Brickvention 2011

[Exile]

It is now 12 pm Jan 16. I have just spent the last 2 days at Brickvention, Australia’s largest Lego convention and display.

Things like this start easily enough you build and alter 9 Lego ships for a display and rework your Brickwars army for it to be display worthy, then you get there and things get complicated.

All the bricklink sellers you buy from are there, the shops have the new collector minifigs, ninjago and sets you have missed out on the first time around.

There are more MOCs than you know what to do with.

You forget to eat because you are trying to figure out the designs and connection systems others have used.

Then you are competing in the challenges first comes build in the bag which is what it says except the organisers want the models to be exactly like the instructions, then there’s the speed sort also exactly what you see, sort out 180 cheese slopes into their colours as quickly as possible and just to be bitches they put in 1 more of one colour and 1 less of another and also make three of the colours dark blue, dark green and black.

You find yourself counting the number of cows the club accidentally bought from Lego and hid through the displays you go nearly crazy when you find 270+ and when you finally look at the bag of goodies they gave you but you put in your bag and forgot about you see one in there as well you sit down for a few minutes and then are roped in to set up even more tables of MOCs you arrived at 9am and left at 9pm and this is only day one.

Day two arrives and you’re going in again of course. 9:30am because you miss the train this time it’s all set up there’s nothing more you’re needed for, what you are forgetting is that day 2 is open to the public you get there and the queue to enter is already around the corner of a city block, you get in and are met with the statement “You’re late its 10:30” you look at the Poke Walker you have been using as a watch, it is set in sync with your DS which you remember is set to get your game of Pokémon more night for you to catch creatures you don’t have. You go in the main hall there are 3000 people there and your ships have been moved.

You’re soon standing inside a table ring surrounded by Space MOCs, you pick tiny hands off delicate robots and answer the same questions for 200 people the guy next to you reminds you to go eat, so you go outside and because you’re a bit of a fool are convinced to help watering the growing queue. Two hours pass and you realize the queue is around the whole city block and seems to contain 10,000 people you run out of water and finally go get lunch its 3 pm according to your IPod (the Poke Walker betrayed you and should not be trusted). You like this “food” stuff and it reminds you of something else you haven’t had for a while, sleep. You gave that up when you started re playing Arkham Asylum mid last week. So far no side effect of that.

Lunch is over. You go back to queue duty and hand out water for another hour then go inside and sit in a ring of tables and pick tiny hands off delicate trains and answer the same questions for 200 people. All throughout the day you have heard the same announcement “missing child” no problem that’s expected, then you hear “missing husband”.

Somewhere in the back of your caffeine denied brain something happens. You tune out and take out the advent calendar parts you had been trying to get around to sorting and 10 minutes later have a reasonable looking steampunk robot assembled and something else in your hand, a receipt with $300 written on it. Then you look in your bag and find an unopened box of the series 3 Minifigs and your money for the week is gone.

You know what happened it’s the Joker and no sleep, you went brain fadey and bought the box you wanted.

More hands, more questions.

The Steambot tells you it’s 6pm (you trust him more than the IPod and Poke walker) the con has closed you get your boxes collect your ships and Brick wars army which somehow became a display and then call your lift. Load up the car and go home. Eat tea (food is still good) and write something for a forum and maybe go to sleep. But you hear it in the back of your mind, mocking laughter. You still haven’t beaten that guy’s face in yet, you don’t need sleep you need to stop the Joker.

The preceding is a very dramatised version of my weekend. Brickvention was great fun and allowed me to see people I haven’t seen for ages as well as be surrounded sometimes literally with Lego. If you ever get a chance to work a convention for a thing you love do it without hesitation it is greatly worth it. The last thing I need to mention is that sometimes one thing attracts another and because there was a large area of Star Wars Lego there was also a number of the 501st floating around along with Jango Fett, Boba Fett and various Jedi. It was a great weekend.

Go to your local Lego conventions they need support.

I’ll post my convention photos onto my Flikr account in the next couple of days.

I hope you enjoyed the sillyness as much as I enjoyed the con.

Edited January 16, 2011 by Exile

[Holodoc]

Wohoo - Nice story, Exile!

I’ll post my convention photos onto my Flikr account in the next couple of days.

Yes, yes, yes!

Any news about upcoming sets, especially this one?

[Exile]

Sorry it took me so long, here's the Flickr link.

Holodoc, the convention was to close to the two huge ones for a preview unfortunately.

[AussieJimbo]

Thanks for the great report and photo set, Exile.

So much top stuff on display.

:classic: