Attend the Longest Running LEGO Fan Convention From Your Home

The AFOL portion for BrickCon 2023 is coming up fast. It will be 7 through 10 September 2023. If you’re like me, you’d love to go in person, but the airline ticket, hotel costs, and transportation costs of going in person would really eat into your budget. The good news is you can still attend virtually. You can buy your ticket here and still participate in presentations, get a live tour of the MOCs on display, play the games with other attendees, be eligible for prizes, and buy the convention merchandise (convention model, swag bag, t-shirts, etc.). Registration is $25 for all the access. There’s still time to sign up.

Hope to see you there! Happy building!

BrickCon (Virtual) 2022 - Day 4

The last day of BrickCon!

First, I tuned into a Q&A session with Steven Walker about BrickCon and future events. Next year, the physical convention is moving to Bellevue, WA for the first time in 21+ years so there were a lot of questions about that. On the virtual side, they said they will keep it going as long as they can get at least 50 people to attend and they’d like to virtual side to go on 24 hours a day if possible during the convention as they know there are folks in different time zones. Maybe someday, I’ll make it to BrickCon in person.

Next up I attended the BrickCon Commerative Model Q&A with Chris Malloy. Chris has been designing the BrickCon models since 2017-ish. He lost count on the number he’s done in total. Chris went through the design process, challenges with parts, creating the box, designing the instructions, and getting the parts.

Here’s his slide where he introduced himself.

Here’s the final model design. Chris said designing the model was pretty easy. The challenges came in the rest of the process.

Chris mentioned challenges he had with new pieces not being in Stud.io, trying to make sure all the parts could be sourced using the LUGBulk program, and then some issues with printed pieces as seen in some of the examples below.

Here’s the copy of the box. Chris showed how he did a pencil sketch, colored it in, and then it became the box.

The custom tile is original to this set only. The left side shows some of the draft versions before the center one became the final version.

Chris mentioned that he had to add a lot of pieces during each step in the instructions to keep the instructions to a specific page count. This kept the price lower. They considered digital instructions, but decided the better option was to go with printed ones so people could build them at the convention and they wouldn’t have to worry about keeping the instructions active online for years to come.

Great presentation and great model Chris! Thanks to you and the BrickCon team for putting this together. I can’t wait for my set to arrive.

Next up was Stuart Harris from the LEGO® House again. He talked about how they go about developing the exclusive models sold at the brand store in the LEGO® House. Here are the last 3 sets.

Here are some concept models of #40501-1: Wooden Duck. Stuart built the concept models and then turned them over to another designer for the final production model. He also showed how they advertised the set within the LEGO® House.

One interesting note, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen is the one who approves the sets and Stuart said that while he’s honored that Kjeld is the one to approve, it is pretty nerve wracking to bring a set to his office.

Here is #40502-1: The Brick Moulding Machine. It started off as an idea to make the moulds, but then turned into the machine that you can see in the LEGO® House today.

Next, Stuart talked about #40503-1: Dagny Holm - Master Builder. He talked about Dagny, getting the set built, and choosing what they would go with in a final set.

Stuart talked about the models they design for the LEGO Insider Tour as well, but the more popular discussion was this 3D printed duck below. Here’s an article from Bricket.com on the duck. This was recently released at the AFOL Fan Media Day as well as at Skærbæk Fan Weekend (I think). There were a lot of questions on this duck and a ton of interest. Stuart had one on hand to show off. He mentioned that it may return in a wider offering sometime in the future so we’ll see what happens.

The last presentation I participated in was by Becky Gorlin. She is a middle school level educator and LEGO Robotics Instructor at Granite Falls School District in Washington (about a 50 minute drive from Seattle and the convention area). I sadly didn’t catch the whole thing, but it sounded very interesting and it was cool to see how she uses LEGO in all aspects of education. I’m hoping they post this one online later.

Lastly, the closing ceremony. There were words of thanks, some admin notes, info on future conventions, lots of prizes, and then awards. I didn’t capture all of the awards, but here are the honorable mentions and winner of the Best in Show awards.

First, the 2 honorable mentions. These winners got a copy of #10497-1: Galaxy Explorer. Not sure how the group is going to share the set, but great build!

And the winner got a copy of #10305-1: Lion Knights Castle.

Nice work MOC builders!

It was a great convention, even if I did attend virtually. Thanks to those who worked hard to put it on and safe travels to everyone on their way home.

I will post more once my swag and the convention model arrive.

In the meantime, happy building!

BrickCon (Virtual) 2022 - Day 3

Back for more fun!

We started the day watching a tour of the convention floor before the public was allowed in. It was quick but great to see everything. I hope it gets posted online so I can go through it again and hit pause to look at things.

The first presentation I attended was by LEGO® House employee Stuart Harris. I have heard presentations by Stuart before and am familiar with the LEGO® House based on my 2019 visit there. I tuned in to get an update on some of the changes which was good. Beyond that, a lot of it was a repeat, but that was okay. Stuart was in person at the convention so that was a nice change versus having a lot of the LEGO® employees online.

The next event I attended was titled “Building Feedback: Peer Review in the LEGO Community” and it was presented by Kyle Keller who also writes for the Brothers Brick. Initially, I thought it was a bit ridiculous. Have we lost the ability to communicate with each other without hurting feelings or being rude? I would think this should be obvious, but I need to step out of my box and understand that the world is different. It was probably a good thing for people to realize that they can’t hide behind their online firewalls and need to give good constructive feedback. Kyle gave some lessons and then did practice with some pictures of old builds that he had. Props to Kyle for handling a challenging topic.

The last presentation I attended was by Deb Banerji titled “Lego Mosaics: Algorithms, Software, and Other Fun Stuff.” Deb built an open source program to take pictures and turn them into mosaics out of LEGO parts. He explained how he optimized the program, some challenges still involved, and a lot of other higher math that was above my brain. Very interesting though. The link to his site is below or you can find it here.

The awards ceremony was on day 3, but it was a bit late for me. I hope the best folks won!

BrickCon (Virtual) 2022 - Day 2

Day 2 was another great day. I started off by attending a few presentations. The first one was “The Lego News Room: Working at the Speed of Social Media.” This was about how LEGO in the US handles social media, carries on conversations across multiple channels, and keeps up with real time popular items. I’m not great at social media by any means so this was eye opening to me and it was interesting to hear what they had to say.

The next presentation I joined in on was “New Element Design from a Mechanical Engineering Perspective.” Two engineers from LEGO in Billund, Denmark talked about some of the parts they’ve designed, some of the challenges they’ve encountered, and what their experiences are working on the team.

Here are a few copies of slides they presented with examples of some parts the presenters worked on. They did specific parts, not the full minifigues.

They also showed us some of the software they use to make changes to parts. The picture below is an example of a part that they walked us through to talk about how they adjusted a part to improve its quality.

The next session I joined was an Ask Me Anything session with Jordan Paxton of the AFOL Engagement Team. Jordan helps run the LEGO® Ambassador Network (LAN) and while I have been a part of conversations with the LAN and AFOL Engagement Team in the past, this one was very heated and emotional. I was actually quite shocked how passionate people were. I’m not 100% certain on what is going on, but I guess a few LEGO User Groups (LUGs) were removed from the LAN and with that, they lost access to support from the LEGO Group and discount parts.

Two notes I did take were that we shouldn’t expect to see new set reveals at conventions and the brittle brown bricks issue has been solved, but LEGO has done a poor job advertising it. I guess the brown parts were stored at the top of the warehouse (warmest) and there was a color change issue that took place. Since then, they have added fans to warehouse and the issue has been fixed. What are you all seeing with your newer brown pieces?

The last thing I participated in was the Keynote presentation which was given by Angus MacLane. He is probably best known as a Director with Pixar, but is also an AFOL. I didn’t know it, but he was the fan designer behind set #21303-1: WALL-E. He stated that he was in the perfect position for the build as he was a part of the movie team so he knew about WALL-E well in advance and could start working on a LEGO version. Also, he was the one to approve the IP for Pixar so the LEGO designers had to work with him on any changes they made.

His introduction was given by someone in a Buzz Lightyear costume which was awesome!

He bragged that in making the Lightyear movie, he made sure the ship had a yellow windscreen to make sure that LEGO produced another yellow windscreen part. I don’t know how true that is, but I’m not sure I care. Glad the piece is out there now.

His talk was awesome, well put together, and very relatable for LEGO fans. As someone mentioned, this session was well worth the $25 registration fee to sign up. I actually think it may end up on YouTube in the near future. If it does, I’ll add a link.

The main purpose of the talk was to present how he goes about building MOCs. He uses the SUCCS method (defined below) and he went through various examples of builds he’s done and how he used this method. I don’t think I could do the talk justice here so just stay tuned for the video.

Onto day 3! Happy building!

BrickCon (Virtual) 2022 - Day 1

I took some time off from work to attend BrickCon 2022 virtually. It was also a good opportunity to do some building, sorting of parts, and organizing my store so I’ll take it.

Day one was pretty slow. This is due to the physical show just setting up so most of the attendees are assembling MOCs in the main hall.

For those of you not familiar, BrickCon is held in Washington state and this is the 21st year it has been held. 2020 kicked off the virtual side with COVID and BrickCon kept up a hybrid version in 2021. 2022 has a hybrid version as well. You can attend sessions via Zoom, there are games for virtual sessions only, and you have access to a Discord server just for attendees.

The first session I attended was titled BrickCon 101 which was an introduction to attending a virtual Con and was a good overview of the events going forward. I got to hear about some of the events like an auction happening over the weekend and some of the speakers. Also, Stuart Harris from the Lego House popped in to say hi.

Next up, I observed a speed build. I missed the sock build (build a set wearing socks on your hands). The speed build took set #31100-1 and an alternate build to the set was presented to the builders to assemble. The first one to finish won. The alternate build was a windmill and there were 5 participants. I was the only observer and then the BrickCon virtual host. As an observer, you’re supposed to heckle, but I kept my mouth shut mostly and watched. They finished pretty quickly and then a few of us chatted for a bit.

I re-joined my family for dinner and kiddo bedtime prep after this ended.

Next up was the opening ceremony. The virtual crew got to watch the opening ceremony going on live in Seattle. The presentation had a lot of administrative notes and then some information on moving the location in future years.

There were also prizes. In person attendees won a bunch, but the virtual crew also won a few to include…

This guy!!!! WOOHOO!!!

I won #71773-1: Kai’s Golden Dragon Raider from the Ninjago line.

This wasn’t new to those present in person, but for the virtual crew, we got to see the Convention Model for the first time. It’s titled “The Wooden Duck” and it contains 346 pieces. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I should get it sometime in mid to late October. I’m looking forward to it!

Lastly, I checked in with the virtual late night social for a bit before getting to bed. They were playing a LEGO based bingo game online. I played two rounds. You go to a web site, enter your info, and get a card. Then the host did random generated picks of various LEGO elements, minifigures, and other related items. I didn’t win, but it was fun and it was impressive to hear how many people knew which sets some of the obscure pieces were from.

I’m looking forward to day 2. It should be a few presentations and the key note speaker in the evening.

Happy building!

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

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.

Are Heiseldal

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.

Justin Ramsden

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.

Marcos Bessa

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.

Marcos Bessa - First MOC

Marcos Bessa - Modular Building MOC

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 Reindl

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.

Group shot

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

Brick on!

Group Shot - Auditorium

10 Reasons to Attend Brickworld Virtual 2020

Full confession… I have never attended a LEGO fan convention before. I have been to a few shows where people display their MOCs, but that’s about it.

I heard about Brickworld Virtual 2020 that was held back in April after the fact and was excited to see it would be held again in May. I registered online and “attended” my first fan convention on 16 May 2020.

A bit of history… Brickworld was started by Bryan Bonahoom and Adam Reed Tucker with its first show back in 2007. Since then it has grown to Brickworld Chicago convention/expo and then expos in Milwaukee, Ft. Wayne, outside of Detroit, and Indianapolis. It was recently purchased by Mark Larson who had the misfortune of buying it during a global pandemic.

Not willing to give up, Mark has put together a virtual convention. You buy a ticket ahead of time and at the time of the convention, you log into your account and can join various ZOOM rooms to see presentations, MOCs, and interact with other fans.

Before I get into my list, if you missed out you can still attend virtual shows on 27 June 2020, 31 October 2020, and 12 December 2020. So you didn’t miss out if this sounds cool.

If you need more persuasion, keep reading…

1. Interact with your fellow fans of LEGO in real time.

I don’t live near an English speaking LUG and I don’t have any friends who are AFOLs. My brick interactions are with my kids, with my Non-LEGO Spouse (NLS) who tolerates my obsession, and one sided interactions with Recognized LEGO Fan Media (RLFM). This show was a great opportunity to interact with fans like me and as far as I know, COVID is not transmitted over the internet.

Not going to lie… I was super pumped to be a fan after the “convention.” It’s great to see I’m not the only fan out there.

2. Minimal cost compared to attending Brickworld Chicago in person.

My ticket to attend was $9. Granted that didn’t include my internet service provider fee, but I pay that regardless so I don’t think it counts.

If I were to go to Brickworld Chicago, I’d have to fly the ~4,300 miles to Chicago, figure out lodging, transportation, food, and be 7 hours off of my normal time. Instead I hooked my NLS’s laptop up to the TV, entertained my kiddos for a bit, had dinner, got my kiddos to bed, and logged back in for more brick fun without spending any funds I wouldn’t have spent on a normal Saturday evening. No complaints from me there.

As a joke, the Brickworld website says parking is $50 per tire. I thankfully parked offsite and avoided that fee.

3. Participate in presentations by various experts in the LEGO fan world.

There were 10 presentations by various experts. The May show included the following:
-Fractals and Functions and Knots, Oh my! with Brian Hirt from LOLUG
-LEGO Vines with Barbara Hoel from WisLUG
-Homeschooling with LEGO bricks with Maddie Jones from VirtuaLUG
-Building LEGO Domes with Peter Strege from EuroBricks
-LEGO® – Community Q&A with Jan Beyer, Community Manager from the LEGO Company
-Train Community Roundtable led by Nate Flood from LOLUG
-LEGO® – My Life in LEGO Bricks with Sam Johnson from the LEGO Company
-Medieval Roofs by David Gregory from IndyLUG
-LEGO® – Build a Tower with Your Bricks by Bo Stjerne Thomsen from LEGO Chair of Learning
-Flexible Surfaces with Barbara Hoel from WisLUG

I wanted to attend most of these, but wanted to see other things too so I missed out on a bunch. My NLS home schools my oldest kiddo (even before COVID) so she attended the homeschooling presentation and got a few ideas for things to do in the future with school. You can see my LEGO based home school day here. I also caught the end of the Community Q&A and the full LEGO® – My Life in LEGO Bricks presentation, but I’ll mention them later. Some good info was shared by many. Thank you to those who presented!

4. See amazing fan built creations in real-time and interact with their designers

Modular City - Peter Strege

-If you missed the May 2020 Brickworld Virtual, you should check out his Flickr stream. It is here on Flickr. He makes some amazing MOCs to include some impressive building MOCs with cool domes and eye catching color schemes. Definitely take a look!

Bricks in the Middle - Kevin Hinkle

-I missed this one…

Great Ball Contraption (GBC) - Bob Luzenski

-More on this one later…

Star Wars® Creations - Carey Warren/Kevin Wagner

-I couldn’t find the display online that I saw to post a link to, but it was an impressive Tatooine display with the Cantina and creatures outside. I didn’t get to ask any questions because there was an excited young fan peppering the builder with questions. It’s all good. Great work and thanks for displaying!

Harry Potter® Creations - Eric Krans

-I found a clip of Eric’s display online. Go to the 2:45 mark if you don’t want to watch the whole thing to see the Harry Potter display. It’s pretty impressive and includes a lot of moving parts… some of which aren’t shown on the linked video. Thanks for displaying Eric!

Guilds of Historica - Eurobricks

-I didn’t spend too much time in this room, but the people involved in the Guilds of Historica forums in Eurobricks shared some of their builds. They had a schedule over the convention of who shared over which time block. I spent about 10 minutes watching a builder show his stuff. If you want to see more, you can check them out on Eurobricks here or on Flickr here.

Smurfs / Futurama - Kevin Lauer / Matt DeLanoy

-I did not see the Futurama display, but I did see the Smurfs display being shown by Kevin Lauer. I found an older post talking about it on the Brother’s Brick here. I’m not sure how much has changed since this older post, but it was cool to see. I spent most of the time watching it trying to explain to my 6 year old what Smurfs were…

Dragon Bricks & Activities - Alysa Kirkpatrick & Mark Haase

-I didn’t make it to this room…

Art and Mosaics - Abbie and EJ Bocan - AbbieDabbles

-I briefly checked into this room, but they were talking about some custom minifigures that they were selling. I didn’t spend much time here.

Still Life Creations / Blacklight Creations - Barbara Hoel

-I got to spend a few minutes in Barbara’s room when she was showing a blacklight creation. For those of you not familiar with Barbara’s work, you can see her Flickr page here. The display she showed was actually shown by the Beyond the Brick team back in November 2019. You can see that video here on YouTube. I wanted to ask a few questions, but my kiddos were ready to move on at that point. Barbara, I’ll bug you some other time…

Brick 101 - David Pickett

-I didn’t catch this one…

There was one other room and I’m not sure which one on the list it was. The individual was showing off a center build while explaining how to build various things. My kiddos were around when I went into the room and they didn’t find it interesting so we moved on. I would have liked to have watched for a bit to see if I could learn any good building techniques.

5. Hear from and ask questions to members of the LEGO Company

I think the LEGO Company has done a great job getting its employees out and about to interact with the fan community. With the pandemic, they’ve been doing lots of live streams and interviews with the RLFM teams around the globe so we get to hear about the company straight from the source. Brickworld Virtual had multiple LEGO Company employees present, but I only caught part of one session and then a full session of another. The first one I watched was of Jan Beyer.

Jan is listed as the Manager of AFOL Network Events (such as Brickworld). I unfortunately missed his talk, but I caught the end of the Q&A session.

Question one was related to regional releases and why items can’t be purchased everywhere. The response was that sometimes LEGO can’t get the product license everywhere and sometimes retailers in some locations don’t want those products. He did mention that LEGO was working to get rid of regional exclusives as we have seen recently with the Chinese New Year sets.

Question two was related to regional exclusivity and the LEGO® House sets. Why could they only be released in Denmark, the UK and Ireland? The answer was with the packaging. It was not built for worldwide releases as the plan was to only sell them at the LEGO® House in Denmark. I own all three sets and could not tell you what is different on the packaging, but there you have it. Jan mentioned LEGO is looking to correct this in the future.

The next talk I saw was called “My Life in LEGO® Bricks” and was given by Sam Johnson. If you’re not familiar with Sam, he’s currently a designer on the Ideas team and has worked on City, Jurassic Park,

Legends of Chima, Nexo Knights, and Harry Potter. The picture is a few years old as it is from when the Dr. Who set came out in 2015, but it’s the same person.

His talk was about how LEGO goes from concept to actual sets. He used NEXO Knights and described how it was created, showed some concept art, explained the processes used, showed some initial models, and then showed some of the prototypes that eventually became one of the final models. I found the talk pretty interesting as it was cool to see how they go from idea to a final model.

There were a bunch of questions about Q&A. I asked if they were seeing any design delays due to having to work at home. He said he didn’t think so as they are used to connecting through digital means and future sets seem to be on track. He also mentioned that designers who like to build with physical bricks versus the digital design programs they have can go into HQ to get the bricks they need to build at home. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Two others that stuck out to me:
-He said something to the effect of the LEGO Ideas Playable LEGO Piano is coming soon and it is awesome.
-While he was not involved with the Bricklink AFOL Designer Program he said it was a great program and LEGO did not see it as a competitor to the LEGO Ideas platform. I see that as good news. We can hope it picks up again someday.

6. Interact with LEGO Masters contestants

I checked into this room to see it quite busy. At the time there were around 45 people. The hosts were from a Bricks and Minifigs store. Contestants that I saw at the time were Boone, Jessie, and Emmanuel. At the time I checked in a number of younger viewers were asking questions to the contestants. There was a decent line in the chat to ask questions and I didn’t have a burning question so I left, but I was glad to see them taking the time to encourage younger fans.

7. Talk to vendors about their LEGO based products and maybe score some deals

I didn’t sign up to attend with the hopes of buying things so I didn’t visit any of the vendors present, but there were quite a few listed who were selling their items. Had I been looking for something, it definitely would have been a good opportunity to hit up some vendors.

In addition to the vendors, Brickworld was selling its own swag. I bought the convention printed 1x8 brick for $3.50 (including shipping). I’ll add a picture of it to this post once I get it. They also had some shirts for sale which looked pretty cool, but I did not buy.

8. Show off your own MOCs to the Beyond the Brick hosts

Joshua & John Hanlon from the YouTube.com channel Beyond Beyond the Brick led a session called “You Show Us!” This was your opportunity to present what you were working on to the hosts. Both times I checked in, it was just Joshua. He was building one of the BrickLink AFOL Designer Program sets while talking with people. The first time I checked in, someone was showing him pictures of some original Star Wars helmets he had built. The second time, a younger builder was doing his best to show a build he was working on.

I put a few questions into the chat window for Joshua (lesson learned… I put “Josh” in the chat… sorry!) and he got to them when he was done chatting with the kid in front of me. I asked if Beyond the Brick had any plans to change at all and if they plan to continue the live stream format they have been using during the COVID-19 period. The answers were they plan to stick with the format they have for now and they plan to continue with live streams.

9. GBC!!!!!!

If you have never seen a LEGO Great Ball Contraption (GBC) in action, you are missing out. There are some very talented builders out there who have figured out the mechanics to move balls through various features and they are very creative. I found a few videos of parts of what I saw on YouTube here and here. My kiddos and I watched the GBC for a bit and we saw it with the room lights on and then when the lights were off and it was lit by glow in the dark balls and LED lights. It was very cool!

10. Play interactive an interactive robotic game online.

I’m aware that most LEGO Conventions have games you can play and while many of them are hard to do over the internet, the Super Robo Rally by Steve Hassenplug is not a problem. I am definitely not an expert with this game, but basically he has a game board with robots on it and users have to program brick built robots through a series of turns to win the game against competitors. Beyond that I won’t try to explain it because I would probably get it wrong. Definitely a fun opportunity if this is something you are into. Just be sure to sign up for one of the slots ahead of time.

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Bravo if you’ve made it this far… I realize the virtual experience doesn’t compare to meeting in person, but given the situation, I applaud the Brickworld team for executing the idea and moving out with it. They had a tech support room you could join with questions and many of the rooms had moderators or the exhibitor spoke up every now and then to explain how they wanted to run things.

Did you attend Brickworld Virtual in April or May 2020? What were your thoughts?

In the meantime, happy building!