L to R - Michael Tollette & Buddy Doebbler featuring ConstrucTÜBE.

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The venture is the brainchild of two of Texas’ premier publishers of construction information – the Virtual Builders Exchange, LLC (VBX) and Construction News, Ltd.  According to its creators, the new site capitalizes on their combined strengths and represents a logical evolution in their core businesses.

“The Builders Exchange was among the first in the country to embrace online technology to get information to the construction industry, and Construction News is the recognized leader in print publishing for that same market in Texas,” said VBX Chief Executive Officer Michael Tollette.  “We’ve blended those strengths and added a whole new mix of features that have never been combined into one site.  The result is ContrucTÜBE.”

 Buddy Doebbler, publisher of Construction News Ltd. sees this collaboration as a win-win for both parties.  “ConstrucTÜBE, draws on our knowledge and experience in publishing and pairs it with VBX’s technological and e-commerce expertise.  It gives both of us a new way to reach our existing audience and appeal to a whole new group of people.”

Tollette and Doebbler started brainstorming on the concept for ConstrucTÜBE about a year ago.

“I’ve watched Michael for 11 years and have been fascinated with his ability to look into the future, understand what will be needed and deliver it,” said Doebbler.  “About a year ago, we started talking about how much things have changed in the way people communicate.  We agreed that things like instant messaging, blogs, podcasting, tweeting and video posting are commonly used by people in our industry, but they are not common to our industry.  It made sense for us to join forces to bring the best of these capabilities into one site for the construction industry, and do it in a way that’s informative and easy to use.”

The site organizes print and video information into “channels” of interest, including innovation, education, headline news, product information and job searching.  Further, it allows users to post their own content, especially video, in either a public or a private forum.  Construction industry companies will have the ability to post information that can be seen globally or restrict content to just a few companies or personnel as they see fit.

“It’s no secret that major news outlets do a poor job of reporting on the construction industry unless it’s bad news.  There is a story behind every project, and it’s a story that is rarely told,” Doebbler added.  “ConstucTÜBE allows for self-promotion.  We want people to promote what they’re doing and we want to do our own feature stories on things that other news media typically ignore.”

ConstrucTÜBE will be user friendly for novices and appeal to people who routinely use social networking and media sites.

“The younger generation can multi-task,” Tollette explained.  “Watch any twenty-something and you’ll see they can listen to music, play a video game and text message at the same time.  They’ve learned from birth to handle information coming in from all sides.  We have to adapt our techniques and technologies to meet those abilities.” 

Even the tagline for ConstrucTÜBE was carefully designed.

“The idea to use the word ‘uber’ to describe the site came when we were trying to explain to ourselves what we were trying to accomplish,” Tollette noted.  “The word comes from Old German, meaning ‘the ultimate’ or beyond anything of its kind or class, but it also happens to be a pretty common slang term used by young people to describe things that are bigger and better.  It just seemed to fit.”

Not only do Tollette and Doebbler expect ConstrucTÜBE to be user-friendly for people of all generations and levels of technical experience, they expect it to go beyond the boundaries of Texas.

“Some of the content will be coming from the four Construction News publications in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio,” Doebbler said.  “But we are already talking with people all over the United States who are interested in what we’re doing.  Today there are no boundaries.  The need for good information is the same in Texas, New York, California, or Dubai.”

The website will be free to use, but users will need to register.

“In order for the site to get the following that we believe it can, then it’s got to be free, but people will have to register.  By going through the registration process, they will have the ability to comment, interact, and post information, but we will have the ability to make sure inappropriate material isn’t posted,” Tollette explained.  “This is a construction industry site, for construction content.  We’ve put perimeters in place to ensure that it stays in the genre that we envisioned.”

“The construction industry may have a reputation for being slow to embrace change, but it adapts quickly once it occurs,” concluded Doebbler.  “We know the time is right for this technology and this site, and we’re excited to bring it to the construction industry.”

ConstrucTÜBE will open its’ “uber pipeline for construction information” on Mar. 17, 2010 at www.ConstrucTUBE.com