Brick Geometry Recording from October BayLUG Meeting

Since 2008 I’ve been giving a presentation at various LEGO conventions, mainly BrickCon in Seattle, Washington, and Bricks by the Bay in Santa Clara, California, called “Brick Geometry” covering a variety of LEGO building techniques. A new recording of the latest version of this presentation is now available on YouTube.Cover slide from Brick Geometry presentation

Continue reading “Brick Geometry Recording from October BayLUG Meeting”

BrickCon Presentation Video

My presentation from last October’s BrickCon event is now available for viewing online. They’ve posted this as well as plenty of other great talks from that event for public viewing. Check them all out! Hopefully this year BrickCon can be held in person… in the meantime stay safe and stay healthy!

Video is embedded below. For more versions of this talk and downloadable slides, see my Brick Geometry Presentations page.

Brickpile YouTube Channel – Brickworld 2011 Videos

I’ve started a new YouTube channel for Bill Ward’s Brickpile. I’ll be adding videos from LEGO events, and maybe even some original content, tours of my MOCs, etc. So far I’ve just published two videos, which form a 2-part walk-through of Brickworld from 2011: Continue reading “Brickpile YouTube Channel – Brickworld 2011 Videos”

Why Does LEGO Ignore Girls?

Blogger and podcaster CC Chapman has set up a great video series where his daughter Emily pontificates on the issues that matter to her.  The latest one is “Why Does LEGO Ignore Girls?” where she makes the case for LEGO to make more products that are accessible to girls.

I’ve always been bothered by this.  They say time and again that their target market is boys ages 8-11 and that’s what they target all their products toward, and they offer token girl sets such as the lame Belleville line and pink brick buckets, which don’t sell well because they are lame!

Like Emily says, girls like the town sets a lot.  She suggests a shopping mall.  I’ve heard this from other girl LEGO fans as well: build sets that model everyday life, and girls will love them.  The town sets always seem to be about police and firefighters historically.  Lately the farm line has some promise, as do the Cafe Corner type buildings (though these tend to be for an older age group, and you’d lose the girls before they got to be old enough to be able to build them without frustration).

Another suggestion I’ve heard many times is to make LEGO babies.  The new 1×1 stud footprint figures used in the LEGO games might be a good starting point for this.

Anyway, watch the video  for yourself, and share it with anyone you know who has girls that might feel the same way.  And more than anything, keep pestering LEGO about this issue.  They won’t do anything about it until there’s a large groundswell of support for LEGO sets aimed toward girls.

Ignite: Hillel Cooperman – “The Secret Underground World of Lego”

Hillel Cooperman gave an “Ignite” presentation on the adult LEGO community recently. You can see it here on Youtube:

I found this through a post on Facebook by Felix Greco (I don’t think I can link to that because of the way Facebook works). The comments were not entirely positive, mostly around the way he talks about the adult LEGO fans, implying that they are so nerdy that they don’t date. It does sound to me like Hillel is not entirely comfortable with his AFOLishness. If he hadn’t had a kid and a wife who was enthusaistic about Harry Potter LEGO, do you think he would’ve rediscovered LEGO? Somehow I doubt it. However, most of the presentation was pretty positive. I do think he needs to take more pride in LEGO as a hobby and not denigrate his fellow AFOLs. But all in all, it’s a pretty good overview of the LEGO scene, told in an engaging and lively manner.