Just a couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the very first BrickFair: New England! This fan convention took place in Manchester, New Hampshire; less than two and a half hours driving distance from the LEGO US Headquarters in Enfield, Connecticut. Needless to say I got to actually stay away from the Chicago O’Hare airport for once and rented a car for the weekend. The entire weekend was rainy and cloudy including both the drive to and drive from so hopefully that helped influx the public attendance.

I arrived in Manchester in the late afternoon, early evening on Thursday- sadly just missing check-in for the day at the event. Nevertheless, I took a quick peek around to find many fans putting together MOCs and display/activity areas. The event was held in a very nice location right in the same building as the hotel, the entire layout was visible from giant windows looking into the walkway back to the hotel.

Friday I was available at the event all day and spent a majority of my time interacting with and engaging the local community. We had a great turnout from members of NELUG, I LUG NY, GardenSLUG, DelVaLUG, LUGOCT, and others. The official LEGO Q&A session took place at noon during lunch at a restaurant in the hotel, with myself at the helm. Definitely my first time to host one while everyone is eating; but hey, why not?! The only down side was having to watch everyone else eat while I fielded questions ranging from: When is monorail coming back to what was the criteria for the VIP Valentines’ Day minfigure keychain promotion. Later in the day I hosted my staple presentation: The AFOL Community vs. The LEGO Group. I was happy to see around 30 or so participants (my biggest showing so far this year). We spoke about the changes in support structure both for the LUG community as well as towards the LEGO fan conventions. I also went into further detail about myself, our team and how we work together. Attendants of this seminar were also surprised with a few minifigure business cards I brought with me. After sharing stories of what fans had done to my figure at Portland and Birmingham, the folks at Manchester decided to up the ante.

Saturday the event was opened to the masses so I mostly wandered about, taking photos and speaking behind the stanchions with various folks. After a few days of tinkering the monorail was running at full speed. With a combined effort of a few of the groups present, they set a new world record for longest display of monorail track. It was ridiculous, and I instinctively tried to stay as far away from it as possible less I hear the question… *twitch. Moving along, I watched a fabulously organized LEGO trivia “game show-esque” event take place. The buzzers were made from LEGO Mindstorms/RCX and the host, Dave, did a fantastic job hosting the activity with a suit and LEGO tie! Quite entertaining- very interesting to see what info the adults know in comparison to the teens, or kids. I know none of the kids would have missed “who is the green ninja in Ninjago.” It was great seeing an event of this scale brought to the Northeast region of the US; I hope it stays on the calendar for years to come. Lots of great folks, great MOCs, and a great weekend.

My full set of photos can be found in my Flick photostream here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinhink/sets/72157633496823870/

Next week I’ll be traveling to the US LEGO fan convention BrickFair: New England in Manchester, New Hampshire! I’ll arrive in Manchester Thursday evening and will be available at the event all day Friday and Saturday, returning to Connecticut Sunday morning. What does LEGO have in store for the attendees at BrickFair: New England this time?
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The AFOL Community vs. The LEGO Group
Kevin Hinkle, The LEGO Group

Join Kevin Hinkle, North America Community Coordinator from The LEGO Group, as he provides an introduction into what he does and the challenges faced everyday while working with the LEGO fan community. What expectations come along with being a conduit between these two entities? An update of current projects will be addressed followed with discussion around what the fan community expects from The LEGO Group in regards to support. This roundtable discussion will allow opportunity for questions, concerns and suggestions to further strengthen collaboration between the AFOL community and the LEGO Community team.

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The LEGO Group Q&A Session
Kevin Hinkle, The LEGO Group

Kevin Hinkle, North America Community Coordinator from The LEGO Group, takes time to answer your questions. This is your opportunity to ask your questions and voice your concerns to an official representative from the LEGO company.

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Please feel free to stop by and say hello while I am in the area!
My job is to support the fan community in North America and I can’t do that if I don’t hear from you!

50 AFOLs are participating and our LCP Dirk Denoyelle will visit the event later today.

I took already some pictures to share here – more to come.

Take a flight

I have been trying to do as many photo as possible of the layout, but it’ll have to wait a few days before I can upload them to my flickr folder.
Until then, all of you will have to live with the pictures I’ve taken using the iPad’s built-in camera.

Quite a few very skilled builders around here!

This week has been a brutal serving of excel sheets, emails, phone calls, and warehouse orders. As promised, I spent every moment not previously allocated to office meetings (Which I had 9 this week) to processing the pending LUG & event support applications for North & South America. As of this morning, I have now successfully shipped out 67 LUG support packages out of 80 submitted applications.

On the event support front, I have shipped out 51 support packages which only leaves me with 10 additional event support applications left to address (unless more decide to come in). So what exactly does that entail in terms of LEGO? Well, according to my records I have now shipped out over 375 LEGO sets and 273 cases of assorted play brick to the LUG community. I have to admit it’s been a very tedious and long process but thanks to an email I got back from the Adult LEGO® Alliance in British Columbia, I’m reminded of the positive impact and purpose of these programs. As a thank you, Pennie-Lynn, my primary point of contact at the ALA built a small vignette to show their gratitude and excitement upon receiving their LUG support shipment. I was very touched by the small gesture and had to share (pictured above).

If all goes according to plan- the final shipments for LUG & event support will make their way from the Enfield warehouse next week. Back to this week however, our colleague Tim Courtney, who works to support LEGO Cuusoo and a member of the Community Co-creation team, worked out of the Enfield office. Apparently, he will be moving soon to help build the team’s presence at the US office. Sara and I spent some time getting him used to the office culture and getting everything in place for his eventual move in the coming months. It’s always good to hear of more community team members coming over to the new colonies: the majority of our department is based out of the office in Billund, Denmark. Outside of the normal hustle and bustle, lots of very productive meetings this week. Hopefully we have a few more opportunities to explore for supporting the LEGO fan community with some of these initial conversations.

LUG UPDATE: We officially welcomed a new LUG this week into South America! LUG Peru – The LEGO® Users Group of Peru, reached out to let us know that they are here and not to be overlooked! They have 14 members and a website available for your viewing pleasure. We look forward to working with them more in the future. South America now has 3 active LUGs!