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PHILCON is a three-day science fiction convention held
annually since 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. As an AFOL and operator
of the con’s Children’s Program (since 2003), I initiated a LEGO sub-track in
2004. (Report to LUGNET.) This year it
had a slightly different location and a much greater turnout.
Although GardenSLUGger Eric Sophie was unable to return this year (his giant
robots are always crowd-pleasers), I instead had the assistance of fellow
DelVaLUG member Joe Cook. (The rest of DelVaLUG was exhibiting at a train show
the same weekend.)
Being an SF con, the sensible model themes were Space, Space Replica, and Mecha.
Since I had to carry everything to the hotel (models, bulk brick, other Kids
Prog supplies) the sensible scale was Micro. (Castle would also be compatible,
but it’s not one of my own themes.)
In addition to 20 of my own models, and 3 from Joe, I had 14 “virtual”
contributions from 3 well-known SF micro-builders -- that is, I recreated their
posted designs with my own brick supply, and identified the originators with MOC
cards. (To wit: Jason Allemann, Brian Cooper, and Chris Deck of Germany. My
plan to build a copy of Chris Doyle’s “Snack Sized Serenity” fell through.)
Over the weekend, some 20 attendees (both youngster and adult) built 28 models
(more if you count individual customized minifigs), some of them drawing upon
leftover fragments of my own models. There’s more exuberance than skill in
many, but that very separation from AFOLdom resulted in some very interesting
parts use.
Photos of the display, at-con MOCs, and happy builders are in
this Brickshelf
gallery. It also includes a spreadsheet (MS Excel and CSV versions) detailing
the models.
The Display and Build were located in the front of the large room dedicated to
Gaming, just off of and visible from the con’s Registration and Info area,
resulting in lots of foot traffic. They ran all-day Saturday and Sunday. On
Saturday it was adjacent to a contingent from the FIRST Robotics League. To
prevent the display of micro-ships from resembling a tabletop parking lot, I
built a “docking spire” of Znap pieces to elevate them.
Activities:
- Display
- Open Build
- “LEGO Gaming 101”
- “BrickQuest”-derived “Harry Potter”-themed game
- “LEGO Builder X-Treme” board game
Activities that did not happen:
- Micro Moonbase Themed Build fell through (I didn’t get to build any explanatory samples)
- Impressive MOCs slide shows (returning item)
- Stop-motion film fest (returning item)
- Large-scale space combat sim (the con’s semi-theme was Mil-SF, thanks to Author GoH David Weber and Artist GoH David Mattingly, his cover artist)
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