LEGO is full of WIN
June 24, 2008 11:17 AM   Subscribe

LEGO is full of WIN - Roo Reynolds' Interesting 2008 talk.
posted by nthdegx (26 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
There seems to be a whole crapload of Lego marketing (viral marketing?) going around lately. That said, I guess I'm a sucker, as I stocked up my 4-year old with a whole mess of Lego bricks this week. But he knows nothing about the marketing going on; he's just discovering he loves them.
posted by crapmatic at 11:21 AM on June 24, 2008


And for more lego goodness: The vault containing every Lego set ever made.
posted by GuyZero at 11:33 AM on June 24, 2008 [3 favorites]


I thought he was being arrogant, calling it his "Interesting Talk", until I realized it was for a conference called Interesting 2008.
posted by davejay at 11:37 AM on June 24, 2008


There seems to be a whole crapload of Lego marketing (viral marketing?) going around lately

As Gen X'ers move into the nostalgia phase of their lives toys that became much more popular in the 80's will start getting the adulation once reserved for stuff that baby boomers grew up with. Keep your eyes peeled for the VH1-Lego TV special.
posted by GuyZero at 11:37 AM on June 24, 2008


"Interesting Talk"

Didn't live up to the billing, anyway. What the sod was the man's POINT?
posted by rokusan at 11:39 AM on June 24, 2008


I didn't have much Lego, and zero Technic/Mindstorms Lego, in the 80s and I still think it's awesome. There's no better way to get a kid into robotics for $200 than Mindstorms, for instance.
posted by DU at 11:41 AM on June 24, 2008


Were the minifigs at slide 28 from Technic or what? They were a little different.

I thought it was cute and funny. Maybe not as much as the audience did, however. :)
posted by artifarce at 11:43 AM on June 24, 2008


Maybe not as much as the audience did, however.

Judging by the amount of laughter, I mean.
posted by artifarce at 11:44 AM on June 24, 2008


Oh, jeez, I've been a Lego fanatic since my early, early childhood. I can't even begin to estimate how many hours I spent working on various, distastefully multicolored space shuttles and race cars on my bedroom floor. And the same impulses run through me to this day -- it didn't take my better half long to figure out that I will eagerly assemble anything she buys from IKEA, just for the rush of taking all the disparate pieces and, step by step, making them look like the whimsical isometric diagrams.

Loved the shoutout in the slideshow to Coupland's digression in Microserfs about how the act of playing with Legos relates to various computer science concepts, and how their use early in life might help prepare children's minds for computer-oriented careers. And I've been amused in recent years by watching Lego identify and take advantage of this demographic, bringing the whole thing full circle. Take Mindstorms, (which I've never really gotten into, but only for my own good, since I think I'd leave myself time for little else) which basically give you the ability to program Legos, something I could have only dreamed of as a nerdy kid. And the Lego Digital Designer software, a Lego CAD program eerily close to the basic idea behind the Oop! software in Microserfs, is addictive enough that I spent 3.5 hours or so late into last night, my first time ever using it, cobbling together a scale model of the car I drive. And when it's done, I can order all the pieces that make it up direct from Lego in a custom kit.

Anyway, I'm being boring in public. Good slideshow!
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 11:45 AM on June 24, 2008 [1 favorite]


That LDD thing looks awesome, cobra_high_tigers. Will need to check it out when not at work.
posted by juv3nal at 11:54 AM on June 24, 2008


Adorable!
posted by cowbellemoo at 12:05 PM on June 24, 2008


And for more lego goodness: The vault containing every Lego set ever made.

*faints*

From age 8 until, well, I guess the present day, every time I played the “if you could have one wish…” game my first wish was usually “Every Lego set ever made.”

Now I just need to plan some sort of Mission Impossible style break-in to that vault and I’ll be all set.
posted by bondcliff at 12:06 PM on June 24, 2008


You could hire T*m Cr**s*, or you could head over to Brickshelf to buy whatever you need/want.
posted by DU at 12:14 PM on June 24, 2008


Now I just need to plan some sort of Mission Impossible style break-in to that vault and I’ll be all set.

bondcliff: for all your Lego(tm) sets, I offer... one million dollars!
[BONDCLIFF EXTENDS HIS RIGHT PINKY AND RAISES IT TO THE CORNER OF HIS MOUTH]
Lego(tm) Executives: (laughter)
Number 2: Lego makes over nine billion dollars a year.
bondcliff: Really?
posted by GuyZero at 12:20 PM on June 24, 2008 [1 favorite]


Loved the shoutout in the slideshow to Coupland's digression in Microserfs about how the act of playing with Legos relates to various computer science concepts, and how their use early in life might help prepare children's minds for computer-oriented careers.

Not to be the contrarian, but as much as I love Legos and believe they have intrinsic educational value for kids, I think too many kids are stifled by "Lego" thinking, i.e. that building/engineering/creativity are a matter of assembling larger things fromn discrete units.

In other words, proper adolescent development would dictate that at some point the child has a design for something they want to build with legos, realizes they don't have enough pieces to build it or enough money to buy them, but instead of giving up, realizes they could just build the thing out of wood or aluminum or resin for a fraction of the price and with more creative possibilities. Too many would-be builders or sculptors are unwitting prisoners of the Lego medium.

[NOT LEGOIST]
posted by Pastabagel at 12:56 PM on June 24, 2008


LEGOs are an international language. I remember spending Christmas vacation in Aruba. I'm not one for social engagements or dinner parties (or hadn't you guessed from my comment history here?), but was saved when the young son of one of the families busted out his LEGO X-Wing set. His English was better than my Dutch, but we made fairly short work of that thing. I made sure *he* got to build it. I flat out told him that I was an extra pair of hands and that it was *his* project. He figured out the game pretty well and delegated assignments/tasks/subprojects to me, like assembling a wing. I got to nudge him a bit, which made me feel (and look, to the assembled adults) like I was doing a bit of teaching. Odd that our side endeavor, attempting to stay out of the way, ended up being one of the focal points of the evening.

I don't do well with small talk, but give me something to do with my hands and I will hand you a party. It was cool to appreciate first-hand the internationality of LEGO, as well. Totally made my evening.
posted by Eideteker at 1:27 PM on June 24, 2008 [1 favorite]


And for more lego goodness: The vault containing every Lego set ever made.

Awesome, and made even more awesome by the fact that somewhere, hidden in there, is the Ark of the Covenant
posted by brundlefly at 1:44 PM on June 24, 2008


And in the Ark of the Covenant is a link to communicate with God and inside God is... every Lego set ever made! Gah! There's no end!
posted by GuyZero at 2:05 PM on June 24, 2008


Not to be the contrarian, but as much as I love Legos and believe they have intrinsic educational value for kids, I think too many kids are stifled by "Lego" thinking, i.e. that building/engineering/creativity are a matter of assembling larger things fromn discrete units.

I don't know. I think it's a mistake to assume kids will limit their horizons from playing with Toy X.
posted by JHarris at 2:11 PM on June 24, 2008


...too many kids are stifled by "Lego" thinking, i.e. that building/engineering/creativity are a matter of assembling larger things fromn discrete units.

Not to sound overly concerned with the population density of my lawn, but I see this with the generation of programmers that came out of college right after me. Damn Java. Damn it to hell.
posted by DU at 2:44 PM on June 24, 2008


And for more lego goodness: The vault containing every Lego set ever made.

Aw, I was hoping for a Scrooge McDuck-style vault, with all the Lego ever invented just dumped out in a big swimming pool, to construct fantastic cross-decade hybrids from. It would be like our living room floors, but bigger.
posted by roombythelake at 2:46 PM on June 24, 2008


Interesting 08 was very interesting. The guy who did this spoke. So did the guy who did this. And 28 other people, one of whom was me.

Roo got the big laughs partly because he was first up, following a singalong version of the 'Final Countdown' which is guaranteed to get an audience in a good mood, and partly because he was brilliant. It's not clear from the Slideshare presentation but his slides were appearing on an automatic timer and he was having to play catch-up as each image appeared. It was like a race, him against his own slideshow. And partly because it's a funny talk. No big conclusions, just cool facts, eclecticism and enthusiasm.
posted by Hogshead at 3:10 PM on June 24, 2008


In other words, proper adolescent development would dictate that at some point the child has a design for something they want to build with legos, realizes they don't have enough pieces to build it or enough money to buy them, but instead of giving up, realizes they could just build the thing out of wood or aluminum or resin for a fraction of the price and with more creative possibilities. Too many would-be builders or sculptors are unwitting prisoners of the Lego medium.

I don't know that it's that easy to shut down the creativity of a creative kid. My 7-year-old is gifted in the area of building things with Legos--it's quite amazing--but he also builds with Zoobs, regular wooden blocks, these plastic tinker-toy type things, and random objects like, the other night at a Korean restaurant, napkins, toothpicks, and chopsticks. He has an overflowing capacity for three-dimensional construction that can't be contained by Legos, even though Legos are his primary medium.

I know that's anecdotal, but the more I get to know kids (and not just my own) the less weight "X kills kids' capacity for Y" arguments carry with me.
posted by not that girl at 6:48 PM on June 24, 2008 [1 favorite]


Pretty amusing talk, but the vault of every Lego set ever blew my mind.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:06 AM on June 25, 2008


"Metaverse Evangelist"

"Roo"

"Full of Win"

This is off the scale on the Annoy-O-Meter.
posted by Zambrano at 1:37 PM on June 25, 2008


"Full of win" = Full of unoriginal douchebaggery

USING VERBS AS NOUNS = EPIC FAIL

u r no longr cyuoot
posted by Eideteker at 3:24 PM on June 25, 2008


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