Two weeks ago I got the opportunity to visit Bricks by the Bay (BTTB) - an incredibly inspiring and fun event organised by the AFOL community. It's one out of 20 "Recognised AFOL Networking Events" and what's special about this type of event is that there's a lot of AFOLs participating (networking, workshops or exhibit models) and that these events have an international focus.
I find it super fun, inspiring and energising to participate in this type of event - to meet people in real life that I've engaged with online and to make new relations. I get a lot of feedback I can take back to the team and I also get to promote LAN to the attendants and talk about the opportunities for community members on the site (like this blog, workgroups and our community and event locator!) I also get a chance to touch base with community ambassadors and get their verbal feedback and in general have a great, informal chat about the LEGO hobby.
Back to Bricks By the Bay! This year’s theme was “Animation” and what a great idea for a physical event to bridge between the screen and physical world! Because it's super difficult for me to limit my enthusiasm about everything I saw I'm going to only highlight some of the line-ups at the event that refers to the theme of Animation.
Mike Powell (image below) had a fun idea: during the event, he filmed a stopmotion video by using the LEGO NINJAGO® Movie Making Kit (853702) plus an army of LEGO Dimensions Ninjago Sensei Wu Fun Packs (71234) (was it 60? It was a lot!) each individual Flying White Dragon was built in a slightly different pose. What I found fun an innovative about Mike’s idea was that the visitors could get a behind-the-scenes look into how to make a stop-motion movie and hopefully they got inspired to try stop motion out at home.
David Pickett was keynote speaker at the event and took the audience on a journey of his career as a Youtuber. The very awesome animator David Pagano was at the event too and hosted a meetup for LEGO Entrepreneurs, where they could share knowledge - for the ones that knows me I'm very focus on leveraging knowledge-sharing and there's so much of this going on at events - I got very inspired to even further improve this area on LAN.
And then something absolutely magical was happening that created such a buzz within the AFOL attendants as well as with visitors (won the “best in show award” + more). Flynn De Marco and Richard Boards “Treasure of the Snake Queen”. Was it a MOC? Was it an animation? No, it was a unique storytelling experience with LEGO bricks as creative medium. The story, the model, the music, the lights made this model into a show that was applauded over and over again by the audience. Check out the video!
Did you see the event kit “Zoetrope” created by Davin White (who also took this photo - thank you for allowing me to share, Davin)? Pretty awesome! On his Flickr you can see some videos of the zoetrope in action plus more images from BTTB.
On Saturday, I met up with the LAN Ambassadors that was present at BTTB, @Russell Clark @Thomas Garrison, @Suzy Lentchner and @Jennifer Nogle - Bricks By The Bay - the LAN Ambassador for Bricks by the Bay. We had a great conversation and I appreciate all the input and I already shared it with the team who saw opportunities.
Thank you to the event committee at Bricks by the Bay for a great event – it was great to get to meet you all and thank you for planning such a fun and inspiring event. Also thank you to the people who came up to me and had feedback or questions – I had so many inspirational conversations at this event. I came home with a lot of input to the Community Team and have shared challenges and opportunities with my colleagues.
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