Hello! My name is Brian, CEO of Locable - the parent company of The Locable Publisher Network, and I grew up in a small town in Northern California called Placerville. Placerville, which is just a few miles from Sutter’s Mill where they first found gold in 1849, used to have that quintessential Main Street where as a kid I could walk up and down to get a true sense of what was going on, overhear the local news and see people from my community. But over time, technology evolved, communities became less personal and the Walmart's of the world made Main Street seemingly less integral to our lives. Main Street no longer stood as the heart and soul of the town.

In 2007, I spent some time nearby at my step-brother’s community magazine and began to realize that his magazine was filling a few of that gaps that Main Street used to fill; the place people went to get the pulse of the town. I've always believed that community and fellowship is one of the greatest gifts and challenges God has given us so when I saw alignment between purpose and opportunity I knew I had to do something about it. So when I returned to business school at the Foster School of Business (University of Washington) in 2008 I recruited a couple classmates to help dig a little deeper.

Initially, we launched the Community Magazine Network with the slogan “Building Community Through Conversation” to help publishers navigate the web, adapt to the changing media landscape and work together to build community. The network was part trade association, part LinkedIn group and all tied around a circulation verification service.

We quickly discovered that while local publishers possessed the greatest unfair advantage imaginable when it came to filling the Main Street gap, the sad reality was most local publishers failed to capitalize because the new media landscape was fraught with challenges. Misinformation, fragmentation and general hubris all hindered our collective opportunity to do well by doing good. They needed more – more guidance, more support and better tools to make a real impact. That's when The Locable Publisher Network was born.

Our ideas and approaches have evolved over the years but the purpose has always remained the same and we’re even more excited about how we work with local community-focused publishers to build community than when we started.

If you care about community the way I do I hope you’ll introduce yourself and share a little about what makes your town unique because when it comes to doing our part we all have a role to play!