies has created an increasing interest in virtual real estate, a report by research firm Technavio revealed.
LastPass hacker got customer information and their encrypted vault data
Business and personal users of the LassPass password management solution are being warned to take defensive action after the company acknowledged customer information and encrypted data they had stored in the service’s digital vault were copied by a hacker in a supply chain attack.
Staying informed is a constant challenge. There’s so much to do, and so little time. But we have you covered. Grab a coffee and take five while you nibble on these tidbits.
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Trending
Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, mass layoffs, the Rogers outage, and a push for clean tech.
Listen to the latest episode of Cyber Security Today
This episode reports on ransomware number for November and trouble in open-source repositories
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Tendances (Hosted by Direction Informatique)
If you live in Quebec, or prefer to consume the latest technology news in French, our sister publication Direction Informatique has you covered. Follow them on Twitter as well.
