BrickFest 2005 Wrapup!

Discussion and planning of large-scale Castle Themed displays and events
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Magnus
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BrickFest 2005 Wrapup!

Post by Magnus »

Well I don't know about you guys, but I'm still floating on a cloud somewhere up there...

The people, the MOCs the building inspiration that comes from an event like this has to be experienced to be appreciated. My head is exloding with building ideas - it seemed I learned something new from so many different MOCs - the building techniques and the effects they created really have to be seen up close to be appreciated. The best photos in the world really can't compete with seeing all this in person.

Thanks to all who attended, I hope everybody got home safely, with MOCs still largely assembled...

For the first time, the Castle theme got two seperate rooms, which was pretty cool. We ended up with one primarily fantasy oriented room and one more medieval oriented room. I think this worked well for the most part although I do understand that there was some misunderstanding during the voting for awards, when some attendees may not have realized that there were Castle Award elligible MOCs in the room next door to the Medieval Room. I did put up signs that I thought made everything about the awards pretty clear, but it seems this kind of thing will have to be spelled out even more in the future.

Awards aside, there were amazing MOCs everywhere! My main regret is not getting to see more of the rest of the event - there were rooms I really didn't get a chance to check out properly at all - we could really have used an extra day.

One of the best things about this year's event was the fact that for the first time, the CEO of LEGO and a number of other high ranking a highly influencial LEGO VIPs were in attendance. Many AFOLs were lucky enough to get the opportunity to show off their MOCs to the LEGO brass, who were appreciative and clearly genuinely impressed with all they saw. They gave a talk about the future of the company and while LEGO has been struggling recently, it is clear that they have some incredible new things up their sleeves that will quite simply take the product we love to new levels. On a more familiar level, the Viking line will be coming out in the US in October.

The castleheads had a 2 hour plus show-and-tell session on Friday and later held the Evil Engines competition. I'd like to thank all those who built engines, and congratulate Cale Leiphart for winning with his fearsome trebuchet "God's Hammer".

On Saturday Lenny Hoffman ran a BrickQuest game which I think was a big hit with a small group of ardent gamers, thanks Lenny!

On Sunday the doors opened to the public, and over 2000 people showed up to check us out. Many of the wide eyed kids who went home will surely be raking their hands through their own LEGO collections (you know the noise I mean;) ) for a long time. And I have no doubt that we and made some new AFOLs that day. Thanks to all those who helped out on Sunday with manning the tables answering questions, and talking about what we do.

I'd like to thank Ed Kohl for his great support in helping run the Castle Rooms smoothly, Marc Nelson for helping with the CCC flags, and to everybody else who came along, helped out, brought MOCs and checked out the Castle Rooms. Thanks t othe LEGO VIPs and everyone i hung out with after hours at the bar.

And more than anyone else, thanks Christina for everything.

This will be the last BrickFest at GMU, which is where we have gathered ever since we started back in 2000. If anybody thinks they can help with identifying a suitable venue to host the event in the future (preferably next summer), please feel free to get in touch with me or anyone else on the BrickFest staff.

thanks all

Magnus
Magnus
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Posts: 255
Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Arlington, VA

PS

Post by Magnus »

Oh, and I'll post the Castle award winners once some good pix come up online for me to refer to. Congrats to all the winners!

If you have comments good and bad, please do share. I for one, think we put on a terrrific show, but there's always room for improvement.

Magnus
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JPinoy
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Post by JPinoy »

This is good news, I didn't here about this before. Castle does need to be separated to historic and fantasy/sci-fi style Castle MOCs.

That way my Kahilawayans will have a place to stay in the Fantasy Castle section and no Castle attendee will try to kick me out and into the Space rooms. :lol:
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