Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
LEGO Conferences such as Brickfest, BricksWest, or Northwest BrickCon
The owner of LEGO, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, visited Brickworld today and I got to meet him!
I took a bunch of pictures documenting his visit to the event. He seemed very happy to see all the things that LEGO fans had come up with. I’ll post more about the weekend later when I have some time but I wanted to get this out quickly. I’m about to head over to dinner at Claim Jumper…
Well, we’re halfway through Brickworld here in Chicago! Time flies so fast…. but tomorrow the big excitement begins as the doors open to the public. If you’re in the area, come on down and see the exhibits! I even have a free pass I can give to one lucky person.
I’ve taken hundreds of photos and uploaded them to Flickr. They’re organized into several sets, but all can be found under the Brickworld 2009 collection on Flickr.
(Note: I’ll be uploading plenty more photos in the next two days, so these numbers are as of Friday night at bedtime….)
I arrived late tonight (2am local time) in Chicago after a quite pleasant, if quite full, flight from San Francisco. Our flight was about 1/2 hour late, but that’s no big deal. Got a taxi from the airport and arrived at the hotel, checked in, showered, and am now waiting for my hair to dry so I can go to bed.
Tomorrow, the event begins. I’ll have to check out of my hotel room since I’ve arranged for a roommate for the rest of the weekend. Look for me or twitter @williamward if you want to meet up.
Listen to me being interviewed on the radio! Well, podcast really. And my mom doesn’t listen to podcasts. But anyway, I did an interview for LAMLradio shortly after BrickFest was over, and it was posted a while ago but for some reason it didn’t show up in my iTunes. But you can check it out on the LAMLradio site at least.
Bricks by the Bay now has an event on Facebook. Please RSVP there if you’re a Facebook user, and join our Facebook group. (If you want to be my Facebook friend, visit my public profile.)
We created a group a while ago, but I had to wait until May 1st to create the event since Facebook doesn’t have a “year” field for events – 12 months is the limit. In other words, the convention is less than a year away!
Bricks by the Bay is also on Twitter, so follow us there. We also have mailing list for announcements as well as people helping with planning at our site, bricksbythebay.com.
I just made my flight and hotel reservations and signed up for BrickWorld (in Chicago, June 18-21)! Hope to see you there…
Anyone want to share a room? I’m currently signed up for a room at $119 but they only had king-bed rooms available, but I put a request in the “special requests” box for a 2-bed room. But if you have a 2-bed room and want to share the cost, I might cancel mine.
Man, did I take a lot of photos at BrickFest last weekend! I uploaded them all to Flickr from the hotel, but I’m still going through to add titles and descriptions. I also shot almost 3 hours of video which I haven’t even looked at yet.
The hotel net connection was spotty. I use the Flickr Uploadr program to upload files, and it apparently has some sort of bug that when the net connection drops during an upload, it uploads files again. I ended up with five copies of some of the photos! I had to manually delete the extras, and luckily I did it quickly before anyone had posted comments in all but one case – and that one case was a comment that was redundant anyway (the same observation had already been made on another photo).
The photos are organized into four sets: one for each day, and one for all the photos. Here are the links:
Enjoy!
I’d better hurry or I’ll miss out on the special Pick-A-Brick they’re doing at the convention right now! Jim Olson just called me to tell me to get over there.. so without further ado here’s my pics from yesterday. View the Flickr photoset or slideshow.
I’m heading up to Portland today for BrickFest. Hope to see you there. My BrickLink store will be closed until I get back on Tuesday, March 31.
Well, checks that is. Two of them. One to the IRS and one to the California Franchise Tax Board (which oversees California income taxes).
And no, I am not talking about my 2008 income taxes. I am talking about my applications for 501(c)(3) tax exempt, non profit status for a new corporation that I’m forming along with Bruce and Loren from BayLUG/BayLTC: Bricks by the Bay, Inc. The three of us met on Tuesday evening to sign the bylaws and review the paperwork before I sent it in. We’re using the Nolo Press book “How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation in California” to set it up.
Why are we forming a nonprofit? Well, we’re putting on a show! We haven’t made any official announcements yet – we’re waiting for the tax exempt status before the deal can be finalized – but the plan is to have a LEGO conference in the San Francisco bay area in April of 2010. We’re forming a nonprofit to run the conference as well as other local LEGO-related events, including BayLUG/BayLTC exhibits.
We need volunteers! You don’t have to be local, or even come to the show, to help! If you’re interested in helping out in any capacity, please let me know. We have a mailing list and a wiki to help with planning.
For official announcements, visit the Bricks by the Bay Web site. I’ll be blogging here periodically as we continue through the planning process, too.
