Celebrating 24 Years of MetroQuest!
This month marks the 24th anniversary of MetroQuest and we’re celebrating with gratitude and joy. We’ve come a long way since our inception in 1997 and I wanted to take some time to share some of our achievements, recognize our customers for the support they’ve provided us with over the years and give a huge kudos to our team in getting us to where we are today.
The origins of MetroQuest: how it all started…
Since first meeting in 1993 as graduate students, Dave Biggs and I have been obsessing about community engagement and how to improve it with technology. In 1997, we founded Envision Sustainability Tools, a software firm devoted to providing the most innovative and effective public engagement solution for urban and transportation planning. In the early days, our small team ran public meetings and set up polling keypads connected to our custom software. As the Internet grew in popularity, we were the first to develop a web-based public engagement platform that broadens community outreach, marking the birth of MetroQuest.
As technology and the software industry have evolved, so have we. From those early keypads to today’s leading SAAS tool, MetroQuest has remained at the forefront of digital public engagement by keeping customer goals top of mind while improving the platform to leverage technology improvements.
After 20 years of extensive experience as consultants with both in person and online public engagement tools, MetroQuest launched its first software as a service solution in late 2016. We started our SaaS business as Version 7 of MetroQuest and just launched Version 8 last Fall. Version’s 1 to 6 are a story for another time.
Success in Public Engagement SaaS Technology
Since January 1st, 2017, we’re proud to announce that:
- 1,254 MetroQuest surveys have been created and launched!
- 785,966 participants have been engaged!
- 20,651,392 data points have been collected!
We’ve also been named a top Technology Innovation by ICT Ready to Rocket for five years and collected awards and nominations from Most Outstanding Community Engagement Platform to Top Citizen Relationship Technology!
Inspired by Our Customers’ Success
MetroQuest’s mission is to deliver great online public engagement experiences that broaden outreach and bring people together to plan better, more sustainable and inclusive communities. Over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of working with government agencies and planning firms across North America that do some pretty amazing things! Here are a few inspiring customer stories that we’re very proud to be a part of:
- Arellano Associates set records for LA Metro. The agency engaged 6,900+ participants online with a diversity that almost perfectly matched local demographics. Check out our case study with Melissa Holguin to learn more.
- The Fairfax County and Franconia-Springfield Parkways survey, launched in October 2018, gathered input from 15,254 residents, the largest number of participants on the previous version of MetroQuest (V7).
- Since our new version launched last fall, the All aboard! Exploring transit options for the Treasure Valley survey engaged 11,700 participants online, the largest number of participants of any MetroQuest survey ever.
- One of the more compelling stories is yongeTOmorrow, a plan to reduce automobile traffic on a key portion of Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. MetroQuest was used 3 times during the planning process: Round 1, Round 2 and Round 3, and collectively attracted nearly 7,500 participants.
We expect to see about 400 surveys created and launched by our customers this year. We look forward to seeing what our customers accomplish moving forward!
A Big Thanks to the MetroQuest Team
To wrap things up, I’d like to extend my appreciation for the amazing work of the entire MetroQuest team. Without your support and dedication, MetroQuest would not be where it is today. The company is truly graced with employees like you – a massive thank you to each and every one of you!