Vik Duggal- The Brain Behind the Konstructr Network

For this weeks Guest Post Friday, Musings has a real treat, an interview with Vik Duggal. Vik is the Founder of Konstructr.com an online construction property. He’s worked for two Fortune 100 companies and small businesses inside and outside of the industry. He’s spent a majority of that time in a sales capacity selling millions of dollars worth of building automation product to contractors and helping building owners save millions on their energy usage. Not to leave folks in the dark he’s created vikduggal.com to help explain his process as he builds his brand online.

I want to start by saying I am humbled that Christopher Hill would ask me to guest post on the Construction Law Musings property. What Chris does here is amazing for you the reader. I hope that the Q&A for this post helps you all in some capacity and that this post sparks a dialogue about something. That being said here we go.

How did you get into green/sustainable building?

I’m not even going to try and make this up Chris. I didn’t seek out the “green” or sustainable building industry. If anything it found me! I was studying at the University of Washington in Seattle and knew by senior year that I wouldn’t be heading to a desk designing hardware. For one simple reason – I wasn’t the best at it. My capstone lab partner was a genius programmer and could debug very well and I didn’t have that same capability. In fact, the plan after my second year of undergrad was to go to law school, but that didn’t happen either for another simple reason: I can’t read fast and there is a lot of reading involved in law school, or so I’m told. I also have a tough time writing coherently so how you got me to write this guest post is still a mystery. Love you Chris.
But I love people and I have amazing capacity for coming up with ideas and working with teams to get them built. So there I was in an accelarated construction sales training program at Johnson Controls after school. It was an amazing experience and I read everything the put in front of me (it was interesting reading!), I met everyone I possibly could. So to be honest – I fell into it. Nothing in my past, nothing I studied could have allowed anyone to predict I would be here in this space.

You have clearly found a niche in the construction world (KCast is a must have podcast), what made you decide to do the KCasts?

Thanks Chris. I really appreciate your compliment on KCast. In high school I had this dream of building the tallest building in Seattle. After my first year in the industry I started to get the itch again. But now having been in the industry for a bit I started to realize that the tallest buildings don’t make the best ones. So I tweeked my dream a bit – I think you’re allowed to do that – and decided I wanted to build the longest lasting buildings in the world. Forget about “green”, my buildings will last forever. For that to happen you have to have some pretty dynamic and capable people on your team. It started with Konstructr as a network and then I decided in late 2008 that these people that were doing awesome things needed a voice. KCast provides them with a platform to do that. The criteria for being on the show is you have to love what you do in this field.

How have you found the KCasts and your networking (Twitter, Konstructr, etc.) to have helped spread your message?

Konstructr was really the idea that there needed to be a place for the most interested and “best” in good design and construction. I’ve found that KCast introduces people to various aspects of the industry they may have never known about. The message is easy right now: listen. Listen to all the amazing things going on. If you find something that makes you want to jump up and save the world then stop reading this post and get to it! We really need to collaborate, connect, and learn from one another. What do you think?

Anyone in particular that you have met in your virtual travels that makes this whole Web 2.0 journey worthwhile?

Man, that’s hard Chris and you’re going to get me in trouble with this question. Let me stick with those that I connected with online and then met face-to-face. I met some great folks in our industry late last year like Stephen Del Percio, Chris Cheatham, Shari Shapiro, and Chris Davis. Those folks are going to be big in two to three years – they’ve been doing this stuff longer than I have. They’re all super smart. I’ve made some great friends on the tech/media side too like Wayne Sutton, George Smith, Jr, Chris Brogan, Jason Keath, and Kipp Bodnar. I’ve got a long way to go. I’m just getting started in this space I’m leaving a ton of people out. But the short answer is everyone. Every single person I’ve met in this journey through the second phase of the Internet has made it worthwhile. There are people who will never listen to KCast, or listen once or message me only once. It’s fine. Everything is not for everyone. I try to learn something from everyone. I like to listen.

Anything else you want to add?

Yes – I would like to add something else. Watch watch what Konstructr comes out with this month. I’ve decided to move full-time into it (that’s an announcement that you heard here first!) so now I can really give it and the community all my focus.

I’d like to thank everyone for reading this and I hope it’s coherent. I love reading your blog. I love reading comments even more. Thanks for having me write. I really appreciate it.