As mentioned last week, I attended a LEGO House® online fan event on 26 March 2021. Having attended other events in the past, LEGO has used the Microsoft Teams platform. It’s not the best or my favorite, but it works I guess. We were greeted by the host, Astrid, who is a Senior Event and Tour Manager in the LEGO House® Sales and Marketing Department. She was hosting from the Red Experience Zone in the LEGO House®. From the looks of it, there were around 50-ish people in the meeting.

Astrid - Senior Event and Tour Manager in the LEGO House® Sales and Marketing Department

The moderator for the event was Are Heiseldal (sorry for the blurry screen shot). Are was scheduled to fly to Denmark for the event originally, but I think he did a great job moderating virtually. He definitely did his research ahead of time, had some great questions lined up, and then mixed in some of the fan questions. He was supported in the background by Jan Beyer, LEGO’s AFOL Community Integration Manager.

The first AFOL to LEGO® Designer interview was with Justin Ramsden (originally from the UK). Justin had decided to stay at work and was in the LEGO® Innovation House. He had set up his background with the sets he helped design in the background. Justin went through his story on how he joined the LEGO® Group and some of the differences he had like a documentary being filmed on him while he applied (not sure if it is still online or not, but worth a watch if you can find it). I won’t repeat the whole story here, but Justin is very charismatic and definitely seems to enjoy interacting with the fan community and talking LEGO.

He discussed his first set which was the 2015 San Diego Comic Con set: Throne of Ultron. He mentioned how he didn’t have a copy and he had to go into the vault to have an example. Then Marcos Bessa posted a picture of his copy of the set. There might be a trade happening at some point…

Justin recommended building all that you can to become a better builder/designer if you are interested in joining LEGO. Looking at his resume, he has taken advantage of switching teams and building sets in different themes. He talked about how this gave him different perspectives that he was able to bring across the company to different themes. Pretty cool.

Lastly, someone asked about the shirt he was wearing. He said his Mom made it for him. She apparently was in the livestream with us and should have taken orders because a lot of folks would have paid up right then and there.

Marcos Bessa was up next. He is one of the multiple Portuguese designers working at Billund. He was at home, but did have a few of his sets behind him along with one of his favorite sets from back in the day. Apparently a Portuguese comedian has coined him the “Cristiano Ronaldo of Lego.” If you don’t know who this is, do some internet searches about soccer players.

Marcos told the story about how he came to work at LEGO. I enjoyed the quip about how he was trying to save up for an iPhone, saw the #10182-1: Café Corner modular building, and picked it up instead of a phone. Probably a better investment and he was still able to get the phone later while it’s a lot harder to get a Café Corner.

He has been with the LEGO® Group for 10 years now and said that part of what he likes about the job is the free bricks. Can’t say I blame him there.

I was going to ask a question and someone else got to it first, but it was how you balance your hobby and design work. I enjoy LEGO, but in my spare time. Marcos’s work is LEGO so he mentioned that after eight hours, he’s ready for something else. He enjoys other hobbies when he’s not at work. Makes sense to me.

After each of the Designers were interviewed, they did small group breakout sessions. I was randomly assigned to Marcos and his group. Some folks got to ask some great questions. I enjoyed the setup and how they broke us up.

Two of his MOCs were mentioned during the event. The first one is his very first MOC. The second is a modular building he designed. He mentioned how he’d really like to design a modular for LEGO and it’s one of the running things he has whenever he sees Jamie Berard. We’ll see. Maybe one day, he’ll introduce a new modular building to us.

The final interview was with Milan Reindl. Milan is on the Technic team and has been since joining the LEGO® Group. His back story is that he grew up in the former Czechoslovakia. He didn’t have any LEGO bricks or sets to build with, but some friends did and he enjoyed them. Once communism ended, his family took a trip to Germany and his parents bought him a few small sets. Since he had so few pieces, he learned how to build lots of things with small pieces.

Fast forward a bunch of years, Milan became a teacher and would build things and take them into school to show his students. He eventually joined LEGO and demonstrated how he took one of his sets and built 7 or 8 cool things with only the pieces from that set. It was very impressive to see.

He has a YouTube video online of a Technic glider he built that really flies. You can video his full channel here were he talks about a lot of Technic things.

It was also pointed out that he has friends who don’t like him building with their kids. Apparently the builds he makes are too good and then the kids expect their parents to put out builds of that quality level. I wonder if they hide the bricks when he shows up?

Milan got to design the brick version of the 2017 Technic 40th anniversary logo. They let him keep his brick build version. A screenshot of him with it is below. Here’s a video of it.

Milan Reindl - 40th Anniversary Technic Build

I won’t go through all of the discussions we had, but overall I had a great time. The event was around two hours long and while I had to pay ~$32 to attend, I think it was worth it. I learned a bunch, got to hear about working at LEGO, and got to interact with fellow fans from around the world to include Australia, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

At the end, everyone turned on their video cameras and we took a group screen shot. Can’t say I’ve ever done this before, but it was a cool idea considering we can’t be all together due to location and the pandemic.

And one more… not sure how they did this, but here we all are in an auditorium…

Brick on!

Post Event Write Up -- LEGO House® - Online Fan Event - AFOL To LEGO® Designer

LEGO House® - Online Fan Event - AFOL to LEGO® Designer