Welcome to the new BrickGeekz blog!

I’m really excited to help re-launch the BrickGeekz Blog. Phil Fenn, the founder of BrickGeekz, wrote the original blog for many years. When we started to discuss reviving the blog, we felt it was a good idea to start over with a completely new site focusing on the BrickGeekz community. And that’s where you find yourself now.

We’re still putting this together and I’ll come back every now and then to post updates on our progress. We’d love to hear your feedback so reach out to us here or through the BrickGeekz community and let us know what you’d like to see.

That’s right, I’m not Phil

So you may have noticed that I’m not Phil. We do have a lot in common. Like Phil, I’m a geeky adult LEGO fan who wears glasses and sometimes has a beard. (I like to think of it as “not shaving” rather than “growing a beard”. It’s all about the intent.) We both love video games and classic rock music. And, of course, we both love LEGO.

But Phil has many projects going on, including a weekly live-stream and podcast, plus managing one of the largest LEGO communities on both Facebook and Instagram. Not to mention raising the cutest baby this side of Baby Yoda. Phil began looking for a writer to bring back the BrickGeekz Blog right when I was looking for a blog to write. The rest, as they say, is history.

I will say that I am a professional writer and life-long fan of LEGO. I grew up in the dawn of the minifigure, playing as a kid with classic LEGO sets like the Galaxy Explorer, Public Works Center, and King’s Castle. I rejoined the LEGO community in the early 2000s after my children were born, giving me a good excuse to buy LEGO sets again. As they grew older, I began designing my own creations (MOCs) and even found some modest success on LEGO Ideas.

But this blog isn’t about me. Nor is it about Phil, for that matter. This blog is about you, the BrickGeekz community. You will hear from us in the more personal “Blog” section of the site. But we want to focus our time on you and all the great things going on in the BrickGeekz community.

About the Blog

So where are we going with the new BrickGeekz Blog? Continue reading to learn about the topics we plan to support. You’ll find these categories as links across the top of our blog.

Community

What makes BrickGeekz so special is that it’s more than just a Facebook page or an Instagram account. It’s a community. It’s a community of like-minded fans who have come together to share their love of LEGO. You will find no hate in this community, only encouragement and excitement for the hard work and accomplishments of each other.

So when something special catches our attention within the community, we want to share that with everyone we can. We’re just as proud of your accomplishments as you are. You will find these stories the Community section of our blog.

Reviews

We did say we are Brickgeekz, right? We get just as excited as you do when new sets are announced, and we’re going to write as many reviews as we can. My interests lean toward the Architecture series, modulars, and LEGO Ideas, and anything else that my wife will let me buy. Phil, meanwhile, knows no boundaries — he loves all things LEGO, period. We both love to build sets and show them off and share our hopefully light-hearted and fun opinions. We plan to do that here, as often as we can.

Tools

As a software technical writer, I love to explain how things work. And I’ve learned a lot in the last few years about using LEGO design software — specifically LEGO Digital Designer and Stud.io. I’ve built “real” LEGO sets in these virtual environments to study their design techniques. I’ve built my own creations (MOCs) as well, and more recently started ordering parts to build my sets for real. It’s fun to take a project from design to reality. And you may be surprised to know that it’s pretty easy as well. So I plan to spend a lot of time in the Tools section of this Blog, sharing what I know.

LEGO Ideas

LEGO Ideas is a brilliantly clever idea. Not only does it give fans the opportunity to design an officially licensed LEGO set, it encourages those same fans to promote their ideas in communities where LEGO does not traditionally reach. Lego Ideas has resulted in some of the most original sets to come out of LEGO in years, including the NASA Apollo Saturn V rocket, Ship in a Bottle, and the Pop-Up Book.

The tricky part about LEGO Ideas is that it’s as much about social media skills as it is about LEGO design skills. And that’s where we’d like to go with the BrickGeekz Blog. Yes, we’ll share the latest contests, news, and announcements. But we’ll also take time to share our favorite Ideas. I know from first-hand experience about the mental boost you get from receiving a coveted Staff Pick or a LEGO blogger endorsement, or having a newspaper article written about your design. We hope that in our own small way, we can provide that same boost through the BrickGeekz Blog and encourage these designers to continue their great work.

News

We don’t aim to be a breaking news LEGO website. I work a full-time job, and Phil is busy with all his different projects, so we just aren’t able to post breaking news about what’s happening in the world of LEGO. But we do hope to maintain a News section in the blog where you can catch up with announcements you may have missed, new set images, and other odds and ends.

Follow us

So that’s what we plan to do. We’re just getting started, but over time we plan to grow the BrickGeekz Blog into something fresh and unique in the LEGO community. Be sure to follow BrickGeekz here on the blog, as well as on Facebook and Instagram, to be the first to read about all the latest updates.