Building a brighter tomorrow with LEGO® bricks
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.
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.
UPDATE – The convention, Bricks by the Bay, took place on April 9-11, 2010, and we’re in the planning process for the 2011 event. You can read more about it at the Bricks by the Bay site.
Some of us in BayLUG have been talking about having a LEGO convention here in northern California. This would be similar to some of the existing ones that have been taking place around the country for years:
Brickfest (Washington DC and Portland OR)
Brickswest (San Diego CA)
Brickcon (Seattle WA)
Brickworld (Chicago IL)
Brickfair (Washington DC)
There’s a thread on LUGNET about it started by Russell Clark, the BayLUG president.
If you haven’t heard of these before, here’s the basic idea. We take over a hotel or convention center for a weekend (hopefully a 3-day weekend), and 100+ LEGO fans descend upon it from all over the country (and maybe a few from overseas). The LEGO company usually sends some high level executives and other representatives. The local LEGO store usually has some special discounts and an after-hours sale just for con-goers.
We’re currently looking at hotels in and around Santa Clara and San Mateo, since that’s where our two local LEGO stores are. If you have any ideas for venues or would like to offer support, please let Russell or me know.
