Event Kit 2

Wow...made lots of progress with some help from Kathie and my cousin Mike.  The kits are all packed up except for the 1 missing piece and the engraved part.  It is a good feeling to have the kits all done before the end of February.  In past years, they were being put together the week of the event in June several times and they were never done before May.

Even more about what is going on now...

I failed to mention that we have finalized the vendor spaces for Chicago.  Now we know how many vendors we can support this year and Kathie will be getting to work on that with returning vendors.  Then we will open up for new vendors in the remaining spaces.

Kathie also now has pictures of the event kits.  So, presales for Brickworld Chicago are being set up.

And, Greg Hyland has sent me a picture of the artwork inks...every year the artwork gets cooler!!!

Event Kit 2

I got out all the parts for event kit #2 (the cracked world by Nannan Zhang).  Then I made up one kit to make sure all was good.  That was when I found out there were no instructions for this model.  Nannan sent me some pictures and with the help of Kevin Clague, I now have a good set of instructions for the model.  So, I built it and found out our initial part count was off by 1 part.  Off to Bricklink I go  :)

Meanwhile, we are kitting the 100 models.  I am about halfway done and planning on major progress tonight.  I want this done and out of the way in the dining room so I can start piling up stuff that needs to go to Brickworld Indy.

Hotel rooms at the Westin are going fast.  We got our first email from someone trying to reserve a room to tell us that their desired room type was not available.  The resolution is that each week we end up calling the hotel to get more rooms added to the Brickworld block...there comes a point where the hotel will say "sorry, no more rooms".  So, reserve your room early.

Event Kit 1 is Complete

We finished packing up the first event kits tonight (about 50 of them).  It is the pyramid.  Great kit designed by Jeremy Moody.

Next up, the cracked world by Nannan Zhang.

I also turned in the final Brickworld Indy layout to the convention center tonight.  Complete with power drops.  The space is full again this year.

The coolest thing so far this week is that I finally managed to get some LEGO parts included on my high school team's FRC robot.  The student in charge of the programming was unable to get the kit accelerometer to work.  After a week of messing around, I noted that the system was designed to allow the attachment of a standard NXT I2C sensor.  So, I took in one of my HiTechnic accelerometers.  We had it operating in about 5 minutes. So, a LEGO part is now on the robot.  All I need to do now is add a minifig or two...okay, so all of that had nothing to do with Brickworld.

We received a package from LEGO yesterday with a few sets to give away in a Brickworld Indy raffle.  Thanks LEGO!!  The list of displayers is complete and posted on the IndyLUG forum to make sure we didn't forget anyone.  All we need is another FLL team or two to help cover the FLL demo area for the weekend.  If anyone is interested, please let me know.

Last week, Steve Hassenplug brought RoboRally down for a science night demo.  I think we found a good way to queue up players and run games.  We will incorporate this into upcoming events I am sure.

That's it for now.

Event kit packing and more

We started making event kits this week. It will be nice to have those completed well in advance this year. The kits have pretty cool parts. So, I think they will sell quickly. We hit 400 registrants today. Amazing and cool. I started laying out the event space. Vendors will have specified space in the room and there are a set number of booths of each size available...more than last year...so we should be getting vendor registration open soon. We also posted the collaboration info to the Brickworld web site...take a look and plan to participate. Finally, I got all my stuff packed up for Brickworld Indy and I found out that I will be on Indy Style again this year before the event. Lots going on!!

Busy Week

It is really disappointing when life gets in the way of fun.  I have not really had much time this week for Brickworld.  I feel like I am falling behind.  But, I did meet Brooklyn Decker (super model) on Saturday.  And the FIRST Robotics Team I work with made some great progress this week.  Kathie continued to work on stuff like registration and closing the books on 2011 so we can get everything off to the accountant.  More fun stuff will start happening soon.  We are ready to kit up the first of the two event kits and we plan to put our fellow IndyLUG members to work on Sunday kitting the parts (if they want).

Fliers at LEGO Store

Thanks to LEGO for agreeing to pass out our fliers for Brickworld Indy at the LEGO store in Castleton Square Mall and for getting Brickworld Indy on the March calendar in the stores.  Very cool!!

Football and Brickworld?

With the Super Bowl in town here in Indy and all the talk about Peyton Manning retiring and drafting Andrew Luck, I couldn't help but start wondering how to connect it all to Brickworld.  And then I learned that Andrew Luck is a big LEGO fan!!!  So, in order to help him decide that he wants to be here in Indy, I am going to find a way to send him some VIP passes to Brickworld Indy in March.  I am sure that it will influence him greatly.  (lol)

300 Registrants and more

Brickworld Chicago hit 300 registrants yesterday.  That is the quickest rise to 300 ever.  It took 21 days.  Last year we hit 300 after about 33 days.  Very exciting!!  Thanks everyone for getting signed up (see other post on keeping Kathie happy).

So, I finished the layout for Brickworld Indy the other night and made my post here...then I worked on the layout more 2 days later...now it is "really" done...Does anyone believe that?  (I have my fingers crossed)