Ed Casabian is a Community Manager with Uber NYC.
1. Pre-Uber, you spent two years neighborhood hopping between friends’ and strangers’ home across 52 neighborhoods in NYC. What was your biggest takeaway from the experience?
Yes! It was amazing. I was in what you might call a “transitional place” in my life (read: breakup) and I came up with this crazy idea to try living with different people in different neighborhoods of New York City every week. At first it started with friends of friends, but over time I had all sorts of people reach out who found me from a blog I was keeping called the NYC Nomad and an article that appeared in the New York Times metro section. No money was exchanged for the accommodations, but I’d pick up the tab for fancy dinners and exploring with my hosts. I ended up spending time in all five boroughs and 52 different neighborhoods. I’m still in touch with a lot of the people who hosted me.
There were so many takeaways. New York City is such an amazing place and it was fascinating to be able to take on the perspective of a traveler seeing things for the first time. I can still remember how I felt moving from Central Park South to Kew Gardens in Queens, and switching my commute from walking to work in SoHo to taking the Staten Island Ferry. I had a full time job during the project at a company called outside.in which was centered around providing neighborhood news so I’d use our site to help orient me after every move. Even though I’ve been settled in my own place in Alphabet City for almost two years now, I still make a point of exploring new spots as much as I can-it keeps me curious.
2. You’ve been blogging since before blogging was cool — since 2006! What’s your greatest serendipity story about blogging on the internet?
I have been a blogger for quite a while (I miss it!). I started my first blog when I was volunteering in Armenia mostly as a way to post updates for friends and family back home, but now I look back and I love that I have a record of those experiences that’s out in the world as opposed to just in a private journal in my drawer. I would have totally forgotten the time I saw this guy climbing the Amberd Fortress wearing dress shoes (check out that old school blogspot blog)! I don’t have as much time to blog these days, but I’m still a big fan of the medium and it’s been fun to see Uber’s NYC blog come to life at blog.uber.com/NYC.
3. Uber’s growing quickly! As the first Uber Community Manager in NYC, what’s the greatest challenge in scaling the car services across all 5 boroughs?
It’s incredible how far we’ve come in the two years that I’ve been at Uber. When I started in NYC, our team was about three people and now the office is now almost thirty! It’s a super exciting place to work, and also incredibly busy. We’re constantly partnering with amazing cultural institutions and companies around the city, so we get invited to a lot of fancy parties. During the day, I’m handling customer service issues, managing a group of fourteen, and setting aside time for rooftop yoga with the team each week (one of our awesome CMs is also a yoga instructor). Right now, the biggest challenge in NYC is finding drivers to meet our increasing demand – I might even consider becoming one myself ? We’re also hiring for jobs all over the world, and specifically Operations and Community managers in NYC. You can see the laundry list of positions at uber.com/jobs — feel free to contact me directly at [email protected]!
4. About seven years ago, you spent five months traveling to 10 countries around the world. What was that experience like pre-Airbnb, and how might you go about it differently today?
I love to travel. I actually used couchsurfing.org in Dubai and Hong Kong which definitely contributed to my idea for The NYC Nomad. I haven’t found a better way to get to know a place than through living with locals. AirBnB often makes that possible and I’ve had great experiences with the service. It would have been nice to have that during that trip! I think traveling now would be much different because Internet is so widely available. I’ve used foursquare on my last few international trips, and it’s fun to see where your friends have been in far off places like Australia. How else would I have found Bru coffee in North Bondi beach? Definitely order the flat white and brekky special ?
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Ed Casabian is a Community Manager with Uber NYC. Ed also explores neighborhoods as The NYC Nomad, and is a former Community Fellow of Soundcloud.
