BrickFair Alabama, January 15-18, 2015

Post date: Jan 31, 2015 1:37:11 AM

The Tennessee Valley LEGO Club attended BrickFair in force this year with over 30 members making the trek to Birmingham from Huntsville, Nashville and Knoxville. We displayed our largest town and train layout, complete with live train cam, while also spreading out around the convention center with MOCs in every theme. The weekend saw 9600 public visitors and Lee Burns won the coveted Crowd Favorite award with his truly impressive MOC of the Space Shuttle while Pete’s newly lit Regions Center won Most Inspiring.

Half of the seminars were presented by TNVLC members with Jennifer presenting on the Micropolis theme and Renee talking about her experiences with First LEGO League and kids on the autism spectrum.

Nine games were hosted by TNVLC members. The biggest surprise this year was the boat race which exploded in popularity!

Bill hosted this game and came up with a new challenge which required navigating from one end of the pool to the other, circling around a floating LEGO island and then returning to the starting point. There were 11 entries, 3 from TNVLC members including first and second place. After the race, the boats were put on display in the convention center and thanks to Will’s speedy video editing skills, a replay of the races was looped during public hours.

Judson Hudson made his first appearance at BrickFair this year. He was a HUGE hit. Hopefully we can talk Emmet to making another appearance next year with more publicity and better crowd control. Thanks Judson!

TNVLC members also did a lot of work behind the scenes by supplying theme leaders, check in desk helpers, bling desk operators and bingo runners. The event owner commented that it was the smoothest Brickfair he’d ever experienced! Thank you to everyone who participated and also thank you to all the visitors who turned out to see us!

TNVLC participation by the numbers:

2 of 4 Seminars:

Jennifer - The Beauty of Micropolis

Renee - Rocket City Roboskills

3 of 10 Theme Leaders:

Will Ellett - Love

Jennifer - Micropolis

Pete - Train

9 of 24 Game Hosts

Marla - Team Speed Build & Parts Draft

Will - Dirty Buildster

Chris - Blind Build AFOL, Blind Build TFOL & Combo Build

Bill - Boat Race

Sandra Boettner - Checkers

Tim - Texas Hold 'em

1 of 4 Check In Desk helpers

Will

4 of 4 Bling Desk helpers

Lee

Laura

Brian

Renee

4 of 7 Bingo Runners

Tim

Laura

Renee

Melissa