Imagineers and AFOLs: Finding Creative Community at BrickCon 2023

Today’s BrickNerd article features a guest post about BrickCon 2023 by Joe Meno of BrickJournal Magazine.

Hi BrickNerd readers! I'm Joe Meno, the editor of BrickJournal Magazine. One of my duties for the magazine is to look for builders to feature in issues and to sell copies of the magazine and subscriptions. The primary way I do this is by being a vendor at LEGO events and conventions. You might have seen me in a booth at BrickFair VA or at BrickCon.

This year, though, I brought a special guest to BrickCon, one of Walt Disney’s legendary Imagineers. I’ll let her introduce herself:

My name is Terri Hardin and I am a Disney Imagineer. I have a Patreon page called Terri’s Tribe, where I met Joe Meno and learned about LEGO. I love learning new things and when Joe and Naomi Takeuchi began to share with me LEGO in the 21st century, I realized just how much LEGO had changed since I was a little girl.

I met Terri when I happened upon one of her public videos where she mentioned that she was a LEGO fan and was working on a project. It turns out that Terri loves dragons and in fact, designed a dragon’s lair. If you have gone to Disneyland Paris, you may have seen it under Sleeping Beauty Castle. Inspired by the range of colors in the LEGO Dots sets, she began working on a life-size mosaic of the dragon. The mosaic will be about 8 feet by 5.5 feet.

When she mentioned this, I contacted her about the mosaic and joined her Patreon page. I’ll let her talk about her connection to LEGO:

I'm 66 years old and when I was a little girl, LEGO consisted of the “eight brick” (eight dots on top in two rows of four) and the “four brick” (four dots on top). In order to make windows, you just created a space and to make doors, you just created a space. To make a roof, you did a special stacking technique that only used part of these LEGO bricks winding down to the final one on top to make a roof.

Joe pointed me in the direction of a world I had never seen before. LEGO had changed, and he said go look at the LEGO website. After looking through LEGO.com, I bought the Titanic kit right away. Then Joe showed me his magazine BrickJournal and in that publication I saw a world that I just couldn't believe existed. I really didn’t quite understand initially.

Joe told me about brick conventions—LEGO events where people get together and show off their creativity and can buy LEGO-related products. I got excited and thought I'd love to go to one of these. I finally got my wish around Labor Day this year.

Joe invited me to BrickCon in Seattle to observe and possibly pitch myself to be a presenter in 2024. The idea was to sit at Joe's vendor table where he would introduce me to some influential people so that I could better understand what I was looking at and they, the powers that be, could understand what I was about as a Disney Imagineer.

People of BrickCon

BrickCon is a LEGO fan convention that has been around for years and has a vibe that is different from other events. Since it’s in Washington (the state), the attendees are mostly from the West Coast and Canada. As a result, many of the builds in this event are unique—they aren't seen at other events usually held on the East Coast of the US.

The North Pole by Josh Parkinson

With all the years that I have attended, the event has become a place to meet and catch up with old friends as well as make new ones. With Terri coming, I had a new friend to introduce to my friends and the community. What I didn’t expect was that in seeing through her eyes, I saw the event like I did when I first attended.

After looking around and seeing some displays, Terri had some observations about BrickCon attendees:

The first thing I noticed upon going to this convention was that the people were very similar to many of the Disney fans who have come to know and love yours truly. When speaking to these people, many told me that they were teased about playing with little bricks and about their passion, and many didn't understand why people play with LEGO as an adult. This is the same for my Disney fans. They too, are teased about wearing mouse ears and about loving Disneyland way into their senior years. Many just don't understand. This makes the LEGO people and the Disney people automatic kindred spirits.

I often tell them that if someone who is making fun of you because of what you love would only take a minute, they would realize that this is no different than a sports fan. If you love sports, don’t you paint your face and dress up in the team colors and grunt along with fellow fans? The only difference there is what you collect or love and that’s it.

I am a Henson Muppeteer and I am a Disney Imagineer. I've also appeared in films like Ghostbusters and Men In Black as a puppeteer. I’ve done a lot in my career. I too have often been teased about playing with dolls. But playing with dolls led me to a very lucrative career. It made me well-known in the industry and earned me a good living and an enchanting career.

Meeting with the LEGO community, I realized they too had enchanting careers. Many were invited to Denmark to show off their amazing creations or became certified LEGO builders. (yes, this is a REAL title). The creations I saw and experienced were absolutely dazzling and amazing beyond what I could have imagined (and that is saying something). Many of them were motorized and had some kind of animation.

These LEGO people were people of service. They not only built amazing LEGO creations, but they came from backgrounds such as nurses, firemen, housewives, event creators, artists, teachers, and so much more. They were fun people who also loved to create in LEGO.

Creatives and Their Creations

After setting up the BrickJournal booth, I took Terri around to meet some of the builders and see their builds up close. My company proved handy a few times, as Terri explains:

I will say that one of the challenges I had was that I didn't understand the abbreviations they used like MOC. The LEGO people use a lot of slang and abbreviations, and I didn't understand this one and so many others. MOC stands for ‘My Own Creation,’ Joe told me. It was great to have him by my side to translate.

Terri also gathered some insights concerning LEGO builders and Disney makers:

There are similarities between creative people—the differences are often the media in which they create. As an artist, a Disney Imagineer, a Henson Muppeteer, and an international trademarked artist and speaker, I create things out of nothing.

So do people who build in LEGO, and so do Disney fans who design their costumes and cosplay. We all create something out of nothing. We are all unicorns and we are all special. But the road of a unicorn is difficult, and many don’t understand who we are and what we're about as this requires people to pay attention and to take time to learn more about us. That's not our fault if they choose not to do it.

AFOL Activities From a New Perspective

One thing that I don't get to do as a vendor is participate in the various activities that happen during the convention. Much of this is because they are happening while my table is open and I am selling magazines. Since I was at BrickJournal’s table, Terri was able to see and participate in a couple of activities that I usually miss:

I had an amazing time at this LEGO event and met a lot of amazing people. But I had a lot of surprises.

The first surprise was when I went to the Master Build contest. I had this image in my head of a lot of people surrounding these master builders struggling to be silent, marveling at the contestants as they frantically created something based on an unknown theme out of the kit they were given. I imagined that this huge crowd of onlookers were held in silence as the master builders created the masterpiece they hoped would win them first prize.

However, when I got there, I was one of only two or three people who were observing and I was one of the only ones who walked around and looked at each build as each master quietly and silently worked in the time limit allowed. There were no crowds, there was no shouting. Instead, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Many amazing creations were made, and I was dazzled. The reverence was unexpected.

In this Master Build, all ages are welcome—you simply have to show up for the contest and make it through three rounds to reach the final round which is judged by all the people who attend BrickCon.

She also made some discoveries about the average LEGO fan when it comes to collecting and having fun:

The second surprise for me was attending an event called Dirty Brickster. This is where you bring a LEGO gift worth $30 or more and it’s played much like the White Elephant gift exchange you have likely been a part of at an office party or family gathering. You're allowed to steal but in a Dirty Brickster, you can only steal three times. Once you do, the gift is no longer in play.

This is where the similarity ends. During the gift exchange you might have played in your office party, your goal would be to get the best gift. A toaster or action figure, whatever. You look at the total package. With Dirty Brickster, there's more going on. If you're like me, who doesn't know much about the subtleties of LEGO, you're simply looking for the kit you want. The kit I had my eye on was a beautiful LEGO tiger.

However, LEGO people think differently. Their brains work like tiny computers calculating not only the best kit but also what's in the kit. How many bricks make up said kit, and how many unusual bricks are in the kit. What colors are in kit, how old and rare is the kit, and recalling if they have or need it in their collection. And they do this in seconds!

LEGO people will look at a kit and not see just the tiger, for example—they will see what the tiger is composed of, they will also calculate color, and they will also calculate how many times the kit that they desire has been in play. The goal is not necessarily to get the kit when you select a gift or you’re stolen from, but maybe to get something desirable that will be stolen from you so you can eventually get to the kit you want. I was located near the end of the circle, so I had plenty of time to observe this behavior in action. I was dazzled by the extreme brain power these LEGO people have as they played. And LEGO people know how to play.

If I'm a creator, one who does MOCs, then I am looking at the kit comprised of what bricks, colors and quantities I need to complete my next project. I'm not interested in whether it builds a parrot or a tiger. If I’m a collector, I look at the set as a whole. Some builders when they won a kit, ripped it open and sorted the pieces into smaller bags and discarded the box entirely to trade or place in their other parts. This shocked me so badly that I had to catch my breath! However, this was one of my favorite parts of the LEGO convention.

Creative Destruction

Terri also enjoyed the presentations that BrickCon is known for:

Finally, my last surprise had to do with the keynote speaker, LEGO Certified Professional Robin Sather. His presentation was about his journey with the LEGO brick, and one thing that resonated with me was that he said, “Don't be precious about that which you create.”

On the last day of the LEGO convention, he demonstrated this with one of his pieces, a giant LEGO locomotive he built with Duplo LEGO blocks. He and his friends gathered us all around and pushed the train off the table, shattering it into a million pieces. I gasped when this happened as I could not believe it.

This is the difference between Disney people and LEGO people. A Disney person collects and often will preserve the boxes and use white gloves to open them and hold the little figure within as they can grow in value.

When I returned, I demonstrated this behavior of the LEGO people to my tribe on my Patreon page, telling them to be sure they are sitting down. I then held the LEGO box up that was titled ‘Dots.’ I brushed the box gently with my hand like it was a priceless collectible, and then I gripped it and ripped it apart, sending these little baggies of LEGO flying. Everyone gasped!

Video courtesy of fellow BrickNerd Will Hafner.

Then I showed them the video of the train being pushed off the edge of the table and exploding into a million pieces. The tribe was shocked and the tribe had to get some water. LEGO sets were a creative means to an end rather than the end itself. This is the difference between a Disney collector and a LEGO builder.

A Blowout at BrickCon

With Terri helping at the BrickJournal table, things got pretty busy pretty quickly. What she did helped the magazine incredibly at the event, and I learned something:

Out of gratitude, I helped Joe realize the true benefit and what his beloved BrickJournal means to people. Joe had tried primarily to sell it to LEGO experts but upon interviewing a few experts at BrickCon, they said the magazine had nothing that they didn't already know and was more of a token to collect. (A shame, because we can always learn something new.)

But I knew that to people like myself—creatives new to the medium of LEGO—this journal was of great value. Sitting at the table, I would tell people that this magazine was not only for the LEGO experts, but for the LEGO enthusiast and the LEGO clueless like myself. It was a tribute to the community and a journal of creative thinking. As a result, we sold out of every magazine and collected a bunch of new subscriptions. Sometimes it's not the product but who you're marketing it to.

So Terri’s trip was her first to a LEGO convention and hopefully one of many. From her, I was able to see the event from a new perspective—a visitor’s eyes. She enjoyed it so much that next year, she will be back at BrickCon—perhaps as a presenter—but certainly inviting everyone to help her complete her dragon mosaic!

After all, isn't that what community is all about?

What do you think about the similarity between Imagineers and AFOLs? Let us know in the comments!

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