BrickFest 2007 Recap

[The Blue Knight]

Well, the dust has settled, and BrickFest 2007 is in the books. While those of us who organized the event are tying up loose ends, the attendees are, for the most part, back to their regualr non-Lego lives; work, school, etc.

I've a chance to do a little reflecting. More will come as I get sleep again.

In 2004 I was like a "walk on" player, a face in the crowd. I was thrilled to be mentioned by name in Lenny's write up of the event. It was basically me and Lenny on the main display, with Tom Rafert and his big display, and another fella (Can't recall his name, Steven I think). The main display was 3 8x5 tables with MOCs from 4-5 other people.

This year, we had a dozen or more attendees, a 6 by 50 foot display, and we dwarfed the space table (castle! castle! castle!)! The overflow table was 3 8x5 foot tables! And now, 3 years later, it is me doing a write up of the event.

We had the core group of now-fast friends who took NWBC by storm back again in no paticular order ( I apologize for any misspellings--blame it on fatigue); myself, Frank Filz, Josh Wedin, Andrew Becraft, Cailin Feiring, Bradley Roberts, Tom and Kristin Rafert, John Langrish and of course Brendan Mauro pulling it all together. We had new castlers as well; Steven Panuel, Justin Martin, John Rasmussen, Thomas Garrison, Chris and Thomas Wunz, and the Lego Certified Professional himself, Robin Sather! Lord Doom stopped by, and because no one knew his nom de reality Josh took on the akward task of introducing everyone by avatar name! Even local Portland Lego legend Jon Furman had Mocs for the pirate table based on the TV show "Lost." Lord, I hope I didn't leave anyone out. If I have send me a nasty PM I shall make recompense.

All of you pitched and did so much to make this the best con I have ever attended, and I want to thank you!

Castle highlights for me;

- Biggest North American castle display ever. Period.

- Titanic battle. How many figs? 2,000? More?

- Tom's new mega-MOC.

- Big turnout of Vikings

- Seeing the Wunz brothers clever designs in person

- Hearing "That's a lot of gold!" about Smaug's Chamber

- The honor of some of my LEGO presented on the same table as Robin Sather's stuff!

- Seeing old friends, and meeting new ones.


BrickFest general highlights

- Being able to do the TV spots prmoting the event

- Beating our attendance goal by 2 1/2 times!

- Dirty Brickster was huge and fun

- Browsing the giant brick bazaar

- Scoring a 10176 castle in a raffle drawing!

- The melee that was the Lego store at midnight!

- Making lots of friends from other themes.

- Pizza Scmizza and King Cake

Special mention goes to John Langrish's mother, Mary, for her tireless and selfless work at the registration table all weekend. I know Christina was so happy to have had you there.

I have to say again, thank you for making this so much fun. It was great to see the West Coast Classic-Castle group again, and see it grow.

One final note. We missed having MaxiVisVires (aka Larry Guarano) and his SO Cathy Miles there due to a family emergency. We did miss you guys, and I'm sure I speak for the community when I say that our thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family. We hope to see you down the line.

Well, I guess that's it. I can't believe it's over. After 4 months of working on it, I kinda feel empty inside. Then again, I'm relieved to have survived and look forward to sleep. So until NWBC, adios!


PS My Subaru, it was the alternator, it's back on the road and fine. The Legomobile rides again!

[Dunechaser]

Great write-up. Onward and upward to NWBrickCon!

[wunztwice]

More will come as I get sleep again....

...All of you pitched and did so much to make this the best con I have ever attended, and I want to thank you!

Castle highlights for me:...

...- Seeing the Wunz brothers clever designs in person...

...PS My Subaru, it was the alternator, it's back on the road and fine. The Legomobile rides again!

Ah, sleep, what was that?

Hehe, thanks for the mention Rich. It was so awsome to finally meet all of you in person. Thanks for all the help in aquainting us with the working of PSthese conventions and actually see all of those awsome MOCs in person!

Some of my highlights:

-Wow, meeting all of you!

-Winning a Big Ben hand car set!

-First time in a LEGO store!

-Meeting Steve Witt (yeah, he's pretty witty)

-Seeing the 18-or-so story cafe corner

-Tom (Remyth) snagging the second-to-last Cafe Corner for me

-Meeting Will 'the brickarms guy" and getting some of his stuff!

-There was so much more, but I'll have to follow Rich's example and sleep more first!

P.S. (yeah, Subaru's do make awsome LEGOmobiles! Glad to hear your's is back on it's feet!)

[Emp.Justinian]

Does anyone know who made the slightly sci-fie castle that could be taken apart? It was at the far end of the castle table and I was wondering if it was made by someone at this sight. I thought that the crashlanding UFO was a very creative idea.

God speed

Emp.Justinian

[Remyth]

...(castle! castle! castle!)...

...Chris and Thomas Wunz...

- Biggest North American castle display ever. Period.

- Titanic battle. How many figs? 2,000? More?

- Big turnout of Vikings

- Seeing the Wunz brothers clever designs in person

- Hearing "That's a lot of gold!" about Smaug's Chamber

- ...meeting new ones.

- Beating our attendance goal by 2 1/2 times!

- The melee that was the Lego store at midnight!

Yup, all of these things I echo.

That was a lot of gold!!


As to meeting me and 'Topher, I'm glad you all liked us. We're kinda strange around here, but everyone that craxy about LEGO has to seem craxy to some people, right? Meeting all you was a great pleasure as well. I just hope we can make it to NW BrickCon.

The attendance was astounding. In case people were wondering, we had 204 people signed up! Not all made it(Larry, for example), but still...

The battle was hugemungous! I loved standing by it and seeing all of the kids' faces light up with amazement and joy. Don't know how many figs, but there were a fickin' ton!

As to the viking attack, I think it turned out great. Just so people know, that was my main thing. I did a lot of the fig posing and such for that. The number of vikings was great. I really missed Larry here, with his peasant horde...*sighs dreamily*

The LEGO store was complete chaos! 175+ AFOLs crammed into a tiny LEGO store! A huge thanks to LEGO for putting that on for us. The scratch-and-dent was sweet! Slave 1, AT-ST, Droid Battle Pack, and Viking Ship, anyone? 50% off? Sweet!! The special PAB was the best! Old light gray 1x2 tiles, dark gray 1x1 plates, tan plates, dark red 1x4 tiles, dark gray 1x4 bricks, sheesh!

The space invasion was easily put to shame with Caylins BrickArms-weilding Leias, my attack frogs, a monkey, and Tom Rafert's forestmen. Unfortunately, we didn't have the figs or time to retaliate...


The fig trade seemed to be a success. (Sorry, Caylin. To bad your partner couldn't make it.) Everyone happy? Good.

Highlights:
-Meeting all y'all!
-LEGO Store!
-Brick Bazzare.
-Seeing the display
-Everything everyone else has/will say!

Does anyone know who made the slightly sci-fie castle that could be taken apart? It was at the far end of the castle table and I was wondering if it was made by someone at this sight. I thought that the crashlanding UFO was a very creative idea.

That was part of the space invasion. Caylin's RPGs took care of that pretty easily.

Welp, I think that just about covers everything.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention that everyone there said that Bionicles can now be called LEGO. That table just blew me away! WOW!

In Christ,[/quote]

[The Blue Knight]

Does anyone know who made the slightly sci-fie castle that could be taken apart? It was at the far end of the castle table and I was wondering if it was made by someone at this sight. I thought that the crashlanding UFO was a very creative idea.

God speed

Emp.Justinian

That was Steven Panuel's. He doesn't post here that I know of, but maybe he will now.

Were you there? I see you are from Oregon. I hope I didn't miss you.

And Remyth is correct, I am remiss in not mentioning the Bionicle display. It was quite impressive, something I never thought I'd say about Bionicle.

[BreadMan]

Lord Doom was there? I somehow missed him, what'd he look like?

I had a great time, even if I was tied up building most of the time and sort of accidentally missed about half the public hours, which I kind of like. I'm just gonna say ditto the above for hilights, seeing all the castlers I met at NWBC and meeting new ones (aka wunzes), seeing Castle Drachenschlaf in person, the hugeness of our battle, Tom's new additions to his display (you can definitely see the difference a few years makes, the trees/swamp were beautiful!) and seeing something we'd been planning for 2 months come together so wonderfully.

Also a few noncastle hilights for me were meeting some new people, builders that I've respected for a while like Gary McIntire, being totally amazed that people I'd never talked to before knew about Base8, and (guilty confession) the classic space fly-in (loves me some classic space).

And lastly, a special thanks to you, Richard, and your fam for letting us crash in your livingroom friday night. You are too generous, I hope one day I have the chance to return the favor. Big hugs to Winchester and Penny from us both

[daggerblood]

The battle was hugemungous! I loved standing by it and seeing all of the kids' faces light up with amazement and joy. Don't know how many figs, but there were a fickin' ton!

Yes, that was amazing

The LEGO store was complete chaos! 175+ AFOLs crammed into a tiny LEGO store! A huge thanks to LEGO for putting that on for us. The scratch-and-dent was sweet! Slave 1, AT-ST, Droid Battle Pack, and Viking Ship, anyone? 50% off? Sweet!! The special PAB was the best! Old light gray 1x2 tiles, dark gray 1x1 plates, tan plates, dark red 1x4 tiles, dark gray 1x4 bricks, sheesh!
That was also awesome, though not for me(being 13, kinda hurt being smashed around). I did manage to buy about 3 cups of the old dark gray, along with one half size cup. They still had it the next day, and wasn't quite so busy, so I bought more.

In Christ,

[BreadMan]

Does anyone know who made the slightly sci-fie castle that could be taken apart? It was at the far end of the castle table and I was wondering if it was made by someone at this sight. I thought that the crashlanding UFO was a very creative idea.

God speed

Emp.Justinian

That was Steven Panuel's. He doesn't post here that I know of, but maybe he will now.

I actually really liked that. It was very unique and I was impressed by the effective use of a lot of bionicle stuff. Steve said it was far from finished and showed me a bunch of WIP sections he had brought but didn't put on for the display. I hope he does join up here and post pics when the whole thing is completed, it was super cool!

[Emp.Justinian]

Were you there? I see you are from Oregon. I hope I didn't miss you.

I was only at the exobition and and only stayed their for about two hours, it was all very interesting. If any of you think you saw me I was the short sadly stout and rather geeky boy with blond hair. I was wearing a red shirt and tan pants. I thought that almost all of the exobition was highly captivating, with the exception of the robot that could (can you believe this) BUMP INTO CORNERS AND THEN TURN AROUND.

God speed

Emp.Justinian

[Bruce N H]

Hey guys,

Was there a keynote address? In past years Lar has put the transcript up on Lugnet, but I see no mention. If so, were there any revelations?

BTW, for you BrickFest attendees, you should definitely check out Sunday's front page.

Bruce

[plums_deify]

Woah. Brickfest was totally, totally awesome in every sense of the word. There wasn't a keynote this year, but there was a Q and A session with stories with four employees representing various portions of the company:

Bjarke, Quality control
Steve, Community Relations
Roger, Graphic Design
Erik V, Master Builder

Highlights for me? The people. Oh, the people. Meals were some of the best, I think. So many laughs. Chinese with Mike, Andrew and Andrew's Minion, (;)), lunch on Steve (Thanks, Mike), Wendy's with a crew (How can you tell they're all geeks? They ALL pull out the digital camera to brag about LEGO...), and let us ALL not forget the desperate hang-around after hours at Windows. Yeah. HILARIOUS.

As far as the LEGO store went, I got what I went for and then some. Now I've got to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with it all. Course, my finds at the Con itself are just as great...6057 complete for $15. Oh yeah. Go me.

I want to thank all the CC attendees, though, for that display. I'm still in absolute awe. I'm totally stoked that it actually got FINISHED before the public hours. Brendan, you rock.

I look forward to NWBC with eager anticipation. I cant wait to see you all again, and to try and best ourselves yet again (and kick space's bum) and come together as a community, both on and offline.

[Remyth]

...Highlights for me? The people. Oh, the people. Meals were some of the best, I think. So many laughs. Chinese with Mike, Andrew and Andrew's Minion, (;)), lunch on Steve (Thanks, Mike), Wendy's with a crew (How can you tell they're all geeks? They ALL pull out the digital camera to brag about LEGO...), and let us ALL not forget the desperate hang-around after hours at Windows. Yeah. HILARIOUS...

Caylin, you forgot to mention the lunch you had with me, my brother, andrew, Josh, and ...(man, I can't remember his name now).

No, seriously, the people are the best group o' guys 'n' gals you'll eva meet.

In Christ,

[robin]

Well said, Ric ... er, Blue Knight (strange for me, having met you first by your RL names, and now switching to forum names ...). Thanks for your welcome and help at BF. Much appreciated. And, as I said elsewhere, awesome to meet the rest of you. Can't wait for NWBC!

Robin

P.S. Steve Penuel's creation reminded me of some sort of castle - "aircraft carrier" hybrid. I told him that and he laughed, and said he loved that description!

[LORD DOOM]

Lord Doom was there? I somehow missed him, what'd he look like?

I looked like, crap. Only with a hat on, and I may or may not have been floating surrounded by magical aura and armor cladded minions of the darkest realms.

Ha ha. Anyway, I was there near closing on sunday. I'd wished I'd been there for more of it. Does anybody know when CCF will next accumulate in one location somewhere near the NW USA?

Brickfest was beyond great. I've never seen anything like it to be honest. I've gotta get my pictures developed, but I'll put my images up for all to see on BS soonish.

>=D