Ever since my return from Europe, I’ve been musing on whether we can only solve our real-time, local information needs through global platforms at scale.

Whether local—that space outside our doorsteps—is more effectively targeted from a top-down global view than a unique bottoms-up local one?

And whether is it really possible for anyone but the largest platform players to truly accomplish this?

This came from being in a different place every day when I traveled, navigating by phone as I wandered about, in and out of WiFi spots.

The truth is that I’ve been a passionate proponent of ground up, local solutions as the key to discovery and engagement for as long as I’ve been building communities

I’m seriously questioning my prejudices after this trip.

Realizing that the idea of a global local is not a phrase, but reality.

I loaded up my phone pre the trip with local apps. Not one of them was opened.

Platforms got used constantly.

Gmaps solved navigation. Uber worked as perfectly in the middle of the night in Porto as it does in LA. Sharing was Instagram and Facebook. Calls were WhatsApp, Skype and FaceTime audio.

The net of this is that how we define local for certain, and possibly community, has shifted.

Local is no longer a secret ensconced in the cobblestones outside a quiet corner cafe, only unlockable through friendly strangers at the bar or a savvy concierge.

Local–wherever it may be—exists under our feet but is informed by the aggregate of our extended networks, parsed by the inclinations of friends and driven by the data that smart networks surface on demand

Case in point–I wanted to know the very best local natural wine bars in Paris, accessible by subway, great to go to by myself.

I simply asked–and the answers came back.

Some from friends, many from their network connections, and invariably with personal intros to proprietors or people behind the bar. Discovery was personalized to me in most every case.

Certainly the interfaces delivering this information are crude at best, but the smarts of these large platforms to surface community on demand is the secret sauce that only networks at scale seem to be able to provide.

You have to ask what is the relationship between these platforms and the communities that provide the information.

Is it only our tech or art communities that can truly guide us to local solutions? Do we need massive verticals to make this happen?

I’m doubting this.

We need experts of course, but more, we need reach and connections. We need platforms to insure that our questions get to the right people with the answers at the right time.

Someday—possibly—someone will discover the key to platforming community as an infrastructure.

But in actuality community simply happens at a flash around points of interest built on the core human drive to share what we know, what we care about.

A year ago on this blog, a commentor stated that I get away without the need for tools and vertical apps because my networks are so well developed. Per him, I’m an exception not the rule.

Not sure this is true any longer.

That one-to-one-to-one connections of the early days of Facebook are not the strength of the platform. In fact, I bet the phrase ‘social nets’ looses ‘social’ pretty soon.

What makes these platforms at scale work is the ability to surface memes, the innate data integrity to let questions drive aggregate communities of interest around an idea. Communities that are by definition, as broad as the interest of the topic itself, not the popularity of who asks the question.

As users, this is all goodness.

We trade our personal info and our privacy, we tolerate the platforms media-based business models, and we get a global, connected and responsive platform in return. One of true reach and personal empowerment.

As entrepreneurs and market builders, my thoughts are more nuanced.

How can we build brands that stand above the networks we live on? How can we build populations of users for local services when the idea of place is no longer lodged in the coordinates of the place itself?

Can the blockchain promise of decentralization of networks, disrupt this reality?  Possibly splintering it to create near-time opportunities for new community structures that are viable at smaller scale?

And, the most telling to me, whether what we do wherever we are is in many ways more germane to the identity of a place rather than the uniqueness of where it is.

That the idea of local, is what we bring to wherever we, is based on the sum total of our networks definition of it.

What a great trip this truly was.