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https://www.brickconvention.com/
Does anybody know about this one? Apparently all the good names were already taken and so they opted for literally the most generic thing they possibly could.
I found out about it because my mom sent me a newspaper article (yes, by snail mail, clipped from an actual newspaper) about the event in the Orlando area next March. (My parents have been snow birds for more than ten years now, and I have never once been to their place in Florida, so I suspect that this is an attempt to get me n Rachel to come visit.)
The webpage is pretty basic and bears a strong resemblance to the BrickFair homepage. The home page has a 2022 copyright on it, and all the upcoming events are in 2023, starting in March, so I suspect that this is a new thing. There’s seven locations from March through September, and for those of you who don’t have a free place to stay in the greater Orlando area, the only one remotely close to us is in Cleveland next July.
From an exhibitor standpoint, the situation, as far as I can tell, bears a greater resemblance to Brick Universe (I’ve never actually been to a Brick Universe, but I’ve looked into it and I’ve seen photos). There’s no fee to exhibit – you just fill out a form saying how many tables you want – but the event is only three days, there’s no games and prizes and whatnot, and we don’t get paid.
I’m skeptical that I’ll really make it to Orlando in March. The Cleveland show is a weekend I’m not usually available for, we’ll have to see. I remember Brick Universe coming to Cleveland and there was interest but nobody could actually make it, and then they came again and it wasn’t even really discussed. I seem to remember though that a bunch of people made it to Brick Universe in Columbus (which is farther away), and a large number of people went to Erie recently, so I’m guessing it just depends on the schedule.
Subbed to see where this goes. I think it would be interesting to attend another Convention but I agree that website looks a little basic
Subbed. The site looks like the old BrickUniverse site. I even noticed EJ’s Iron Man. It’s also interesting that it’s at the fairgrounds, so I’m wondering if it’s going to be open to the elements a little. It looks like there are buildings, but only 3 are heated, which leads me to think that none have AC.
So it turns out that me n Rachel are going to this after all. I submitted table requests for both of us, and I have heard back from the Brick Convention people. My mom really wanted us to come. Also, coincidentally, Rachel’s sister and her husband live in the greater Orlando area as well, so we have plenty of reason to go down there.
I requested half a table. After coming up short on my build at Exton, I decided I should scale back what I can expect to get done for this event, and decided on a new Space build that’s four baseplates wide by three deep. So, exactly double the footprint of the last space plants build, but less than half the footprint of what I attempted for Exton. I did some test builds for this build at Rachel’s house in November 2021, but nobody’s seen the photos other than Frost.
I thought maybe Rachel would take her small mosaics that have gone to Chantilly, Schaumburg, and Portland in the past, but she wants to take the fireworks display, and she’s started researching a better way to shade the display.
Incidentally, Rachel almost never logs into steelcitylug.com, and relies on me to pass along information. But she must be set up to receive emails about new topics, because she read my initial post on this thread. And despite the fact that the email would have put my name right at the beginning of the post, she somehow failed to notice that I was the author, because she told me later that when she was reading it, she thought ‘Hmmm, this guy’s pretty funny, maybe I should trade in Ben for a better boyfriend’, and it was only after she saw her own name in the post that she realized that she’d actually chosen wisely the first time around.
I’m interested to see what you think of it, especially since you’ve experienced a number of other conventions. Looking forward to your review! 🙂
Google feeds me news articles on my phone, based on what they think I might be interested in (their results are uneven), and they recently gave me an article from a Minnesota publication about the Brick Convention event coming to the area later this year. There were a couple of noteworthy items.
It did confirm that this is Brick Convention’s first year of operations. But more importantly, it says that “[Brick Convention’s] founder, Greyson Riley Beights, also launched another annual Lego fan event called BrickUniverse as a teenager in 2014.” I don’t know Beights or his name. I don’t know if anybody met him when they were at BrickUniverse. What the article doesn’t say is why he chose to create a new event instead of continuing to operate, expand, and promote BrickUniverse. So we don’t know if it’s because he came up with a better way of doing things, and felt it was better to start fresh, or if it’s because he had a falling out with somebody at BrickUniverse and left to create a rival venture. Both seem plausible to me.
The article’s description of the event makes it sound a lot like Brick Fest Live, and they specifically mention that BFL is not coming to the Twin Cities area this year.
They’ve email me twice now. They said we’d get information like load-in times soon (which I’d asked about) so I’m still in suspense. Rachel decided she wanted a whole table, but I still only need half, so we asked for two tables next to each other, which they said isn’t an issue. They said they’d look for somebody to fill the other half of my table, but if they don’t, maybe I can just center my build on the table? So it sounds like they are not worried about running out of display space.
That’s very interesting @bengood921. Explains why the websites look so similar. Brick Universe was definitely more fan focused. I know a few of us went to a couple, but I don’t think anyone ever displayed. Thanks for keeping us updated.
Rachel and I attended Brick Convention Orlando this past weekend. We enjoyed it very much. We met Greyson, who is the organizer, and displayed our stuff, and there was a good crowd.
It was pretty much what I’d expected. It was well organized, but there was nothing at this convention that isn’t being done at the others. Greyson told me that the convention is not on tour in the sense of doing a different schedule and different set of cities every year. He said he wants to get established every where they go, and he has a five year plan to grow. So, that means they will be back in Orlando next March. (It also means Pittsburgh won’t be added to the list, which I suggested, although presumably that could change if some cities don’t pan out.)
I am considering going back next year. It might depend on whether or not my parents still have their house there. Rachel enjoyed it and is willing to go back also.
We looked at the schedule again. As previously discussed, the Cleveland show in July is the only one that’s even remotely convenient to Pittsburgh. The dates are not good for us, but Rachel has friends in Cleveland and is considering rearranging our schedule so that we can go. The other one that got my attention is Davenport, IA, because it’s not that far from Chicago, and it’s near where Rachel grew up and she still has family there. I don’t expect to talk anybody from Steel City LUG into driving to Iowa, though.
I am having trouble getting Google Photos to update (my phone sends them automatically when it’s connected to Wifi, but I can never tell if it’s actually working or not, and there’s no way to force it that I know of), but I’ll post a couple pics here when I can.
@joshhall Rachel and I earned three cups each: 1 for displaying, and 2 for four shifts of staffing. Rachel ordered a Steel City LUG t-shirt from Redbubble and wore it for the first time on Saturday.Here’s some pics, I got all three in one post, high five.
I did not get even the most basic landscaping done in time for the event. I did some during setup, but then I had to keep adding plants during public hours, although I stopped after the morning session ended on Sunday. I will have more time and can do a better job at FXBG, so I’ll take more pics then. In the meantime, I am up past my bedtime in the hotel room and I brought two containers of Legos into the room to work on the build (which I never do).
My previous post is already obsolete. Rearranging the schedule did not work, so we will not be available for Cleveland this year.
If we decide to do another Brick Convention show this year, I will probably create a new thread for it. This one is really Brick Convention Orlando, although when I started it, I didn’t think I was going, and it was more about the fact that there was a new convention that I’d not heard about up to that point.
The other one I’d mentioned to Rachel is the Toledo show. It’s more than four hours from Pittsburgh, but it’s essentially the same distance as BrickFairVA, although obviously it won’t be as big, and it’s still closer than Exton was. The drawback is once it wraps up, we’d have to get out of there as quickly as possible so that we can set up for Halloween the next day, and it could be pretty exhausting.
all the good names were already taken
Maybe we should get a copyright for Brick House before its taken also.
but there was nothing at this convention that isn’t being done at the others
That is one result of the growth of Lego Fan conventions. They all basically follow the BrickFair formula. And I do not blame them; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Although some conventions do have better and more plentiful activities than others. I presume the weather was nice in Orlando.
So that’s what those red space plants from the picture workshop were for. I love the build! Is Toledo August 26-27th? I think that should leave plenty of time for Halloween preparation.
>> So that’s what those red space plants from the picture workshop were for. I love the build!
Yes, Mitch may or may not be interested to know that I built those rock & plant assemblies specifically for Mitch’s class, but they both did in fact make it into the build that I displayed at Brick Convention Orlando and now at BrickFair Fredericksburg as well. The diagrams indicating the location of the plants didn’t make it with me, and almost all of them came off in transport, so I had to just make up their locations this time around, but the rocks are the same. @mitchsbricks
>> Toledo August 26-27th? I think that should leave plenty of time for Halloween preparation.
Toledo is 28-29. If we drove back the evening of the 29th, that would give us all day on the 30th to set up. But you have to also remember that I’m an old man, and that three days of a convention like that is tiring, and we wouldn’t be getting back to Rachel’s house until after midnight on the 29th, and that my trick-or-treat assembly has a certain amount of setup time. So we’ll see. The one in Iowa is looking better to me right now. I think it’ll depend on whether or not I get significant building done after BFVA, if I have nothing new to show, those later Brick Convention events are not going to seem worth it.
Yes, Mitch may or may not be interested to know that I built those rock & plant assemblies specifically for Mitch’s class
Sweet! that display looks amazing! when you get good pics of it send it to me so we can post on the Steel City Instagram!
>> Sweet! that display looks amazing! when you get good pics of it send it to me so we can post on the Steel City Instagram!
Thanks, the best pics I have right now are the ones I posted to Flickr. They’re not great, they were taken in the convention hall at Fredericksburg, with questionable lighting and a busy background. I don’t have space available in my house right now to set it up for a good pic, and I don’t plan to to even take the various components out of the storage containers before BWC23 unless I get some more design work done first. But if those photos are good enough for you, you can use them on Instagram; I chose a small selection of recently posted photos to put in the Steel City LUG Flickr group.
For anybody interested, prrbrix, who I don’t know but is one of many many people that I follow on Flickr, posted a 166 photo album of Brick Convention Minnesota, which happened this past weekend. Unfortunately, when I do a Flickr search for ‘Brick Convention Orlando’, the only relevant match that comes up is my own photo. So for anybody who wants to see what their second event looked like, you can follow the link below. The only real overlap I see with Brick Convention Orlando is that AC Pin was at both of them and had a large selection of stuff.
Also, I don’t know what I was thinking when I discussed the possibility of Brick Convention Toledo coming next October; I already know that I won’t be available on October 28 or 29, so that one is definitely out for me. The one in Iowa is still being considered.
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