Pokémon Go maker Niantic names Megan Quinn as chief operating officer

Pokémon Go maker Niantic has named Megan Quinn as chief operating officer. Founder and CEO John Hanke said in a post that Quinn will lead business operations and international development for the company as it prepares for the next phase of growth.

He said that Quinn has been a supporter of the mission since the company’s roots as a part of Google. At Google, she worked for Hanke in various roles for seven years before Niantic even got started. It’s a significant appointment, as high-ranking women are still rare in game companies and women make up roughly 20% of game industry professionals. It’s also important as Niantic has seen great success, with hundreds of millions of downloads and billions of dollars in revenues.

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Byton Resumes Production Of M-Byte Electric SUV

Byton also finalized the home charging installation deal for the U.S. market with Qmerit. 

Byton's CEO Daniel Kirchert revealed this week several images showing that the company is busy making first M-Byte all-electric SUVs.

The pre-production in Nanjing actually started in October 2019, but then was interrupted by COVID-19 in early 2020.

We are not sure whether those are still pre-production cars or already some demo units, but the schedule is to start customer deliveries in China in mid-2020.

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Comics Still Selling Well in Booktrade Despite Coronavirus Pandemic

With the Direct Market effectively shuttered due to Diamond Comic Distributors' shutdown and several state mandates, the booktrade has become the defacto primary distribution channel for comic book publishers including Marvel, DC, BOOM! Studios, and VIZ Media.

ICv2's Milton Griepp has organized a report of booktrade sales in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. According to figures from Bookscan, March 2020's sales for the top 20 kids graphic novel titles "were actually up substantially over" March 2019 and that the top 20 adult graphic novels were "similar" to those from this point last year.

But how?

While Diamond has been shutdown for the past two weeks, several publishers use other distributors for bookstores. BOOM! Studios, for example, uses Simon & Schuster.

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Netflix Inks First-Look Deal With ‘Mouse Guard’ Comic Book Publisher BOOM! Studios

Netflix has struck a first-look deal with BOOM! Studios, the comic book publisher behind franchises including Lumberjanes, Something is Killing the Children, Once & Future, andMouse Guard.

The deal covers live-action and animated series and comes after the streamer began worked with BOOM! on a feature adaptation of The Unsound with Shazam! director David F. Sandberg in 2019.

BOOM! Studios previously struck a first-look film deal with 20th Century Studios and the studio took a minority stake in the company. That first-look deal runs through January 2021 and the studio is releasing supernatural thriller The Empty Man in August. However, following the Disney merger, BOOM!’s $150M animated movie Mouse Guard, directed by Wes Ball, was cancelled and the company moved beyond 20th Century Studios, setting up projects across town including feature film Memetic with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg producing and The Batman screenwriter Mattson Tomlin at Lionsgate and a slew of TV projects to Amazon, HBO Max, Peacock, CBS All Access and Disney+.

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Why pay equity should be top of mind during mass layoffs

As the COVID-19 pandemic has settled in across the globe, leaders at companies large and small have watched their business sharply plummet. Many are in the throes of swiftly acting to manage costs and either considering or enacting layoffs, usually as a last resort to keep a company solvent.

But while leaders are rightly concerned with making sure layoffs are conducted with sensitivity and in a way that ensures business continuity, they are often forgetting about an important unintended consequence: the impact on pay equity.

Let’s face it: when the axe falls, it often falls on those who are already disadvantaged. Tough times don’t level the playing field. Tough times exacerbate differences. The impact of hurried layoffs is going to fall disproportionately on women, who are already carrying more than their fair share of the burden in the current “work and school from home” environment.

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