The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design -- my alma mater -- has just launched a new initiative with Surface Magazine called the Surface Summer School at Penn. A fairly unique partnership between a media company and an accredited university, the goal of the "summer school" is twofold.
One, it gives Penn students, who might otherwise struggle to find an internship in this climate, something productive and positive to do over the summer. And two, it applies design thinking to the problems of this pandemic.
Penn students will have the month of June to design a prefabricated COVID-19 testing structure -- one that could be rolled out in dense and compact urban centers around the world. A jury will then review the submissions and a winner will be announced by mid-July.
The jury includes a host of noteworthy architects and designers: Winka Dubbeldam, Dror Benshetrit, Thom Mayne, Yves Béhar, Susan Sellers, Marion Weiss, Ferda Kolatan, Joe Doucet, and others. Starting on June 3rd at 6:30 PM eastern, members of the jury will also start delivering design lectures on Surface's Instagram.
I am looking forward to seeing the submissions. Hopefully all of them will be made public.
Photo by Dyana Wing So on Unsplash
People are starting to eat at restaurants again. Here is a recent chart from the WSJ showing seated diners at restaurants on the OpenTable network:
OpenTable has been publishing this data since the beginning of the pandemic in something they call "the state of the restaurant industry." All of their datasets from around the world can be
On Monday it was reported -- by the Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, and others -- that Uber will be laying off another 3,000 employees and closing 45 of its offices around the world. Here is a quote from TechCrunch:
“I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public company, or to protect or stock price, or to please our Board or investors,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote to employees today in a memo, viewed by TechCrunch. “I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world — our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us — demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating.”
According to this SEC filing, the company expects to pay approximately $110 million to $140 million in severance and other termination benefits, and somewhere between $65 million to $80 million in costs related to closing its offices.
All of this is, of course, being driven by a steep decline in ride bookings, which is about 70% of the company's revenue. Ride bookings were down 80% in April from a year earlier. For Q1 2020, they were down about 5% compared to 2019.
The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design -- my alma mater -- has just launched a new initiative with Surface Magazine called the Surface Summer School at Penn. A fairly unique partnership between a media company and an accredited university, the goal of the "summer school" is twofold.
One, it gives Penn students, who might otherwise struggle to find an internship in this climate, something productive and positive to do over the summer. And two, it applies design thinking to the problems of this pandemic.
Penn students will have the month of June to design a prefabricated COVID-19 testing structure -- one that could be rolled out in dense and compact urban centers around the world. A jury will then review the submissions and a winner will be announced by mid-July.
The jury includes a host of noteworthy architects and designers: Winka Dubbeldam, Dror Benshetrit, Thom Mayne, Yves Béhar, Susan Sellers, Marion Weiss, Ferda Kolatan, Joe Doucet, and others. Starting on June 3rd at 6:30 PM eastern, members of the jury will also start delivering design lectures on Surface's Instagram.
I am looking forward to seeing the submissions. Hopefully all of them will be made public.
Photo by Dyana Wing So on Unsplash
People are starting to eat at restaurants again. Here is a recent chart from the WSJ showing seated diners at restaurants on the OpenTable network:
OpenTable has been publishing this data since the beginning of the pandemic in something they call "the state of the restaurant industry." All of their datasets from around the world can be
On Monday it was reported -- by the Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, and others -- that Uber will be laying off another 3,000 employees and closing 45 of its offices around the world. Here is a quote from TechCrunch:
“I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public company, or to protect or stock price, or to please our Board or investors,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote to employees today in a memo, viewed by TechCrunch. “I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world — our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us — demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating.”
According to this SEC filing, the company expects to pay approximately $110 million to $140 million in severance and other termination benefits, and somewhere between $65 million to $80 million in costs related to closing its offices.
All of this is, of course, being driven by a steep decline in ride bookings, which is about 70% of the company's revenue. Ride bookings were down 80% in April from a year earlier. For Q1 2020, they were down about 5% compared to 2019.
Back in March, it was interesting to see this data, but most people basically just stopped eating out around the middle of the month. After that, in-person dining mostly flatlined. (This data wouldn't capture takeout, delivery, and other activities not flowing through the OpenTable network.)
At this point, we are now seeing geographies reopen in different ways. Germany, for example, is ahead of many other countries (at least on the OpenTable network). Note the spike (i.e. lower year-over-year decline) on May 21st. It was a national holiday.
You can also drill down into individual cities:
I think this is a pretty good indicator for how people are feeling, and so it could be useful to follow this data. Governments can reopen things, but people need to feel confident to go out and spend money. It looks like a number of people already feel that way.
Uber Eats has seen a spike in demand with people staying at home. Bookings were up 52% in Q1 2020 from a year earlier. The problem is that, unlike its rides business, their food delivery business is far from profitable. That's the point of the possible merger with Grubhub.
The company has said that they are seeing some signs of a recovery in markets that have begun to reopen. But it's too early to predict what that will really look like. The hole is pretty deep.
Pre-COVID, ride hailing demand tended to surge on the weekends as people went out to restaurants, bars, and clubs. So presumably those activities will need to return for its revenue to return. But I also think we could see a spike because of people being nervous to take public transit.
Either way, the company is making some really tough decisions right now. But it seems to be doing what it needs to do in order to get to the other side of this and become a self-sustaining and profitable business. Full disclosure: I own some $UBER.
Chart: Uber Q1 2020 results
Back in March, it was interesting to see this data, but most people basically just stopped eating out around the middle of the month. After that, in-person dining mostly flatlined. (This data wouldn't capture takeout, delivery, and other activities not flowing through the OpenTable network.)
At this point, we are now seeing geographies reopen in different ways. Germany, for example, is ahead of many other countries (at least on the OpenTable network). Note the spike (i.e. lower year-over-year decline) on May 21st. It was a national holiday.
You can also drill down into individual cities:
I think this is a pretty good indicator for how people are feeling, and so it could be useful to follow this data. Governments can reopen things, but people need to feel confident to go out and spend money. It looks like a number of people already feel that way.
Uber Eats has seen a spike in demand with people staying at home. Bookings were up 52% in Q1 2020 from a year earlier. The problem is that, unlike its rides business, their food delivery business is far from profitable. That's the point of the possible merger with Grubhub.
The company has said that they are seeing some signs of a recovery in markets that have begun to reopen. But it's too early to predict what that will really look like. The hole is pretty deep.
Pre-COVID, ride hailing demand tended to surge on the weekends as people went out to restaurants, bars, and clubs. So presumably those activities will need to return for its revenue to return. But I also think we could see a spike because of people being nervous to take public transit.
Either way, the company is making some really tough decisions right now. But it seems to be doing what it needs to do in order to get to the other side of this and become a self-sustaining and profitable business. Full disclosure: I own some $UBER.
Chart: Uber Q1 2020 results
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