Bill Ward’s Brickpile

The 2010 Vintage Vehicles & Family Festival was held in Palo Alto on July 25. BayLUG took part with a small booth featuring my downtown buildings, some models by teenage member Jack Marquez, and Paul Sinasohn putting together some LEGO kits. Our club was really overextended this day, as it was also the last day of our San Leandro Brick Show and the Buzz Lightyear event at the Hillsdale Shopping Center. This was the first time our club was involved in three separate events at the same time! (And I made it to all three – if you count the teardown, that is…)

Click the picture for the photos, or browse a slideshow.

On July 23-25, members of BayLUG volunteered to help LEGO Master Builder Steve Gerling and LEGO store employees, and thousands of kids, build an 8-foot tall statue of Buzz Lightyear, from Disney’s Toy Story movies.

The event was held at the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo, CA, near the LEGO store. Kids built 8 by 16 stud "bricks" out of 2×4 and 2×8 bricks, which were then assembled into the large model corresponding to the 2×4 bricks in a smaller sample model. BayLUG members volunteered to assist with the project, making sure there were always enough bricks for the kids to build with.

I was there on Saturday all afternoon, and came back Sunday night to help with teardown, but they had already done most of it already by the time I got there, thanks to the help of all the kids. We weren’t paid for our help, but we were given discounts on LEGO which is just as good :-)

Click the image above, or here for a slideshow.

I’ve just submitted my registration fees for BrickCon, the LEGO convention in Seattle. It’s held the first weekend in October – starting September 30 and going through the weekend on October 3. I hope to see you there!

This was the opening weekend for the the Brick Show in San Leandro, CA at the Bay Area Family Church, organized by Johannes van Galen and featuring BayLUG/BayLTC. The show is ongoing through July 25 so come on out and check it out!

The show features a large train layout and various other displays in all themes of LEGO. Admission is $5 each for adults (age 16+) and $3 for kids ages 3-15. Kids under 3 are free.

I took a bunch of pictures around the display today. Click on the image to see them:

You can also view the pictures as a slide show on Flickr.

Here are the pictures from the Bay Area LEGO Users Group & Train Club’s exhibit at Maker Faire 2010 Bay Area in San Mateo, CA.

We had a 40′ by 50′ space just like last year, but this time we set aside about half of it as a play area for the little ones. We dumped out loose LEGO parts on the floor (including a DUPLO area for the really little ones) and spread them out on some tables as well, so that fairegoers could build whatever they wanted. We then had some tables set aside to display these MOCs (My Own Creations), and had volunteers who would take pictures of the models and put them up on a computer. I brought my video projector and we had a continuous slideshow running all weekend with pictures of these MOCs.

Besides the play area, we had the usual train layout, and a row of tables for other themes such as space and sculptures.

You can see all my BayLUG pictures from Maker Faire in the BayLUG at Maker Faire 2010 photoset (slideshow), or see Maker Faire 2010 for all my Maker Faire photos, including both LEGO and non-LEGO displays.

My Bricks by the Bay Pictures are available on Flickr if you want to take a look at some of the great models on display and the crowds on the public day. The convention was held Friday-Sunday, April 9-11, 2010 in Fremont. We had such great media coverage that throngs of people flocked to the hotel to see the LEGO models on Sunday, April 11. People waited for hours in a line that snaked out the lobby and through the parking garage and we had to turn people away once we realized the line was so long that people at the end might not get in before closing time. It was a huge success and we’re looking forward to having an even bigger and better convention in 2012.

Click the image to see the pictures or view them as a slideshow.

So, that was what it’s like to run a LEGO convention.

I’m sitting in my hotel room, having just finished up the cleanup after the Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention. It was an amazing experience! The convention itself was so much fun and great to see so many of my ideas coming to life and actually working. We had nine themes, each with its own coordinator and judging categories, keynote speech by LEGO’s EVP-Marketing Mads Nipper, contests and games, and lots of door prizes. And though there were a couple times when I got really stressed out trying to make sure everything went off without a hitch, for the most part it was a seamless experience.

The public day though, was a bit of a debacle. We had such great publicity that the turnout was tremendous. I was interviewed for television several times, and the people came out in droves. People stood in line for hours in the cold and rain and the ballroom was packed elbow-to-elbow so much that we had to stop letting people get in line at 1:30. We had a few irate people after that, but most people understood that even if they got to the head of the line, they wouldn’t be able to stay long since we had to close at 4.

For the most part though, it went pretty well. We had a lot of positive comments and those who did get in seemed to have a great time. I just have to remember to not let a few bad apples spoil the barrel.

I’ll post my pictures online soon but right now I think I just want to rest and recover…

Last weekend I, along with other members of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club, had a display at the Northern California Train Collectors Association Cal-Stewart Spring Meet in Santa Clara, CA.  This is one of our favorite locations to do a train show – the hall is beautiful, and the crowds are manageable enough that we don’t have to put up our “sneeze guard” plastic barriers on the layout.  It was open to the public only on Sunday for four hours.  Pictures from the show can be seen on Flickr (or view as a slideshow).  Enjoy!

On January 24, Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) had our annual meeting at Dave Porter’s house in Woodside, CA. Dave always sets up a very impressive layout in his loft featuring a huge collection of LEGO sets and his own custom creations, with running trains. He has been inviting the club up to his house every January for the past few years to share his layout and give us a chance to show off what we’ve been up to. Marcello de Cicco brought his Japanese Navy ships to show off, and Brian Thiemer and his wife brought their newest MOC, a baby, to the meeting!

We also had a presentation about Bricks by the Bay, and BayLUG agreed to loan some money to the nonprofit org. that is putting on the convention to help with start-up costs. If you haven’t signed up yet to attend the convention (April 9-11, 2010, in Fremont, CA) please do so soon! Early bird pricing ends February 23.

The photos from the meeting have been online for a while now (slideshow) but I have been neglecting to post about it here.

This weekend, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group opened our annual “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. We’ll be open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day) through Sunday, January 17. Admission is $2 (free for BayLUG and MoAH members and kids under 2), which is split 50/50 between the club and the museum.

Come on down and check it out soon before the publicity spreads and we start getting huge crowds! Last year we had 1500 people on the last weekend, with people waiting for several hours in the rain in a line around the block to get in!! We have our first TV interviews this Friday morning for a Spanish language station…