Posted by
Dan
at
2:12 PM
| Name of Event: BrickCon 2014 |
| Found at: http://brickcon.org/ |
Details:  BrickCon is this weekend! I (Dan) have all of 14 hours to finish packing before I leave for the airport! Who needs sleep? There are more MOCs to build!
This year's theme is "Invasion", and that's why it's finally time for LMOTD to "invade" by making an appearance there this year. Although I actually used to live within driving distance of this convention, I never attended because I was in my teens at the time and BrickCon didn't allow anyone under 18 to participate in the full convention. Seriously, I still have the flyer from when they tried to advertise at a free event LEGO was running. Although BrickCon is still a needlessly exclusive event (seriously, why does anyone think LEGO events should exclude the people who have the most time to spend with the brick?), I've since aged to the point where I'd be allowed to attend - and more importantly, I've been convinced to go so I can see the birthplace of Mini LEGO Con. In spite of this being a smaller event (roughly 500 attendees, compared with nearly 1,000 at BrickFair Virginia or Brickworld Chicago), there are actually quite a few noteworthy builders attending, so it sounds like a promising show.
Public hours are from 10-4 on Saturday, October 4th, and 9-3 on Sunday, October 5th.
Find me there and you can get your hands on one of our 2x2 LMOTD tiles.
I'll add our usual round up of coverage of the event to this post after the event has passed. This was a great event - in spite of the smaller size, BrickCon has roughly the same concentration of talent as some of the larger conventions, so there's still plenty of great LEGO creations to take in and exciting people to meet.
Here's our round-up, still in the early phases as of this writing (10/10/2014):
My (Dan's) photos are on Flickr.
pasukaru76 highlighted Star Vikings at BrickCon 2014 (on Flickr).
pasukaru76's general BrickCon 2014 photos on Flickr
Lino's Flickr photos
The Brothers Brick wrap-up
Nannan's Flickr photos
brickstuff's Flickr photos
BrickCon Flickr pool
Proudlove's Flickr photos
legotanks' Flickr photos
Lonnon Foster's Flickr photos
Bill Ward's Brickpile's Flickr photos and blog post
Sean Edmison's Flickr photos
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
10:06 PM
| Name of Event: BrickFair Virginia 2014 |
| Found at: http://www.brickfair.com/ |
Details: 
This was an absolutely fantastic event this year - as always - and I'm going to probably write much more about it over the next few months. I'm still recovering from what was an amazing and exhausting 7 days (yes, 7) at BrickFair Virginia. It could take weeks for me to process everything that happened there, and I could write pages of thank yous to everyone involved who helped to make it a magical experience.
I recently finished uploading my photos to Flickr. There are fewer than 4,000 this year, which we should all consider a scandalous disappointment. Personally, I love this event too much - between the giant exact-map Mini Con layout and the 4 games/seminars I was in charge of, I spent most of the event running around setting things up. I didn't have time to photograph everything, and I actually never properly worked out where I needed to add an additional magnet to my badge (I ended up not wearing it much because I needed to make sure it didn't fall off).
The photo to the left is from Joe "Unhalfbricking" Miserendino of this year's Micropolis collaboration, after the invasion of some Exo-Suit sets. Micropolis is always a large fixture at BrickFair Virginia, but the decreasing popularity of the micropolis standard at other events means that BrickFair Virginia now represents the largest ongoing Micropolis display at a convention.
As always, if you have or know of photos or other coverage of BrickFair Virginia 2014 that I don't have here (I'm sure there's something I'm missing - I'm starting with fewer links than usual in the interest of not putting this off any longer), feel free to mention it in the comments or send an e-mail to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com so that we can add it here.
my (Dan's) Flickr photos
JustJon's Flickr photos
Black Six's Flickr photos
Kreativ Snail's Flickr photos
Bob Hayes' Flickr photos
ajfeist's Flickr photos
TJJohn12's Flickr photos
DJ Quest's Flickr photos and videos
Official BrickFair Flickr group (goes back to 2008)
AgeOwns.com's Flickr photos
ajfeist's Flickr photos
BrickFair 2014 Flickr Group (130 photos as 9/1/2014)
ToaMeiko's Flickr photos
Brickset posted about the event shortly beforehand.
ExclusivelyPlastic (Caleb L.)'s Flickr photos
Bosta's Flickr photos
bhrome's Flickr photos and videos
Rob Bender
Cale Leiphart's Flickr photos
Beyond the Brick's Joshua Hanlon finally made it out to BFVA and BTB actually have published their own playlist of videos by made Beyond the Brick at BrickFair VA 2014 - but before they went, Josh and Matthew interviewed the event organizer (Todd Webb) and a frequent volunteer who plays a role in coordinating some collaborations (John Rudy).
Interview with Todd Webb
Interview with John Rudy
Beyond the Brick Guided Tour (2.5 hrs)
playlist of shorter on-site videos (including 12 more that I haven't singled out here)
Beyond the Brick's Flickr photos
EDWW day_dae (esteemedhelga)™'s Flickr photos are split into multiple sets this year:
The Fox 5 videos seem to be a bit better this year, although their anchors still keep trying to put an 'S' at the end of LEGO and pretend that's a real word. My understanding is that there were four segments aired live Sunday morning, although only two appear to be online:
7:20 AM: Mini Con interview with Mariann Asanuma and Daniel Pikora (hey, we know those two!)
8:40 AM: Charity minifigures interview with Ben Spector
6:24 PM: Evening recap
Fox 5's Kellee Azar also gave BrickFair some positive coverage on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/496374700570705920
https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/495916112291594240
https://twitter.com/KelleeAzarFox5/status/495888337677586432
We also rounded up coverage of BrickFair Virginia in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. I'm not sure why 2012 was skipped - I still intend to catch up on BrickFair 2013.
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
11:28 PM
| Name of Event: Brickworld Chicago 2014 |
| Found at: http://www.brickworld.us/ |
Details:  For the second year in a row, LMOTD made it out to Brickworld Chicago. Technically speaking, back in 2013 we were still trying to merge with Beyond the Brick, so we skipped rounding up coverage last year in favor of video work (Matthew) and behind-the-scenes efforts for the aborted site (Dan). I may try to do a proper round-up of BW13 at some point, but for now I'm focusing on 2014.
In the interest of being competitive, I did not take enough photos to beat my record from last year, but I did seem to take more than any other individual. I don't know if that counts as winning, but it's a start. It's weirdly satisfying knowing that I ended up missing a few of the MOCs because I was too busy enjoying rare opportunities to catch up with friends from previous events. Another nice thing for many of us is that the amount of high-profile people who showed up this time around and don't always make it (the west-coasters in particular had a huge presence this time) turned this into more of a networking event than in prior years - it was great getting to meet many of you that I previously only knew from online.
Pictured to the left: the spectacular Micro-GARC Brickworld Grand Prix was not just a highlight of the event, but perhaps the most successful online community collaboration ever, with dozens of excellent models being put in a side area because of overwhelming participation. Usually you see group layouts find creative ways to work around low participation - this was the first time I've ever seen extra space required to fit excess models. This photo of part of the layout is by Cale Leiphart.
As always, if you have or know of photos or other coverage of Brickworld 2014 that I don't have here (I'm sure there's something I'm missing), feel free to mention it in the comments or send an e-mail to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com so that we can add it here.
My (Dan's) Flickr photos
Brickapolis (Matthew)'s Flickr photos
Beyond the Brick's Flickr photos (most descriptions have links to their videos on YouTube, including the keynote address and a tour, as well as interviews - which they're actually still editing and uploading)
Nick Brick's Flickr photos: day 1, day 2, World of Lights, day 3, & day 4.
Kevin Hinkle's Flickr photos
CEE Team Blog Event Recap
RedCoKid's Flickr photos
Cecilie Fritzvold Flickr photos
hinckley39's Flickr photos
Joe Meno's Flickr photos: setup, World of Lights, 1, 2
Bill Ward's Flickr photo album and (blog post)
Cale Leiphart's Flickr photos
The official Brickworld Flickr pool
SavaTheAggie's Flickr photos
blackpony72's Flickr photos
We also rounded up coverage of Brickworld Chicago in 2010 and 2011.
Some housekeeping sidenotes: Yes, we still intend to round up coverage of other events, in particular BrickFair Virginia 2013, BrickFair Alabama 2014, and BrickFair New England 2014, because I (Dan) loved all of those and continue to be active with BrickFair as an event volunteer (please join us in Virginia later this month!). Also, I've decided to back off of trying to keep track of the official Flickr jargon - from here on out, we'll just refer to a grouping of photos on Flickr as "Flickr photos" (rather than "photoset", "set", "collection", or "album", since these seem to change).
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
2:05 PM
| Name of Blog: Community Team Blog |
| Created by the LEGO company's Community Engagement & Events team |
| Found at: http://ceeteamblog.com/ |
Details:  If you've been following our coverage of LEGO-related events over the years, you've probably come across some interesting examples of official visitors to these events and official support for these events from various parts of the LEGO company. This is something that has been in flux over the years as LEGO tries to determine how unofficial events can be of use to the LEGO company and how best to support unofficial events. Those constant changes can make it hard to keep track of what LEGO does and doesn't do for the fan community, but all of the official efforts are managed by LEGO's Community Engagement & Events (CEE) team, which (since November 2012) has a blog to help you stay in the loop. It won't tell you everything (because some community support programs are relatively secret pilot programs), but it's a great resource and will show you many fascinating aspects of the LEGO fan community and the LEGO company.
We really can't thank the CEE team enough - they're out there trying to keep track of every LEGO User Group in the world, listening to a ridiculous amount of concerns from LEGO fans, and constantly answering the same questions (even though most of the answers are as follows: "No, we can't confirm or deny anything about the future or upcoming products", monorail/old grey/Bionicle/9V trains are not coming back, LEGO does not have the license to make that, and no, we can't supply you with free LEGO pieces for your personal projects). I don't know how they do it, but they are fantastic and do an excellent job of being our voice inside of the company and representing the company to the larger community of LEGO hobbyists.
Full disclosure: Senior Community Coordinator for the Americas Kevin Hinkle is a "somewhat awesome" friend-of-the-blog who has previously featured my work on the CEE team blog (see screenshot above) and may or may not secretly be on our payroll. Those may be excellent ways to get my attention, but I'm still not above razzing Kevin for not making it to every LEGO convention in the world.
Further disclosure: We don't actually have a "payroll" and much of this blog's relationship with Kevin (and his team) is based on our previous relationship with Beyond the Brick. Beyond the Brick recently interviewed Kevin in his Enfield, Connecticut office and Kim Thomsen, Community Coordinator for the EU, blogged about that video.
I'll be disclosing more (about a project I've gotten involved with that has indirectly received support from LEGO) in the near future.
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
12:45 AM
| Name of Model: MegaCon 2014 Moonbase |
| Created by: GFLUG and "Orange LUG" |
| Found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/moctagon/sets/72157638835134784 (and more - see roundup below) |
Details:  Last weekend, I was out at MegaCon 2014 with GFLUG, "Orange LUG", and the Bonahooms (of BrickWorld fame, there promoting the upcoming BrickWorld Tampa event). The main group build was a Moonbase-themed display, although it ended up being more "moon" than proper, standard-meeting Moonbase. In spite of my post here about the moonbase standard being the top Google result for "Moonbase Standard", I had actually never built a moonbase module before - something I rectified with an Alien Conquest-themed build (not itself worth featuring here, although I'm happy with how the corridors came out). There were other MOCs on display as well - many small things, a large train display, a LEGO-movie themed section, a fantastic twist on the Great Ball Contraption concept, and many MOCs based on various movies and television shows. You can see all of those in the coverage roundup below.
...but you probably shouldn't. You should go build some moonbase modules, right now. Moonbase isn't dead! Moonbase is easy! Moonbase is fun! You should build moonbase! Go, now, stop reading this and build some moonbase!
Coverage Roundup (trying to focus on LEGO-oriented coverage - there are some "interesting" cosplayers at this event, be warned that you're likely to see something Not Safe For Work in the background if you dig too far):
Moctagon Jones' Flickr photos
my (danny316p's) Flickr photos
Orlando Weekly slideshow
BrickRabbitt's Flickr photos (added 4/25)
Todd Thuma's Flickr photos (added 5/5)
As always, if you know of photos or other coverage I should have here and don't, you can leave a note in the comments or e-mail us at legomodeloftheday@gmail.com
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
9:42 PM
| Name of Event: LEGOPalooza 2011 |
| Created by: NCLUG |
| Found at: http://www.nclug.us/2011/03/06/legopalooza-2011-photos-and-coverage/ |
Details: 
I'm still pretty exhausted after a long, strenuous weekend at LEGOPalooza. I stepped up to coordinate the town & train layout, and pretty much everything that could go wrong did - the final result came out well, but I was surprised we managed to pull it off at all. Since I already wrote up a proper round-up on the NCLUG (North Carolina LEGO Users Group) website and would rather not have to keep track of this in two places, I'm going to direct you there for photos and coverage of the event.
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
11:34 PM
| Name of Website: BRICKITGOOD |
| Created by: Mr. Corey Sanders |
| Found at: http://www.brickitgood.info/ |
Details:
Here's a new feature I'd like to get started on right away (mostly because I just found out about this great website): a spotlight on useful resources within the LEGO community. BRICKITGOOD is the work of Mr. Corey Sanders, a schoolteacher from Nevada who runs (and personally funds) an after-school LEGO program for elementary-school aged students. The site features a wide variety of models, with plenty of photos for each one. Most of the models also include instructions - some of which are in LEGO Digital Designer format so you can easily buy the parts needed to build them. An advantage (for teachers especially) of creating building instructions is that you can save designs while taking the models apart - which is particularly important when you need to make the parts available again for other students. In addition to creating instructions for his own designs, he has also created instructions for a number of popular models that haven't been available to the public (such as promotional items that were only given away as glued models). These models are a great starting place for your original creations - or you could try rebuilding some of the designs as shown. The events section covers student creations, regional events, and the 2004 Master Model Builder search (yes, when you build lifelike sculptures this well, LEGO takes notice).
The photos below show examples of the variety of material available on the BRICKITGOOD website, and each one is a link that takes you to the appropriate section of the site.
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
12:07 AM
| Name of Event: Bricks Adventure 2011 |
| Found at: http://legendbricks.com/BricksAdventure2011/ba2011.html |
Details:  Starting in Hong Kong today (sorry! We're still a week behind so we were not able to announce this in advance - however, this is a multiple day event and there is still time to attend).
Please see the website mentioned above for information on the exhibitors and some photos of models that will be shown at the event (we'd highlight some of those here, but since the photos aren't tied to builders, it'd violate our policy of only highlighting a model when we can properly credit that model's creator). You can also look at the official flickr group from the event to see photos from last year's event (as well as some planning photos for this year, and I'd assume we'll see this year's photos turn up there soon too).
See also:
Jared Chan's flickr photos
|
|
Posted by
Dan
at
10:58 PM
| Event Info Found At: http://www.nasuhai.co.jp/event/lego.html |
| Photos by: kelvin255 (Kelvin Lok) |
| Photos found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelvin255/sets/72157625566538544/ |
Details:  It's Christmastime in Japan's Nasu Highland Park. The LEGO pavilion there has a few seasonal displays up now, but apparently the Tokyo miniland layout (which features a bunch of landmarks, although some have been made a bit generic) is a semi-permanent exhibit. Another highlight is a large Clone Wars set-up, and there are also several large sculptures. This appears to be like a small LEGOLAND park - apparently there are LEGO-themed rides here for most of the year as well (although these photos focus on the models on display). |
|
Posted by
Dan
at
9:58 PM
| Name of Event: The LEGO® Store København (Copenhagen), Denmark Grand Opening |
| Found at: http://stores.lego.com/en-us/Copenhagen/LandingPage.aspx |
Details:  A LEGO store opened recently in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm not entirely sure how to explain this one - it's not like any of the other stores. It's not an "outlet", a "flagship store", a "discovery centre", or and "imagination center" either. This place has some phenomenal things, though - a giant Pick-A-Brick wall, enormous mosaics, large sculptures, and even a miniland-scale layout. It's also the first Denmark location where LEGO has a non-LEGOLAND park retail presence. The place is as exciting as it is hard to classify. Here's a round-up of the photos I've found so far:
schioldannvoneyben's's flickr photos
legosamlet's Brickshelf gallery
eiker86's Brickshelf gallery
More to come as we find it. As always, send your tips to legomodeloftheday@gmail.com
|
|
|
|
This year's LEGO Fan weekend event in Skærbæk, Denmark was announced to be the last, just weeks before the event. Being both a fairly official event and the last event of its kind, the usual issues of precedent and favoring one event above others didn't apply - so LEGO bigwigs Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and Jorgen Vig Knudstorp were able to meet with some of the 350 exhibitors (from 24 different countries) and 2300+ public visitors. As an added bonus, the participating exhibitors also received an exclusive run of this year's Inside Tour set.
