Bill Ward’s Brickpile

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…

As I mentioned previously, a reporter and photographer from WIRED met with us on Sunday to document BayLUG’s plans for Maker Faire. The results are now online, and the photos look great! They have a slide show featuring each of the BayLUG members who were present and at least one of each of our models.

See you this weekend at Maker Faire!

Yesterday, we had a special meeting of BayLUG members so that a reporter and photographer from WIRED could come and take pictures of some of our models and talk to us. About a half-dozen members showed up at MoAH in Palo Alto and set up an assortment of models that we’re bringing to Maker Faire next weekend.

I forgot my camera, but luckily others didn’t. Mark Warren took a bunch of great pictures and posted them on a Picasa folder. Click the image to see the rest of them:

This was for the WIRED.com site, not the print magazine. Hopefully the results will be online in a few days, because the point of the exercise was to talk about what will be on display at Maker Faire. I’ll post a blog entry with a link as soon as it becomes available.

Today we had a meeting of Bay Area LEGO Users Group at Johannes’s church in San Leandro.

I brought the 10181 Eiffel Tower that I won as a door prize at BrickFest last weekend. I also took along my LOVE and LEGO sculptures, so that if you look at the tower as a letter “I” it would spell out the same message as seen on my car’s license plate. I also brought the motor yacht for display, but that doesn’t spell anything…

Johannes brought along a great 30″x60″ castle scene, with just about every square inch taken up with minifigs, horses, and other medieval stuff either defending or storming the castle. Charles and Adrienne brought some Bionicle models some cars, and checkers/chess sets they’ve been working on, including a chess set for the blind that Charles is donating to a charity auction to benefit Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco. Paul brought an “oriental hall” he was working on, and a four story apartment building with a fully detailed interior, as well as some sets for sale. Bruce had his usual minifigs, mini train engines, and jeeps for sale, along with random $1 baggies of parts.

We had a great discussion of Mindstorms developments and Maker Faire plans with Steve Putz of Robotics Learning. Maybe we’ll start having more robotics activity in the club…?

This past weekend (March 21-22), the Bay Area LEGO Train Club did a show as a part of the Nor-Cal Division of Train Collectors Association Cal-Stewart Meet. We set it up Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and then the show was open to TCA members all weekend, but only open to the public on Sunday March 22.

View the photoset or slideshow on Flickr.

This was probably the largest layout we’d ever done – we’d used all 28 tables in our club inventory before, but when we did it was to make the depth larger. This time we kept the depth at a maximum of 5 feet and went with a larger footprint.

Friday night we got a little desperate for track and baseplates, but we got enough reserves Saturday morning. With a great last-minute idea by Loren to add a lake next to the campground, and Bruce’s construction zone, we were able to cover the bare wood before the show opened. In the end, it turned out pretty good.

One nice thing about the trackplan for this show was the use of a “wye” on the outer loop and track leads in both directions on the inner loop, enabling trains to be switched in and out of the yard on both loops in both directions without “hand of god” operations (except for those locomotives that can’t go backwards…). It was also visually interesting to have one of the main lines run behind the downtown instead of having both loops run side by side all around.

Each year for the past several years, Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has been invited to hold a meeting at the home of one of our members, Dave Porter, at his house in Woodside, CA. He has a huge LEGO display in his house every year, and we get to see it in person before he takes it down each February.

At the meeting we had a lot of people bring their latest models for display, bulk LEGO shopping in Dave’s home office, and of course viewing of Dave’s home layout (pictured above). We also held a business meeting to plan for the Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention which we are organizing for April 2010.

We took down the BayLUG exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA, on Sunday, January 11. I finally got around to dumping the camera today and uploaded the pictures to Flickr. Sorry about the delay.

During the teardown phase of any of our train shows, after the crowds are gone, we take down the “sneeze guards” (Plexiglas barriers to keep little hands – and sneezes – off of the LEGO models) and spend about fifteen minutes doing a photo shoot. These pictures are the results of that. I’ve been sick off and on all month so far, and wasn’t feeling too well on that day, so I didn’t get really ambitious with the photography, but hopefully I covered everything.

You can also browse all the pictures from the show or view them as a slideshow.

Our next public event is a meeting at MoAH on Saturday, February 21. Hope to see you there!

We had some great publicity for the exhibit by the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA for the last few weekends.
There were television coverage by two different local stations, articles in the newspaper, and lots and lots of word-of-mouth advertising. We got several new members in the club and lots of people signing up for our club mailing lists or taking business cards home.

I was sick for most of the last two weekends, but did go on Sunday (the last day) and shot some video footage. However, a couple of other club members took photos of the crowds and sent them to me with permission to post online, so I have done so in a Flickr photoset. Please check that out by clicking the photo above, or view it as a slideshow. You can also view all my photos from this exhibit (or as a slideshow).

Next year, we’re not sure if we’ll be able to have the exhibit at the museum! The room is just not big enough to accommodate that kind of crowd. However we’ve already started talking about alternatives that would scale better, so don’t worry… we’ll still have an exhibit. We’re also talking to another museum about having an exhibit this summer but haven’t announced any details yet.

The next public event by BayLUG is our meeting at MoAH on Saturday, February 21 (note: originally scheduled for Sunday the 22nd, but the date has been changed due to a schedule conflict). Hope to see you there!

I spent today at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto helping staff the exhibit there by my local LEGO club, the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group. I took a few pictures of things that had been added since my last update.

This is the fifth annual LEGO show that we’ve done at the museum. We have a train layout in the center of their “Frank Livermore Learning Center” building, plus various non-train-related displays on the tables around the perimeter. We also have some members (mainly Bruce) selling parts and sets at the show.

The show is open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, now through January 11, 2009. Hours are 11am-4pm. There’s no charge but a donation to the museum is suggested. If you want to come by and say hi, send me an email first to see what days/times I’ll be there.

I’ve taken photos on a few days during the exhibit. I created a photoset for each day’s photos, plus one that contains all of them:

• December 6 (VIP holiday party for the museum)
• December 13
• December 21 (today)
• Everything – or sit back and enjoy the slideshow

This past weekend, I joined with other members of Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group to set up a train layout and other exhibits at the Museum of American Heritage, which will be on display through January 11, 2009.

The opening day of the exhibit, December 6, was also the day of the museum’s annual holiday party for VIP donors. We were invited to stay that evening to show the exhibit to the party attendees and enjoy the refreshments.

Every year BayLUG puts on a “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the museum during the Holidays. We put it up in early December and take it down in early January.

If you’re in the area please come by and see our exhibit. It will be open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday now through January 11 from 11am to 4pm. I will be there some Saturdays and Sundays, so if you want to say hi to me please send me email or something and let me know when you’ll be there.