Back in early 2001, Digital Oak Park took a stab at online community building; it's kind of entertaining to look at what the site held back then.
Suffice to say, we were pretty far ahead of the curve on this one, and while a few others tried in the years that followed, none were very successful until Live Here Oak Park came along a couple years ago. It's been great watching that grow and succeed.
There still are some opportunities for other niche sites to fill though. The vision I have is a map -- a map with many things on it, but the key being that they are current things, now things, short life span things -- things seen by and submitted by residents and other interested parties.
Chances are if you're reading this, you have a camera with you all the time, it's your phone. Snap something interesting, email it or MMS it to a address here and it pops up on a map -- if your phone has a GPS, that happens automagically, if not, perhaps the subject line could be "stormdamage: Madison and Highland" and that would be enough to put it in the right place.
Imagine if that were available during the damaging storms earlier this year and the perceived slow response to debris removal? Nothing like a couple hundred dots on a map to get some attention.
Perhaps mapping incidence of drug use? Other crime? Wednesday Journal's bike theft map is a good example, but it's single use and isn't user contributed.
So that's the short version of what's going on here. Watch this space!
