I love this story of an entrepreneurial teen from the Grand Rapids Herald  who is taking over management of a local online shopping/exchange site. The site is akin to a Craiglist but meets the needs of smaller communities. The site has been up for a while, but under management Douglas H. Allain, a former Grand Rapids native. Now a new Grand Rapids resident is taking it over and making it even better…

Without sacrificing the convenience of Facebook, EAS Local [the shopping/exchange site] fills the same need as the original GR EAS. There are categories and organized listing pages, as well as an advanced and accurate search. The site is 100 percent integrated with Facebook and can be used right on Facebook, similar to games and other apps. It will send Facebook notifications when someone sends a contact email as well as when someone comments on a listing. One difference is notifications are customizable under the “My Account” page. It also provides a watch list function to save a listing to easily return to it later.

The article also provides a little background on the new, young manager Isaiah Olson…

Olson moved with his family to the Grand Rapids area in 2004 and considers Itasca County his home. He was interested in computers early on as he and his dad shared a love for computer programming. Olson enjoyed video games and in the sixth grade he began to self-teach himself to program by writing bots and mods for World of Warcraft, as well as writing coding for emulator server projects. He began to design his first websites and has written numerous different programs over the years for different purposes. Olson has been repairing computers and performing IT consulting in the Grand Rapids area for nearly two years.

Olson is deploying EAS Local in the Grand Rapids area, and will have the freedom to move it around Minnesota as it starts to grow. If EAS does branch out from Grand Rapids, instead of being split into sites EAS Local will allow searching all listings within a certain radius from the user. Olson feels this feature will appeal to small towns in a way no other current solution can. Olson encourages other small area swap and sell sites to come on board as the main GR-EAS and clothing sites transition users over to the new program.

I have been in conversations with folks who seem to feel that the metro areas have the corner on the teen tech scene – I think this story proves there are young techies around the state. They just need the infrastructure and opportunity to apply their skills.

You can visit the tools at http://www.easlocal.com/ or https://apps.facebook.com/easlocal.