My Interview on Past and Future of LEGO Community

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A week ago Saturday I was a guest on the LAML Radio Podcast, invited to discuss the history of the LEGO community, particularly as it pertained to the once-central discussion site LUGNET. The opportunity came to me last-minute; I composed some thoughts for about a half hour beforehand and then had a good 40-minute discussion with James Wadsworth and Mike Huffman which you can listen to below.

While it was fun to recount the community history, I’m more excited about how LEGO fandom can catch up to the rest of the Internet. Mike is the developer behind BrickBuildr, a Flickr API-driven LEGO photo site. What we don’t see yet though is LEGO fan sites leveraging social network application platforms to reach broader audiences. With the news that adults compose not 5 but 20% of LEGO’s sales (link in German, Babelfish translation here), there’s a lot of opportunity to identify and connect people who are under the radar provided such applications are executed properly.

Here’s a link to the interview on the LAML Radio web site. See the small embedded link at the bottom of the page, I come in at about 17:00 on the podcast.

Enjoy, and I encourage comments!

Posted on 9 June '08 by Tim Courtney, under Uncategorized.

3 Comments to “My Interview on Past and Future of LEGO Community”

#1 Posted by kypar (10.06.08 at 00:06 )

Think I sat next to you at one point during Techcocktail’s conference. Be sure to check out Brickworld (http://www.brickworld.us/) which is the Lego conference created by adult fans taking place in Wheeling later this month. Don’t know if I’ll be there but surely worth a mention in your blog. (It’s a good opp to find out why or why not this audience would want to build an online social community too)

#2 Posted by Tim Courtney (10.06.08 at 06:45 )

Hi Kyle,

Definitely let me know if you’ll be at BrickWorld. I’ll be there Saturday and Sunday. I have a lot more to say than what’s in the interview about the future of the fan community. A lot of it comes down to breaking with the past, looking forward, choosing the target audience carefully despite what some say.

-Tim

#3 Posted by RSchamus (13.06.08 at 14:27 )

Tim,
You are the man in demand. I’m still gonna try to convince you to come to D.C. and do BrickFair. Just come. I’ll put you up again, if needs be. The Fan community would be served well by your participation in this venue as well.

Sorry to hear that you may have missed an opportunity to build a new friendship. Yes, life is short and you (everyone) should take advantage not just to make new friends and have great new experiances, but also to build on older relationships, and have great new experiances.

Rich