As Route 66 approaches its 100th anniversary, a three-person independent technology team has earned national recognition for building an interconnected digital ecosystem designed to transform how travelers discover destinations, businesses connect with visitors, and communities preserve their stories. Connect66's ambitious effort brings technology, tourism, and historic preservation together to help carry America's most iconic highway into its second century.
CHICAGO, Nov. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- In an industry often associated with enormous development teams and substantial financial resources, three people working to solve longstanding challenges along America's most iconic highway have earned a place among the Top 10 in the 2026 ONCON ICON Top 100 Technology Teams.
The team behind Connect66 didn't set out to compete with corporate technology giants. They set out to solve a problem.
What began as an effort to address fragmented communications, scattered destination information, limited business visibility, and disconnected digital experiences along historic Route 66 has evolved into an interconnected collection of functioning technology platforms, built around one guiding principle:
Every Place deserves a trusted digital home.
Solving Problems Before Building Technology
Despite its worldwide recognition, Route 66 has long faced challenges connecting its attractions, businesses, historic landmarks, and communities with the travelers who want to experience them.
Information is scattered across disconnected sources. Marketing efforts often operate independently. Worthwhile attractions can be difficult to discover, and even identifying the precise location of a historic landmark can be surprisingly challenging.
Connect66 Founder and CEO Kevin Niebergall recognized that these were not simply isolated problems. They were interconnected challenges requiring an interconnected solution.
"We didn't start Connect66 with a list of technologies we wanted to build. We started with real problems that needed solving," said Niebergall. "Route 66 already had extraordinary places, passionate communities, and remarkable stories. What was missing was a way to connect them. Our challenge was to understand how those pieces fit together, then build the technology around the solution."
Rather than developing another destination directory or a collection of unrelated travel applications, Connect66 began building a shared digital foundation centered on individual Places, connecting travelers, businesses, tourism organizations, photographers, historians, and communities.
Three People. One Vision. A Connected Solution.
Turning that vision into functioning technology required a combination of strategic thinking, technical expertise, and continuous collaboration.
The Connect66 technology team consists of Niebergall, technology leader Omar Sandoval, and software engineer and developer Micah Boon, bringing together entrepreneurial vision, technology strategy, and software engineering.
Sandoval, previously recognized as an ONCON ICON Top 50 Technology Professional, brings extensive experience developing practical technology solutions to complex organizational and community challenges.
Together, the team has worked to make multiple sophisticated systems function as parts of a larger experience while keeping the technology accessible to the people who use it.
"The innovation isn't just in any one application. It's understanding how the challenges connect and building solutions that strengthen one another," said Sandoval. "That requires a team willing to challenge assumptions, work through difficult trade-offs, and keep the people we're serving at the center of every decision."
For Micah, that philosophy translates into making the complexity behind the scenes feel simple to the end user.
"Travelers shouldn't have to understand the technology behind a personalized itinerary, and business owners shouldn't need technical expertise to manage their digital presence," said Micah Boon. "Our job is to handle the complexity, so they don't have to."
An Ecosystem Where Every Contribution Matters
The team's work has taken shape through several interconnected platforms, each addressing a different aspect of the larger challenge.
- Explore66: A live destination discovery platform featuring more than 1,500 geolocated Places along historic Route 66. Businesses can transform basic listings into interactive Place Pages through a guided activation process, then manage their presence through an intuitive dashboard.
- 66Journey: An automated trip planner that creates personalized, end-to-end Route 66 itineraries based on travelers' interests, available time, and travel preferences, helping them discover extraordinary Places along the way.
- 66Stories: A storytelling platform that connects personal experiences, family memories, photographs, and firsthand accounts to the actual Places where they happened, capturing the living stories of Route 66 across generations.
- 66Vault: A collaborative historical preservation platform where historians, institutions, communities, and everyday people can contribute photographs, documents, artifacts, and personal recollections, bringing forgotten pieces of Route 66 history to light and reconnecting them to the Places where they belong.
Coming next is the Explore66 Mobile App, an interactive travel companion designed to bring the entire experience onto the road, connecting personalized itineraries, navigation, nearby discoveries, local happenings, traveler contributions, and the stories and history behind the Places travelers encounter.
What distinguishes the approach is how these components are designed to strengthen one another. When a business activates its Place Page, travelers gain better information. When travelers share photographs and experiences, those Places become richer for future visitors. When historians contribute archival materials, the stories connected to those locations can be preserved for future generations.
Each contribution has the potential to make the broader ecosystem more useful, creating value that extends beyond any individual application.
Together, the platforms support five principles:
Discover. Plan. Experience. Share. Preserve.
Route 66 Is Just the Beginning
The recognition arrives as Route 66 celebrates its 100th anniversary, bringing renewed attention to the communities, landmarks, and stories that have shaped the highway for generations.
For Connect66, the centennial represents an opportunity to make those Places more discoverable today while helping preserve their stories for tomorrow. Although Route 66 is the starting point, the team's Place-centered approach is designed to extend to other destinations and regions facing similar challenges.
"Our mission is to help travelers discover extraordinary places and create lifelong family memories, give small businesses the visibility and opportunities they deserve, and help historians preserve the stories and legacies that might otherwise be lost," said Niebergall. "Because when places lose their stories, communities lose part of their identity."
For a three-person team, earning Top 10 recognition marks a significant milestone in an ambitious, ongoing effort.
"We're incredibly honored to receive this recognition from OnConferences and grateful to everyone who supported us," said Niebergall. "It's an exciting milestone for our team, but in many ways, we're just getting started."
About Connect66
Connect66 is a technology company developing an interconnected digital ecosystem centered on Places. Beginning with historic Route 66, its platforms bring together destination discovery, automated travel planning, community engagement, traveler storytelling, photography, and historical preservation.
Learn more at Connect66.com or explore destinations at Explore66.com.
Media Contact
Connect66
Kevin Niebergall
(708) 825-4462
Media Contact
Kevin Niebergall, Connect66, 1 (708) 825-4462, [email protected], Connect66.com
SOURCE Connect66
Share this article