On the Path to Civic Innovation

In the Summer of 2007, Facebook had yet to replace MySpace as the dominant social network. If you’ve never experienced MySpace, let me be the first to congratulate you for missing out on what ended up being a fairly perverse corner of the web. The idea that any business would be on MySpace, apart from the bars and music venues, would simply not have occurred to most people. Nevertheless, I had a plan to unite local businesses in the Oregon District with the neighborhood association through a social network that resembled what I knew of Facebook at the time. As it so happened, my partners and I managed to get an initial investment from the Oregon District Business Association (ODBA) and built a prototype that we presented to other local neighborhood and business associations. While we did manage to launch the initial website with the support of Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin cutting the yellow ribbon in front of a wonderfully packed house, we never quite got the rest of what was called the Impresto Network off the ground.