Subject:
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Community Events Information (Was:BricksWest 2003 Event Coordinator's Report)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events, lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Fri, 28 Feb 2003 01:26:28 GMT
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In lugnet.events.brickswest, Todd Lehman writes:
> On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 7:14PM -0500, Matthew Gerber wrote:
> > [...] Born of a special summit at LEGO headquarters in Enfield, Connecticut in mid-January,
> > the primary message taken away from this session was that as an enthusiast community,
> > LEGO trusts us with their brand. Ideas and systems are being developed to facilitate
> > communications and coordination between the fans and the company...look for further
> > information to be made available soon!
>
> I'd like to hear more about this, now that you mention it. Someone at
> BricksWest asked me why I didn't attend it and was shocked when I told
> them that I had no idea there had even been such a meeting. Which of
> course made me wonder what was discussed, who called the meeting, who
> was invited, who attended, etc.
OK...let me give you the nutshell version here. I am not a spokesman for the
attendees of the event, just another enthusiast participant sharing my
personal thoughts. I will stress that none of us are under any type of
confidentiality agreement, and all of the information from this meeting is
meant to be disseminated to the public. However, know that due to the
proximity to BricksWest and the schedules of all involved, not much
follow-up has been able to happen yet. It is coming (from myself especially,
who has much left to say preliminarily, just to wrap-up the initial talk),
and new information will be available from many sources soon, I believe. I'd
hate for too much talk/specualtion/etc. to happen in the community prior to
the initial group being able to complete some sort of official wrap-up.
A small, diverse, and extremely well chosen (IMO) group of LEGO enthusiasts
from the community were invited by Jake McKee and LEGO Direct to Enfield at
the end of January (I said mid-January before...my mistake...chalk it up to
my current stress levels and work load). This group was Steve Barile,
Christina Hitchcock, Dan Parker, Calum Tsang, Eric Harshbarger, John
Gerlach, Mark Neumann, James Trobough, myself and Mike Walsh (who was unable
to attend). This cross-section covered the range from large events to
train/club public shows to charity events to private individual efforts. We
were brought out to talk about how the LEGO enthusiast community could
better work in concert with the LEGO Company to promote ourselves and our
efforts while promoting the LEGO brand. We met with over a dozen
representatives of the LEGO Company from around the world, from diverse
divisions like education, shows and events, and LEGO Direct.
The number one thing to come out of this meeting was a single phrase: the
LEGO Company trusts us, the enthusiast community, with their brand. This
seemingly simple statement is infinitely deep in both its scope and depth.
One of the worlds largest and oldest companies trusts us, their fans, with
their most important asset...their brand identity. Why this is important is
that we, as a community of enthusiasts, have thus far done most things
right. Our events and productions are noticed and appreciated by both the
public and the company. LEGO is happy with our successes, and wishes to help
us continue to succeed in our endevors. Secondarily, the LEGO Company hopes
that we consider them a PART of the community, not separate of
it...something that I am more than willing to do based upon all of my past
dealings with them on several levels.
On day one of this two day meeting, we discussed the means and methods for
communication between the company and the enthusiasts, our current community
events, successes and failures, best practices, etc. This was the most
exciting part of the talks to me. We came away from this day with the
preliminay frameworks for our best methods of the enthusiasts working with
the company to produce more and better events, promote more clubs and
organizations, and draw new enthusiasts into the community.
Day two saw the group discussing specific events, new ideas for the types of
events that the LEGO Company and the fan organizations could produce in
concert, and further communication and support structure needed to make
these types of events viable.
As you can tell from what I have written above, IMO it was the fact that
this meeting happened at all, not necessarily the content drawn from it,
which is of the most importance. It was a preliminary stab at quantifying
the LEGO community (enthusiasts of all ages, organizations, the LEGO
Company, other related businesses, etc.) as a whole, and attempting to
ascertain a direction for our best methods of keeping in touch and making
things happen.
That's it, in a nutshell, from my point of view. Others may wish to weigh in
here, or wait until more official wrap-up has happened in the initial group
before releasing too much more information. Also, this is basically the
information presented during the session at BricksWest 2003 (an impromptu
schedule change since we had a fair group of participants from the meeting
at the event which allowed us to have a first chance to share our
information with a larger group of community members).
I don't have much more to say on this right now, and am staring a large pile
of work in the face which I am behind on due to BricksWest. If anyone has
specific questions about this, please don't take a lack of response on my
part as a negative. I personally need to do more actual wrap-up regarding
the meeting with the initial group before I will feel comfortable saying
much more in public about specifics. Thanks for understanding.
Matt
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