Day: June 17, 2011

Brickworld 2011 Part 2

Here’s the second installment of my trip report to the Brickworld LEGO convention in Chicago, for Day 2 (Friday, June 17). I went to a bunch of presentations and events:

9am: A session led by Ben Ellerman regarding the effort in 2007 by LEGO to bring in members of the adult fan community to provide input for the new castle products then under development. He showed a slide show with a bunch of prototypes from that process, and described his experiences in that project. The Q&A session devolved into a discussion about LEGO licensed products, new parts & themes, etc.

10am: Train Forum with Q&A by Jim Foulds of LEGO and the guys from ME Models (makers of aftermarket train tracks)

11am: Olivia Donahue (15 year old girl) gave a presentation on what kinds of sets she would design if she worked at LEGO

noon: Bluebrick – software for designing LEGO displays (e.g. train layouts)

1pm: LEGO Cuusoo – a new program where people can suggest new things for LEGO to make, and if 10,000 people support it, LEGO will consider making it and give 1% to the idea’s originator

2pm: Boat Races – LEGO robotics tackle the high seas of the hotel pool

3pm: Nice Part Usage – Christopher Doyle presenting some examples of uses of LEGO parts that go way beyond their designer’s intentions

I made video recordings of Olivia’s and Christopher’s presentations with my camcorder, but I won’t be able to upload them to the Web until after I get home. (I also made a videotape recording of Arthur Gugick’s architecture presentation yesterday.)

Also this afternoon I took about 20 minutes to go through all the ballrooms and make a video (using my digital camera) of all the MOCs and vendors. That’s uploading to YouTube as I type this [Update: YouTube rejected it because it is longer than 15 minutes. Sigh. I will have to wait till I get home to edit it]. It’s kind of amazing that even at a pretty fast pace it takes that much time to get around the halls. This hotel has 4 huge ballrooms, and Brickworld is using all of them.

Now, all the presentations and workshops are over and I’m taking advantage of the empty room where Christopher Doyle gave his talk to upload things to the Internet and update my blog. Soon I will go around and take photos of all (well I doubt I’ll get all of them, but I’ll do what I can) the models on display. I just uploaded all the photos I took yesterday and today so far, which you can see in the previous entry.