Talks at Bricks by the Bay 2018

For the first time in a few years I gave my Brick Geometry and Studs On All Sides talks at the Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention in Santa Clara, CA. I updated both presentations for this event by adding a few new pages in each one. Here are the updated versions of the files if you’d like to look at them:

Let me know if you’d like to see me deliver one of these talks at an event near you! Enjoy the information, and happy building!

BBTB 2018 Brick Geometry 1

Bricks Cascade 2018

Last March I went up to Portland, Oregon and attended Bricks Cascade, their annual LEGO convention. While I was there I got some bad personal news, and it’s taken me a while to get around to posting my photos of the event–sorry about that. But better late than never, right?
Bricks Cascade 2018
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Bricks by the Bay 2017

I attended the Bricks by the Bay convention on August 3-6, 2017, for my first time as an ordinary attendee. It was a great exhibit of LEGO talent from near and far, but the show-stealer was this amazing “California Dreamin'” theme park model from Flynn and Richard which won several trophies including both Best In Show and Public Choice:

BBTB2017 721.jpg

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Paredes de Coura 2017 Fan Weekend

This year I made another international trip for a LEGO event – this time to Portugal. The Portuguese LEGO Fan Weekend in the town of Paredes de Coura is a unique event and this is the second year they’ve held it. I was so impressed when I read an article on Brickset about last year’s event that I just had to go!
Selfie with my MOCs in Portugal
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Brickvention 2017

After the flurry of activity on my blog in December for the Advent Calendars you may have wondered why I disappeared… well the reason was I took a vacation to Australia right after Christmas!

Brickvention Selfie

I spent New Year’s in Sydney, did lots of sightseeing, and ended up at Brickvention in Melbourne. I’ll be posting the travel photos soon on a new travel blog I’m going to be starting, and will post a link to it here when it is live so you can check those out if you want. But the photos from Brickvention are now available online, and here they are! (Click images for a bigger one, or see links at the bottom to Flickr albums.)
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BrickCon 2015

Just got back from Seattle where I attended the latest edition of BrickCon, their annual Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) convention. I had a great time – played some games, won some free LEGO, and got a trophy (Best Sculpture) for my Teddy Bear.

I also gave an updated version of my “Brick Geometry” talk, and a new presentation on “Studs on All Sides” which talks about techniques I’ve used in models such as the Teddy, Easter Bunny, Q*bert, etc. (Which reminds me, I really should do a photo shoot of Teddy Bear and blog about him.) Here are the slides to the talks:

I didn’t take any photos at BrickCon, but plenty of other people did. I’ll post links to them here as I find them:

Bricks by the Bay Just Around the Corner

I’ve been quiet on here recently, and haven’t been building anything in a while, but I wanted to say something about Bricks by the Bay which is coming up in just over a week.

This is our annual Northern California LEGO convention, and I’m the president of the nonprofit that organizes it. It’s coming up at the Santa Clara Convention Center from August 6-9, 2015. We’ve been super busy over the past few months getting all the planning and preparations done, and I haven’t had much time for anything else.

The theme this year is “Monsters” and we’ve got a great event kit which is a dragon designed by Charles Esseltine, and I’m preparing the instructions for building it as we speak. We have a great Guest of Honor this year, Alice Finch from Seattle who is bringing down her collaborative build with ArchLUG, the World of Mouse Guard, and giving a keynote speech. We also have a speech by Megan Rothrock, author of the LEGO Adventure Book series on Thursday night, and one by Tim Courtney of LEGO IDEAS on Saturday.

Convention registration closes this Friday, July 31st, so get your badge now! We will be open to the public on the last day, Sunday, August 9, for a Public Exhibition, so if you can’t make it for the whole weekend at least drop by to see the show.

More information, including convention registration and public day tickets, can be found on our website, http://www.bricksbythebay.com.

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”