Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report
2. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report, Part 2
3. Brickworld 2011 Photos

The contest sign-ups were first-come, first-served, and only the first N people to sign up got in. Since I didn’t sign up until after opening ceremonies I missed out on the first contest, the blind build. That contest had a maximum of 70 people (2 groups of 35 each). In the blind build, you are given a small LEGO set to assemble without being able to see the parts. This is done by having a triangular shaped “blind” placed over the parts, so that the only thing you can see is the instructions, and you have to build the model by feel only. The fastest time wins, with 10 seconds added for each error (wrong color, wrong part, sticker misaligned, etc.). It was fun to watch, and to tease some of my friends who were participating. At the end, everyone got to keep the set they built, and the best 10 from each group went into a final competition with a larger set to determine the overall winner.

After watching the blind build, the time came for the speed build contest. Here we don’t have any special handicaps, we just need to assemble the provided set as quickly as possible. For this contest 50 people could participate, and though I wasn’t in the top 50, there were enough no-shows that I could take part anyway. The set we built was set 8080 Undersea Explorer, part of the Atlantis line. I didn’t win – the winner finished 10 minutes before I did – but I got to keep the set so all was not lost.

The next contest was the Master Build, where contestants were given a set and told to use those parts to build something of their own imagining using a provided theme. Since I had been in the Speed Build I wasn’t allowed to be in this one, so I left and went down to the Exhibition Hall to see the models on display (and being set up).

I looked at the models for a while, visiting all the tables. I didn’t take any pictures, just let myself look around. Too often at conventions I get so focused on photographing things that I don’t really get a good look at them. So this time I wanted to take time for just that. In the process I ran into some Bay Area folks who were headed to a nearby pizza place for dinner, and invited me to join them.

After dinner we rushed back to the convention for the evening program, which consisted of a few announcements and presentations and the keynote from Hillel Cooperman about what LEGO fans love to hate: Megabloks. He told us about the crappy quality of some Mega sets he had bought, and then brought out a blender which was provided by the Blendtec company, makers of the “Will it Blend?” videos. The blender was then given out as part of that night’s door prizes. By the time the evening program was over it was about 10 pm and there was just an hour to look around the exhibition hall before we had to leave.

In the morning I did some work on the Bricks by the Bay registration system and went to the LEGO store. The line there was enormous! I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to take advantage of the combination of their convention discount (up to 30% off) and the double VIP points in October. A friend picked me up and took me there and we stood in line for an hour and a half or so, making forays from our spot in line to grab more and more LEGO sets. I had planned to meet a non-LEGO friend for breakfast but the shopping trip took so long we had to cancel that plan. After shopping we headed back over by the convention and went to McMenamin’s for lunch. We ran into some BrickCon friends there and joined them.

We finished lunch just in time to dash over to the con for the afternoon’s activities. The first one was the Iron Brick contest where, given a fixed number of 2×8 bricks, each team of 4 was to build a bridge that could span 20 inches and hold as much weight as possible. My team’s bridge failed at 35 lbs, but the winning team supported 115 lbs! I did the same event last year and the best teams’ bridges were so strong they ran out of weights and had to use 2.5gal water bottles as 20 lb weights.

Following the Iron Brick contest there was another contest, the Relay Build. We again broke up into teams of 4 people and had to build a set as a group. The parts from the set were divided among three tables, and each of us stood at one of the tables while the fourth member ran back and forth, and each time we added something to the model the people swapped roles, so each of us got a turn to run to another table. There was a cheating controversy, but overall it was a fun game and I’d like to try something similar at Bricks by the Bay.

I took a break from activities after that to work on the BBTB site some more and chat with my friend Holger Matthes, who had hosted me for a night when I was visiting Germany 10 years ago, and we did some LEGO building in his living room with some of his friends. We were both amazed that it had been that long.

The next event I did was the “101 bricks” challenge. For this you bring an assortment of 101 LEGO parts to the game, and the organizer assigns you a topic on which you need to build for only 3 minutes, using only the parts you brought. One person is chosen as the winner and this is repeated for 10 rounds, with more rounds in case of a tie. It ended in a 3-way tie, but in the first bonus round there was a clear winner. Some of the themes were:

1. The President of the US – I missed this round as I had to go run to the other room and find 101 parts to build with from the play brick table!
2. Venus Flytrap – I built a rather bad looking model of the plant
3. Rustic Log Cabin – I had a small pile of brown bricks, a roof, and a chimney
4. I’m Going To Kill You, James Bond – I had a yellow figure with white shorts and a laser coming at him between his legs
5. Godzilla – I built an Anime style super hero (think Voltron)
6. I think that I shall never see a thing as lovely as a tree – I did a blackened (burned) tree
7. Timepiece (clock, etc.) – I did an hourglass

There were 3 other rounds but I forgot what they were already. After the event I talked to Roger Hill (the guy who was running it) about how I wanted to try running this game at BayLUG meetings and/or Bricks by the Bay. He gave me some tips and allowed that he’d never played it as he is always the one running it. So I challenged him to build something with my pieces up against the game’s winner, a guy named Chad, who was still there. I gave them the theme “Escape from the Zoo” and they both did a creditable job, but Chad was the clear winner.

I worked on the BBTB site through the dinner break and went to the evening ceremonies room, where I talked to the organizers to get permission to announce the BBTB site being available. I ran out for some takeout from the deli counter at the Metropolitan Market and was munching on that as the ceremonies began. The emcee (Shawn? Shaun? Sean? I’m not sure how he spells it, which is funny since he made several jokes about people spelling his name wrong…) was late getting back from dinner, so they had to stall with some impromptu Q&A from Gary McIntire (Master Model Builder at LEGOLAND who used to be a Seattle AFOL) and Wayne Hussey (BrickCon main organizer). When the program began properly I was invited up to announce BBTB registration being open and got a strong response from the audience when I asked who was planning to come. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the fact that we have the steampunk convention in the same hotel.

(Last year, I went to BrickCon and really flogged BBTB in a lot of my interactions with people, to the point where I heard through the grapevine that I had been annoying people with my persistent “Are you coming to Bricks by the Bay?” questions. I really tried to keep that to a minimum this year. I hope I succeeded.)

After my turn on the stage the evening ceremonies really got underway with a presentation about the financial ups and downs of the LEGO company, followed by the awards ceremony for all the MOCs. There were more door prize drawings but I still didn’t win any.

After the ceremonies I went down to the exhibit hall to take pictures, and got all the steampunk and art stuff before we had to leave. I also took pictures of Zack’s stuff (an awesomely detailed house, bust of Bender from Futurama, and a wedding cake topper), as he was leaving that night. They lock down the facilities at 11pm each night, which I found disappointing. I took a bus back to my friend’s house and went to bed.

Sunday morning I slept in and got to the convention around 11, which of course was full of public by then. But I still managed to go around and take lots of pictures, and I hope I got all the models on display… at least I got most of them. At 2 I went over to the meeting rooms for a panel on LEGO blogging, but I already covered that in another post.

The closing ceremonies featured people other than me winning prizes again, and then the teardown really got rolling. I loitered around the Exhibition Hall for a while and then went out to dinner with a group of people, and we were joined by a couple of the convention organizers. After eating we had a lively discussion about BrickCon “post mortem” and hopefully that will contribute to making it even better in the future. We kept talking until the restaurant closed, and then continued in a nearby hotel lobby until about 2am. I got a lot of great ideas for Bricks by the Bay out of that too.

In the morning I rode the bus to downtown Seattle and walked around a bit, had some lunch, then took the light rail to the airport and flew back to San Francisco.

Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report
2. BrickCon 2010 Trip Report
3. BrickCon 2009

After foolishly staying up until 2am the night before, I got up at 5am Friday morning (that’s right, 3 hours of sleep) and drove to the San Francisco airport. I parked my car and rode the shuttle to the terminal, checked my bag, and flew to Seattle. I didn’t bring any LEGO to the convention. I had a checked bag with all my clothes, toiletries, etc., and a carryon backpack with my laptop and camera. I brought a large suitcase – the one I had bought in Chicago at Brickworld – and packed an empty duffel bag as well in case I would need more luggage for the return trip (to carry all the prizes I hoped to win, and the LEGO I planned to buy). Since I was staying on the floor at a friend’s house, I brought along my Aero Bed mattress, which added to the bulk and weight of my suitcase, but not too badly.

The Seattle airport is a happy place for me. As a child I used to fly to Seattle at least once a year with my parents to visit my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins, and we would always arrive at the N terminal on United. My flight this time was on Alaska but we did fly into the N terminal. Sea-TAC Airport has this underground “train” system (I use quotes because it uses rubber tires on a concrete guideway, so it’s not really a train) that connects the N terminal island to the rest of the airport. As a kid I used to love standing at the front of the train and watch out the front window, and even though I’m 40 years old now, I still enjoy it.

I picked up my bag and made my way by light rail and bus to my friend’s house where I took a brief nap before heading down to the convention. The location of the convention and my friend’s apartment were perfect for this – the #28 bus runs directly from downtown, right by Seattle Center, and continues on to a point a few blocks from her place. It follows the exact route I would take if I were driving, and runs frequently, and all day, from 5am to midnight.

I attended the opening ceremonies, which was mostly an orientation type presentation to explain the program of events and location of things, and then went to a meetup of the California LUG (LEGO Users Group) members. There were a couple of us from BayLUG but many more from southern California. We talked about our LUGs’ upcoming event plans and a little about Bricks by the Bay, about which I mentioned that we would shortly be opening up registration and looking for volunteers. After that, I spent the afternoon watching and participating in various contests.

My plane is starting to board, so I’ll continue this later.

Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report, Part 2
2. BrickCon 2010 Trip Report
3. BrickCon here I come

I don’t have one of those T-shirts that says “I’m Blogging This.” but I am anyway. There’s a video recording being made, so you’ll be able to watch it later if you wish.

Topics include:

• Search engine optimization and blogging strategies
• “Hiring” other contributors to write for the site
• Using Amazon affiliate links
• Shifts in the online LEGO community (LUGNET, Flickr, Brickshelf, blogs, etc.)
• In-person events (BrickCon, other conventions, LUG meetings, etc.)
• Not profitable to run a LEGO site
  • income not enough to live on
  • TBB gives back to the community instead of profiting (incorporated as a for-profit org, but run as if it were a not-for-profit)
  • FBTB is a sole proprietorship
• What benefit do you get from it?
  • Andrew: Not the fame. Acts as a journal of his experiences in the community
  • Josh: Just likes to write about LEGO, to day what he thinks
  • Ace: Not a MOC builder, so it is his way to feel part of the community; also likes running contests

Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report, Part 2
2. BrickCon 2011 Photos
3. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report

Related posts:

1. Bricks by the Bay 2011 Registration now Open!
2. Bricks by the Bay Photos
3. Bricks by the Bay Facebook event created

I spent an hour or two photographing everything in the Lake Michigan ballroom, and afterward was feeling really tired, achy, and hungry. So I set my computer to the task of uploading all those photos, and headed out for dinner.

I walked down Milwaukee Ave to where I knew there was a lot of retail and restaurants, at least fast food. I was hungry for something like fish & chips, greasy and salty and filling, but I spotted a little sushi place in a strip mall and decided to check that out. It turned out to be expensive too (Food around there is super expensive! At first I thought it was the hotel, but everywhere seems to be pricey) but I had a large platter of tempura shrimp and vegetables, and a couple pieces of sushi. The food was decent, but I’ve had much better. The place was called “Sushi Gallery.”

After dinner I stopped at Walgreen’s for a few snacks and beverages, and walked back to the hotel. The roads around here are really bad when it comes to sidewalks. Milwaukee Ave has sidewalks on both sides up until about 50 feet from the intersection where I needed to cross for the hotel. I had to walk on the grass (which was luckily dry) to get to the intersection, then after crossing at the crosswalk (at least they had that) I had to walk on the grass again as there was no sidewalk leading up to the hotel entrance (though with a slight detour I could have walked across the parking lot). In California, there would have been more complete sidewalkage, I am sure.

When I got back to my computer it had finished uploading all the photos so I spent some time fixing the ones that were rotated 90 degrees one way or the other. I left my computer and most of my stuff in the hotel room and went to tackle the Ravinia ballroom.

I stayed up late Friday night until around 2am taking pictures in Ravinia, and still didn’t finish. I got up in the morning in time to finish taking pictures there, which I did, but not before I ran into some technological issues. Late at night when I was trying to dump my camera I ran out of disk space. So Saturday morning I was talking to one of the guys from the local train club and he offered to take me to Wal-Mart. I bought a 1TB small hard disk and a large cheap suitcase for all the LEGO sets I had bought.

I copied all my files to the new disk, but it’s really slow. I’m not sure why but it seems USB activity on my computer is significantly affected by its presence (I think it’s not capable of talking USB to two devices at once, and my laptop’s memory card reader slot counts as USB). Every time I take a picture it saves both a 10 megapixel JPG file and a RAW file – the latter being several times larger than its corresponding JPG, containing the original data captured by the camera for post processing purposes. I’m considering turning off the RAW feature when I take pictures at events like this but it still seems like a good idea in case I ever need to go back and reprocess a picture.

Anyway, once the crowds came pouring in, I spent a lot of time in the hotel room, where I managed to get all the LEGO sets I’d bought into the suitcase – by removing them from their boxes and putting them into extra plastic bags that I’d got from the LEGO store. I did go down and take some pictures though, to show what it’s like full of people. Once the crowds left I went over to the next ballroom, Botanic Garden, and took pictures of the models there. One large display in the center of the room was being torn down while I was there – someone had received news that a family member was in the hospital, and he had to go right away. One other thing that won’t come through in the photos is the Christmas music that was constantly coming out of one holiday-themed display. The owner of the display was nowhere to be found, but the music was pretty pervasive throughout the room. Christmas music, especially highly religious songs, should not be played in a secular public event in June, full stop.

While I was taking pictures in that room, the announcement came over the PA for all attendees to gather in front of the hotel for a group photo by Joe Meno, editor of BrickJournal. We stood on and in front of the fountain by the hotel entrance and smiled on the count of 3, then I went back inside to take more pictures in Botanic Garden, and back to my room to download them onto my computer and hard drive.

Saturday night at 10pm, one of the best things about Brickworld happened – the World of Lights and Sound. The “World of Lights” was started two years ago, when I came to Brickworld for the first time in 2009, and now they’ve added sound to it. It’s promoted by LifeLites, a company that produces white LED lamps for use in LEGO models. Lots of people added the lights to their creations and when 10pm on Saturday rolled around, the room lights were turned off, leaving the models to shine for all to appreciate.

Most of the models were unlit, but those that were did some pretty amazing things. Some people used black light, which causes transparent LEGO parts (especially the transparent greenish yellow color) to glow. Many of the town buildings were lit, and a few of the vehicles (such as trains) had interior lighting and/or running lights. There were some mosaics built out of transparent colored parts (like stained glass) that were backlit to good effect.

There was a contest, sponsored by LifeLites, and by far the most popular (and, as it turned out later during the closing ceremonies, winning) entry was the Star Wars Death Star Disco model. It was filled with all kinds of lights including in the dance floor, and was accompanied by a playlist of disco music. On the dance floor Princes Leia was getting down with Darth Vader while a variety of Star Wars characters were standing around in various poses.

Also announced in the closing ceremonies: Next year they’re adding “and Motion” to the “World of Lights” theme.

I stayed up way too late that night. I had a lot of technical difficulties with my pictures stemming from the disorganization that came about due to filling up my laptop’s disk. It turns out that a few files from the Ravinia Ballroom were filed under Lake Michigan by mistake, but only on my hard disk (not on Flickr). I noticed there was a discrepancy in the number of photos in the Lake Michigan folder on my computer and the set on Flickr, so I uploaded them to Flickr and filed them under Lake Michigan … only to look at them and realize they were really in Ravinia. So I deleted them from Flickr. And then I realized that I had not uploaded them under Ravinia either, and should have just edited the descriptions instead of deleting them. So next I undertook a full scale audit to verify the location of each image, check where it was on Flickr compared to on my hard drive, and then to upload whatever’s missing. This took many hours, largely because I keep stopping what I’m doing to chat with people, and I stayed up until about 3am to do it.

Sunday morning, I went downstairs just in time to take photos of the vendor’s room before it opened up to the public. I brought all the LEGO store bags I had left over, including the extra ones I was given to help pack my things, and gave them to Larry Pienazek and his wife. Larry is a friend and long distance (Michigan) BayLUG member whom I’ve known for as long as I’ve been into LEGO, and they are selling off some of their excess inventory of older LEGO sets. They gave me a small set by way of thanks, which was really nice.

I also sat down with Jim Foulds in the LEGO booth for quite a while and we talked about the LEGO conventions. We discussed some of the differences between the various conventions and I asked him for feedback on Bricks by the Bay. He suggested having more group activities, and we talked at length about how to lay out the vendor room and deal with the crowds of kids who act like ants looking for Brickarms.

Afterward I went off in search of a quiet place to work some more on the photo organization and uploading. I went over to the build room, where kids were given a chance to build whatever they wanted out of a huge quantity of dark grey 2×4 bricks. I plugged my laptop in and uploaded the remaining photos that were missing, deleted some duplicates, and rotated ones that were sideways. Partway through the process of fixing sideways pictures, my laptop died due to lack of battery power. Turns out the outlet I was using was dead! Something similar happened Saturday night too, with an outlet in the hallway. I ran into a hotel employee who asked how I was doing and I told him about the dead outlets. Then I went up to the hotel room where I finished the job (but I couldn’t upload photos over the cellular connection I was using) and ate some Fritos and had a quick chat with Valerie on the phone.

After the public left, everyone set about tearing down their models. Having no models on display, teardown was a breeze for me :-)

I was in the vendor room when the public hours ended and teardown began. I talked to several vendors about coming to sell at Bricks by the Bay, and about possible sponsorship opportunities. I also went over to the next room where Vincent Kessels (the guy from Holland who had agreed to go on the boat tour with me the next day) was taking down his things, and talked to him for a bit. But then they locked down the ballrooms and we gathered in the Ravinia room for closing ceremonies.

In Ravinia they had taken down all the tables in one corner of the ballroom and set up a video screen and chairs facing it for closing ceremonies. That area had been largely free of tables anyway, as it had some floor-based robotics exhibits (including the giant chess and Robo Rally boards). The winners in several categories of MOC contests were announced, along with instructions for the final door prize giveaways.

After that I arranged for a taxi to the train station for our trip into Chicago, leaving the airport at 7am to catch a 7:30 train, and went up to my room. I organized my things a bit, read a bit, and took a little nap, until Mariann came in and started talking about dinner. We went down to the lobby and met up with a group of people, 10 in all, and all agreed to go get dinner. We sent two people to scout ahead to see if we could get a table at the Cooper’s Hawk restaurant next to the hotel. They reported success so we all trooped across the parking lot and sat down. The service was rather slow, but the food was excellent. I had salmon with asparagus and broccoli (special version of their salmon dish meant to be dairy-free). As we were leaving we tried to pay for our meal, only to be told it had been taken care of. Apparently one of the people in our group had quietly settled the bill (and this was not a cheap restaurant, especially with the alcohol some of the people had to drink with their meals!) and disappeared.

After dinner I packed up my belongings as much as possible and went to bed.

In the morning we checked out of the hotel. We had a bellhop take our bags out of the room and stack them in the taxi (a minivan, thankfully). Vincent met Mariann and me in the lobby and we left a little late, due to some trouble working out how to split the bill and still give Mariann her receipt for tax purposes.

When we arrived at the train station, we paid the cab in cash and went inside to get the tickets and as we were fumbling with our money we heard the train arrive. We were planning to get on a train that left at 7:30am, and it was the last train to Chicago for the day so we couldn’t afford to miss it. In a panic we got the tickets and rushed aboard, where we settled the splitting of the taxi and train fares… my brain does not work well for doing arithmetic on so little sleep :-)

Eventually we got to Union Station a bit earlier than planned, and I figured out that we had actually gotten on the penultimate train, which was apparently running about five minutes late! We found the luggage lockers and put our bags away for the day, then headed out to see the city. We took the El train for a couple of stops, just so we could say we did it, and then walked to a Corner Bakery cafe that was across the river from where Vincent said the boat tour left.

We left the restaurant with just enough time for a leisurely stroll across the river and down to the dock… only it turned out that he was talking about a different boat tour company, and ours was another three long blocks or so away! I called them to confirm their location as we were walking there, and realized the error. But as we jog/walked to the correct location I realized we weren’t going to make it there by 10, so I called them and told them we were just a block away and they said they would hold it for us. We got there a few minutes after 10, bought our tickets, and went aboard.

The boat tour was great. The weather was a little questionable – warm, but with an intermittent light drizzle. We sat under a canopy, but there were open seats in the front row so we could still have a great view. The tour guide explained about the different architects and styles of the various skyscrapers along the river, mixed with history about the city and the river. The tour lasted 90 minutes and included excursions up both the north and south forks.

After the boat tour, we had some time to kill, since it was 11:30 and Mariann and I didn’t have to be at the airport until 2:30 or so. We walked over to Navy Pier and wandered around it, admiring the stained glass window exhibit and having lunch. We took a taxi back to the Union Station and Mariann and I got our luggage. Vincent helped us schlep our luggage over to the El train, which Mariann rode to Midway airport where we got on our respective flights and went home. (Vincent had a later flight to Amsterdam out of O’Hare.)

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011 Photos
2. Brickworld 2011: Lake Michigan Ballroom Pictures
3. Brickworld 2011 part 1

Miscellaneous (14 photos)

Update: added 6/22/2011

River Ballroom (Vendors) (79 photos)

World of Lights (100 photos)

Botanic Garden Ballroom (434 photos)

Ravinia Ballroom (1,014 photos)

Lake Michigan Ballroom (512 photos, 1 video)

Events (51 photos)

Collection

All the above sets are also available through the All Brickworld 2011 Photos collection.

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011: Lake Michigan Ballroom Pictures
2. Brickworld 2011 Part 2
3. Brickworld 2011: Event Pictures

slideshow

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011 Photos
2. Brickworld 2011: Event Pictures
3. Brickworld 2011 Part 2

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.

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011 part 1
2. Brickworld 2011 Photos
3. Brickworld 2011: Event Pictures

Click the image above or click here for a slideshow.

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011 Part 2
2. Brickworld 2011 Photos
3. Brickworld 2011: Lake Michigan Ballroom Pictures

When I arrived at the hotel, I checked in at the front desk and took my stuff up. I changed into jeans and a Bricks by the Bay T-shirt, and went downstairs. I saw the tail end of the opening ceremonies – a presentation about the new LEGOLAND Florida which opens in October.

After that I milled about in the lobby for a while. I talked to a couple of people including Arthur Gugick, the guy running Thursday afternoon’s architecture workshop, about doing the architectural boat tour on Monday. He seemed positive about it, and said he would give me some time during that workshop to mention it and gauge interest.

I went across the road to get some takeout dinner, and ate it in the room, and went to bed.

Thursday morning, I attended a workshop on sculpture and landscaping, presented by one of the builders from LEGOLAND, Mark Larson. He’s a very entertaining speaker and showed a lot of great photos of waterfalls and rocks and stuff, such as this one by Mark Kelso:

A specific building technique he described that I had not thought of is illustrated by this image:

The top row is not lined up with the bottom row – it is offset by one stud. This helps significantly strengthen the wall, so that if twisted it won’t come apart as easily.

For the presentation he used some random bits of LEGO to demonstrate some of the concepts, but it was hard to see from the back of the room. I wished they’d had a video camera (webcam?) connected to the projector so we could all see it.

To conclude the session we took time to build hemispheres (domes) out of LEGO bricks. We used “brick paper” to design the circles in both axes out of LEGO parts and then built them out of assorted parts of various colors that were provided. It was a bit chaotic because the parts weren’t sorted or organized, and the assortment of parts provided didn’t match up with our needs very well, but it was still interesting to work on it.

The big lesson in making a sphere out of LEGO is to remember that any way you slice up a sphere you get a circle, not just at the 90 degree surfaces but also at all angles throughout the sphere you should see circles all over the surface. He showed a picture of a large LEGO sphere (designed by computer) that they did at LEGOLAND in which you could see circles all over it.

The afternoon workshop that I attended was on LEGO architecture, presented by Arthur Gugick with a special guest appearance by Shannon Sproule (aka Shannon Ocean), a great builder from Australia. I video-recorded the entire thing. Arthur began by talking about his experiences building LEGO buildings and how he was chosen to build the Taj Mahal model used in the Australian indie movie “Taj” and how he was flown to Australia where he built an exact copy of the model so the film could have a backup prop. He then introduced Shannon, who was the on-set LEGO guy responsible for the models after Arthur went home. After all this, Arthur showed a short video of a TV commercial he was in for a now-defunct independent LEGO toy store. I had been talking to Arthur about the architectural boat tour, and he let me make an announcement to the group at this point about it. Only one person came forward to sign up, a guy visiting from Holland who is flying home Monday evening. Arthur is interested too but needs to confirm child care before staying an extra half-day. After my announcement, Arthur then brought out the bricks that Shannon had schlepped back from Australia for the prop that was destroyed during the filming (at one point the protagonist destroys it in a fit of frustration/rage). The parts were dumped on the floor and everyone there got to take some.

I wandered around for a bit after that, and eventually met someone who was thinking about going to the LEGO store soon, and we did that. I’m afraid I got a little carried away and spent over $700 on LEGO sets at 30% off. Only one of them was for someone else – one of the BayLUG members responded to my call for requests for stuff to bring home. Luckily these people had a large vehicle and we were able to get everything back to the hotel.

When I returned to the hotel there was a robotics contest going on. The challenge had been issued in the early afternoon to build a MINDSTORMS robot that could deposit balls in five different containers placed around the field of play. The game was contained in a wooden box – a flat table surface with about 6” high walls all the way around, all made of plywood. The various containers, all made of LEGO, were worth 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points each, in varying degrees of difficulty in terms of size and placement. If you got balls in all 5, you would earn 55 points. The amazing thing is you had to build and program a robot in just a few hours to accomplish this task! There were several very clever solutions, and it was fun to watch them attempt (with varying degrees of success) to earn as many points as possible in several rounds of competition. In the end, naturally, Steve Hassenplug won (he always wins these sort of things) but some of the other competitors were quite good too.

After that I sort of roamed around for a bit. They had a “ballroom crawl” where soft drinks were provided and everyone roamed around the ballrooms full of displays as a group, socializing and admiring what people brought. After going through all the ballrooms, I went upstairs to write this and go to bed.

Related posts:

1. Brickworld 2011 Part 2
2. Brickworld 2011 Photos
3. Brickworld 2011: Event Pictures

Related posts:

1. Bricks by the Bay 2011 Registration now Open!
2. Interview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer
3. Bricks by the Bay Photos

So if you’ve been waiting for this news to register for the convention, your wait is over. Head on over to the site now and sign up!

http://www.bricksbythebay.com/register/

Related posts:

1. Registration is now open for Bricks by the Bay 2012
2. Bricks by the Bay Facebook event created
3. Interview with yours truly about Bricks by the Bay

I left home around midnight Thursday morning (September 30) after attending the Earthquakes game (they lost 3-0 to Chicago) and attending the Wednesday Night Hop swing dance.

Besides my own stuff, I was carrying cargo for two other people – Marcello De Cicco’s big WWII Japanese warships (an 8-foot-long Yamoto battleship and 4-foot-long Yukikaze destroyer) took up most of the space in my van with four huge boxes. I also brought up a box for a young BayLUG member (Nick Barella) who was flying up with his father Louis. The van was pretty full floor-space wise with all the rear seats removed, but there would have been room for a lot more. I only brought two bankers-boxes of my own LEGO since most of the models I have were displayed at BrickCon last year.

The first few hours of the drive were uneventful. I listened to podcasts all the way up, catching up on old episodes. Around 3:30 am however, I got a flat tire. I was going through a section of road that was being resurfaced, and hit a rock or something sharp that apparently punctured the left front tire, but I didn’t realize it right away. After I got back on regular pavement however, the tire pressure warning light came on and the car started feeling a little funny so I pulled over, and saw that the tire was completely flat! I slowly drove to the next exit so I could change the tire. By the time I got there it was pretty badly shredded, but at least there was still rubber between the wheel and the road.

It took me a while to figure out how to get the spare tire and jack sorted as it was the first time since I got the van that I had to do this, but everything was in good order and I put the spare tire on without too much trouble. By the time I had this done, I was pretty spent and thought I’d find a place to sleep. I was originally planning to pull over somewhere and take a nap in the back of the van, but the thought of moving the LEGO boxes and the shredded tire around to make room was daunting. So I gave up and decided to stop at the next cheap motel I found, which turned out to be the Super 8 in Redding. I checked in at 5am and went to bed, setting my alarm for 9:50 so I could get the free breakfast (waffles) before they closed it down at 10. I got up when my alarm went off, got dressed, and went down for a waffle. I spilled syrup on my pants and sock and one shoe. I took off my socks and washed the shoe and changed into shorts.

From there, I drove to Portland, with a brief stop in central Oregon to have the bad tire replaced. I went to the Waltz Eclectic and danced for a few hours, then spent the night at my friend Marion’s house.

Friday morning, I left Portland around 10 for Seattle. I reached Seattle around 1pm, just as the opening ceremonies were set to begin. They had a catered lunch just before the opening ceremony, so I had some of the letovers – salad and a cheese sandwich – while I listened to the announcements. I won a small Power Miners set in the door prize drawing, and signed up for some contests. As I had an hour or so before the contests were beginning, I went back to the van and took all the LEGO stuff to the exhibition hall, and went back up to the Rainier Room for the contests. After the opening ceremonies, we all queued up to receive a special gift from LEGO: an Exo-Force set (one of three surplus sets that LEGO had) and a minifig.

The Blind Build contest is an interesting challenge where you have to assemble a LEGO set without seeing the pieces, in a limited time. You are given a triangular shaped box with felt sides, with hand slits so you can reach inside. The third side is open so that observers can heckle as you fumble around for parts. There is a 10 second penalty for every error – and it’s impossible not to make some errors if there are parts of the same shape but in different colors or patterns. Since the set in question has four minifigs, it’s almost certain that you’ll make several errors. I was selected for the second round, and watched (and heckled a little) the first round people attempt build the set. They were given 15 minutes originally, but so few of them were anywhere near done that it was extended to 20. Even so, nobody finished the set. When my turn went, it was announced that we would have 40 minutes, and the first group could get another 20 minutes later to complete their models. However, at about the 17 minute mark they announced that it was time for the Iron Brick contest, and I asked to stop at 20 and do the remaining 20 later so I could go do that contest.

Iron Brick is inspired by Iron Chef, but I felt they could have done more to imitate the TV show. Groups of 3 people were each given a bag containing 100 2×8 bricks and 2 8×16 bricks, and told to build a bridge that would span two tables placed 15 inches apart. The 8×16 bricks were to provide a platform to hold weights; the design that held the most weight would win. I was in a group with a deaf man whose wife did the sign language interpretation, which made discussing our design a little challenging. We ended up just settling on building our ideas rather than trying to describe them as the LEGO brick transcends language. We came up with a design that was basically a slightly arched truss shape, with right angle wedges to grip the edges of the tables. Unfortunately the contest organizer didn’t bring enough weights, and all but one of the designs worked fine with all of the weight (about 20 pounds I think).

When the Iron Brick contest was over I went back to finish my Blind Build, and I ended up about 10th place, roughly in the middle of the pack. I made 12 errors, which was about average as well. Then I went back to the exhibit hall to set up my LEGO sets. I had a hard time finding the coordinator for the WWII area, but eventually I found him just as the evening ceremonies were starting, and got the Yamoto and Yukikaze set up at last.

I got to the evening ceremony a little late, but didn’t miss much (except that I never had time for dinner). The keynote speaker was an executive from LEGO in charge of customer relations. She told us about her job and how they handle customer feedback, and unveiled a new set – a very detailed Harry Potter diorama of Diagon Alley! A lot of door prizes were given out, but I didn’t win any since I had already won one Friday. After that, I went back to the exhibit hall to finish setup of my own models, mainly the Scrambler, which had disintegrated pretty badly. I then set off for Bellevue and the LEGO store.

As at every LEGO convention I’ve attended there are two specials on offer – everything in the store at 10-20% off (discount is tiered based on total purchase price), and in addition there is a large “scratch and dent” area set up in the mall hallway outside the store. These are sets with damaged boxes for half price. For the “scratch and dent” sale, everyone was assigned into a group by randomly drawing colored bricks from a bag, and the groups were randomly selected to go in and pick out 1 item per person. I’m in the 8th group, and got a Grand Emporium (Set # 10211), a $149.99 set for $75! Once everyone was done picking one set, they had a second pass through, with everyone going back in reverse order. They had a third pass in the original order to get rid of what was left, and you could take two items. Finally they had a free-for-all to get rid of the scraps. In the past at these events (including at Bricks by the Bay) there have been a lot of complaints about vendors buying up scratch and dent sets at half price to sell at full price, while there were still fans waiting their turns. That didn’t seem to happen this time, and I think these new rules worked well. In addition to these discounts, the LEGO store is offering double VIP points, and they gave us points on our purchases.

I finally left the mall around 1am and went to my friend Sue’s house where I would be staying for the weekend, along with former master model builder Mariann Asanuma. The three of us stayed up late watching TV and talking. I slept in really late Saturday morning and didn’t do much during the day. I didn’t get to the convention until 1:30pm, and missed out on the “101 bricks” challenge I had signed up for that was at 12:30. I even made sure to pack a bag of 101 bricks for it. Basically it was a series of building challenges, where you were to build something to a theme in like 5 minutes, using only the 101 bricks of your choosing that you brought from home. I was able to watch part of the contest, but missed the chance to participate. I ended up using my 101 bricks (all in dark grey) to make a frame for my badge so I could display the badges for all the conventions I’d attended.

I was also signed up for the “build in a bag” contest, which happened next. This contest was inspired by some small LEGO sets that were introduced a few years ago, where you receive a plastic box containing all the parts for the set in one bag, and the challenge is to assemble the set (typically a race car) without opening the bag. I’ve done it before, and it’s tricky. But for this contest we got a much bigger set, a Space Police set, which we had to build inside a gallon ziploc bag. I’d never built minifigs in a bag, and that was definitely tricky, especially the visor on the cop’s helmet. But I did get it done, just not in time to win anything. The consolation was we got to keep the set we built.

After that I went down to the exhibition hall, and got there just as they were closing down the public day. I went around to all the tables and took pictures until it was time to do the parts draft for the free Exo Force set we had all recevied.

A parts draft is a way of getting a large number of identical parts instead of the variety of parts included in the set. Each participant provides one copy of a LEGO set, and all the parts from all the sets are sorted out into little plastic tubs. We then draw lots to determine drafting order, and each person takes one lot as their turn comes around. I was pretty happy with what I ended up with.

After that, I finished my picture taking, until I had filled up all available memory cards – 10 GB in all! Then Louis and Nick took me out for pizza as thanks for transporting Nick’s box of LEGO up to the convention while they flew up. We then went back to the Rainier Room for the evening ceremonies, which included awards for a lot of amazing models, but none were for me (or for the people whose models I brought), sadly. We also had a Q&A session with Steve Witt, LEGO’s community liaison, and a lot of door prizes were given out to people other than me.

After the ceremony, we had the continuation of the Iron Brick contest from yesterday. To augment the weights, they had obtained four 2.5gal containers of water! The procedure was to add a container of water, and then if it didn’t break, add the metal weights on top of that, and if it still didn’t break to remove the weights and add another water, then continue until it does. The bridge I helped make managed to support two water containers and all the weights, but then collapsed. It fell to one side, so I’m not sure if it was just loaded in an unbalanced way, or if it gave out, but either way we didn’t win. There were two that worked with all four bottles and all the weights, one of which was designed by Dr. Bram Lambrecht, who has a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and the other was designed by Gary McIntire, a LEGOLAND model builder. We broke the tie by having Gary stand on each of the bridges, and Bram’s collapsed more quickly so we declared Gary’s team the winner. My team came in fourth.

Once all that was over, I wandered around taking a few more pictures – one large group was doing another parts draft, while another group was playing Dirty Brickster (a game similar to a white elephant exchange, but with LEGO sets in shopping bags, instead of random junk wrapped in Christmas paper).

I went to the convention around noon and watched two presentations by Mariann Asanuma in the Rainier Room, then headed down to the exhibition hall. The public day was in full swing, and it was packed solid. There were 20-foot aisles between tables, and they were full of people. I took some pictures of the crowds, going up on the balcony to get an overall view. I was in a grumpy mood already due to some personal issues and being in that crowd didn’t help, especially with all the little kids underfoot. But soon, 3pm came around and they herded people out with PA announcements and lights flickering, and we started tearing down. I got Marcello’s ships put away without incident, and boxed up my stuff. I also collected a suitcase to bring home for Steve Putz as well as Nick’s box.

The closing ceremonies were held in the exhibition hall since everyone was already there. They announced the total attendance was over 10,000 public and over 400 fans (attendees), both of which are shattering previous records. We also set a new record for BrickCon’s space by having both the Exhibition Hall and Rainier Room. The next BrickCon will be September 28 through October 2, 2011, and the announced theme is “Building a Community.” It’ll be the 10th anniversary of BrickCon, which started out as “Northwest BrickCon” and was a small gathering of 25 local people in the Rainier Room. They’ve come a long way since then…

After the closing ceremony, I pulled my van up to the loading dock and loaded it up. I drove to Sue’s and took her out for sushi dinner to thank her for her hospitality.

Sue made us waffles Monday morning, and the three of us (Sue, Mariann, and I) feasted on homemade waffles with berries and bananas and real maple syrup. After that excellent breakfast I hit the road for Portland. On the way, I’m stopped at Dan Parker’s City Blocks shop in Tacoma, where he’s having an open house for BrickCon attendees. Dan is a Certified LEGO Professional and runs a business that does some LEGO-related events for kids, classes, and I believe custom models. About a dozen guys were there. City Blocks is a business which rents space in the Freighthouse Square complex in Tacoma. They have LEGO models on display there, but the main purpose is to do custom work for customers (e.g. trade show displays built out of LEGO, etc.) There was a spread of free food and lots of bricks to mess around with. The Freighthouse Square is doing a haunted house for Halloween, and City Blocks is making LEGO Miniland scale (same size as seen at the LEGOLAND park) models of the various rooms in the haunted house. He built a really cool building to house them.

I reached Portland around 4 or so, and went straight to the LEGO store at Washington Square Mall. Since there’s no sales tax in Portland, I wanted to get a few things that they didn’t have in Bellevue because the BrickCon attendees had snatched them all up. I suggested to the manager that they ought to have the 20% discount available at the Portland store the day after BrickCon, but I doubt they’ll go for it. I got the new Tower Bridge and the new Power Functions cargo train, and filled up two cups of Pick-A-Brick including a bunch of orange 1×4 bricks. I’m going to build an orange house or something, I guess. I also got a lot of pink 1×2 slopes, inspired by some of the art that was displayed at Bricks by the Bay comprised entirely of those.

After getting some pizza and doing some book shopping at Powell’s, I went to Random Waltz. Portland has two weekly waltz nights, on Monday and Thursday, and I made it to both of them. (I did the same thing last year for BrickCon as well.) The only problem was my dance shoes were missing! I realized I had left them behind at the waltz last Thursday. However, they were found when the hall was being closed for the night, and put into lost & found. I gave $10 cash for postage and my address to the woman who runs that dance, and she’ll mail them to me. Luckily I still had an emergency pair of Capezios in the car, so I was not unduly inconvenienced. After Marion and Jack got home, I stayed up talking with her for a bit while she put away dishes. She asked about Steve Putz, who I know from BayLUG and whose suitcase full of LEGO sits in my van as we speak – it turns out she went to high school with him! I sent him an email saying hi for her and telling him I was staying at her place.

I got up and left Marion’s about 8am and picked up some Voodoo Doughnuts to bring back to California, which is sadly deprived of Voodoo Doughnuts. (Someone should really do something about that.) I got home around 11pm.

Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report, Part 2
2. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report
3. BrickCon 2009

Related posts:

1. Going to BrickCon
2. Home from BrickFair, thinking about BrickCon
3. Home from BrickCon

Related posts:

1. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report
2. Home from BrickFair, thinking about BrickCon
3. BrickCon 2009

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

Related posts:

1. BBTB: Some good, some bad, some ugly… but mostly great
2. Registration is now open for Bricks by the Bay 2012
3. Bricks by the Bay 2011 Registration now Open!

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…

Related posts:

1. Bricks by the Bay Photos
2. BayLUG Museum Show Open through January 17
3. Great Train Expo San Jose 2008, Day 1

As it turned out, my friend Donia who I met dancing in Santa Cruz was moving to Seattle that weekend, so I was able to combine helping her move with attending the convention. It also got me a place to crash so I could save the cost of a hotel room. I drove her car to Seattle, while she followed in a van she borrowed from a friend of hers. After the convention, I drove the van back home. On my way north, I stopped in Portland for the night Thursday night, and stayed at the apartment of another friend I knew from dancing. While I was there I went to the Waltz Eclectic and had a great time! In the morning I did a little Goodwill shopping and had lunch with yet another dancing friend before heading to Seattle.

I got to the convention Friday in the early afternoon and unpacked my LEGO models. I brought the Scrambler, various cars and trucks and RV’s, a few train models, and my DC-3 airplane. The Scrambler and DC-3 were motorized, so in keeping with the theme of the event, “Bricks in Motion,” I thought it was especially important to bring those.

Friday night we had the opening ceremonies, where the new 10210 Imperial Flagship was revealed. There was much oohing and aahing. Afterward we all went to the LEGO store in Bellevue where we were able to get discounted LEGO sets – 50% off “scratch & dent” sets (prize tickets were used to determine order for selecting up to 4 items) and 20% off everything in the store. It was quite crazy, as it always is at these events, but a lot of fun too. I think I restrained myself pretty well, all things considered, but I still spent a lot of money.

Saturday was the first day that the exhibit was open to the public. We had about 4500 people go through looking at all the LEGO models on display. Most of the day I spent with my nose in the computer, avoiding the crowds. I didn’t go around and take pictures at all Friday or Saturday, though. A few people had to leave Saturday night, so I missed a few models, but Sunday (even more people came on Sunday; over 4700!) I made up for it in terms of picture-taking. I managed to go around to all the tables and take pictures Sunday, mostly during the public hours. Also, the friends I was staying with came by Sunday and I was able to see the exhibit through their eyes which was a lot of fun.

Sunday was Donia’s birthday, so we went out for sushi and chocolate. We were going to go to a swing dance featuring Gordon Webster but didn’t manage to get around to it. (But it’s OK because he played at the Friday Night Blues in San Francisco this past Friday, and I was able to go to that – the music was amazing!) But back to the BrickCon trip… On the way home I stopped in Portland for the day, and met with a colleague from Oracle who was based there. I went to Random Waltz in Portland that night (If you like dancing and ever find yourself in Portland on a Thursday or Monday night, you gotta check out those waltzes. The dance community there is very welcoming and friendly, and I had a great time at both of them!), stayed the night in a hotel paid for by the company, and then went home the next day. I got home around 2am Wednesday morning.

My pictures from BrickCon can be seen on Flickr (or view as slideshow). Warning: there are over 400 photos so it may take a while to see them all!

Related posts:

1. Train show this weekend, then off to Seattle for BrickCon
2. BrickCon 2011 Trip Report
3. BrickCon here I come

And then, I’ll be driving up to Seattle next week for BrickCon! A friend of mine happens to be moving to Seattle for the first of October, so I’ll be borrowing/ferrying her car up, while she follows up in a van she’s borrowed from a friend of hers, which I’m driving back home in. Sounds complicated – wish me luck! Anyway I’ll be coming up with an assortment of MOCs, though probably not as much as I took to Portland for BrickFest this spring – I’m carrying some of her stuff up, and anyway I ought to be able to see out the rear window.

Related posts:

1. BayLTC at San Jose Train Show, Sep 2009
2. BayLTC at San Jose train show
3. Bay Area LEGO Train Club at San Jose Train Show in Sep. 2005