Tag Archives: Ambassadors

The LEGO Ambassadors program is a community engagement program run by the LEGO Group to solicit input from the adult LEGO fan community. The LEGO Group also occasionally provides information back to the community through LEGO Ambassadors who represent various LEGO Users Groups (LUGs) and online communities like The Brothers Brick.

Ben Ellermann launches “Ask a Lego Fan” [News]

Lego Fan Blog Ben Ellermann

Ben Ellermann has recently announced the launch of his new blog, Ask a LEGO Fan. His purpose behind this new site is to field questions from adult fans, young fans, parents of fans, and anyone interested in anything to do with Lego. Ben is one of the most knowledgable fans I’ve had the privilege of knowing. He has also been selected as a Lego Ambassador in the current cycle. This puts him in a unique position to get answers to your questions. Check it out and drop him a line with any questions you might have. I think his site will be an asset to the community and to all of those connected to it.

New Survey for Adult Fans from LEGO

LEGO has created a new survey to help them work better with the adult fan community. Go ahead and tell them how you really feel!

Cycle 7 LEGO Ambassadors announced

The next cycle of LEGO Ambassadors has been announced and includes 45 fans spanning 27 nationalities and 50 different groups, which is impressive in its diversity and serves as a testimonial to the worldwide interest in the hobby.

The following lists the Ambassadors that were chosen from the 86 nominees, including the group(s) they represent and their country. Congratulations to the new LEGO Ambassadors and to Tim, who is the representative for The Brothers Brick!

Sebastion Arts – De Bouwsteen – The Netherlands
Sue Ann Barber – MUGs – Australia
Patrick Begin – QueLUG – Canada
Heiner Berg – MBFR – Germany
Norbert Black – ParLUGment – Canada
Pitsanu Boonyarit – Thai Brick Club – Thailand
Andrew Bulthaupt – BZPower – USA
Pijarn Charoensri – T-LUG – Thailand
Marco Chiappa – ItLUG – Italy
Ben Coifman – Railbricks, ILTCO & COLTC – USA
Fernando Correia – PLUG – Portugal
Yvonne Doyle – Brickish Association – the United Kingdom
Ben Ellermann – Classic-Castle.com, GtwLUG, ForbiddenCove.com – USA
Adrian Florea – RoLUG – Romania
David Furphy – CALG – Australia
Lluis Gibert – HispaLUG – Spain
Tim Gould – Brothers-Brick.com – Australia
Matija Grguric – Klub Kockice – Croatia
Philip Heinrich – Bricksinmotion.com – USA
Tom Jacobs – Classic-Pirates.com – Belgium
Tsang Yiu Keung – HKLUG – Hong Kong
Sung-Wan Kim – BrickInside – South Korea
Christian Krutzfeldt – 1000Steine – Germany
Tuomas Kukkamaa – Palikkatakomo – Finland
John Langrish – VicLUG – Canada
Igor Makarov – DoubleBrick & Phantoms – Russia
Lino Martins – LUGNUTS & SeaLUG – USA
Matija Puzar – Brikkelauget – Norway
Don Reitz – FBTB.net – USA
Wagner Cavalli – LUG Brasil – Brazil
Harald Roossien – LowLUG – The Netherlands
Dan Rubin – Classic-Space.com – USA
Yoshikazu Saito – AFOL Japan – Japan
Svend Erik Saksun – Byggepladen – Denmark
Verena Schaden – LCOe – Austria
James Shields – Brick.IE – Ireland
Josephine Shih – TWLUG – Taiwan
Mikael Sjostedt – Eurobricks & SweLUG – Sweden
Pedro Silva – Comunidade 0937 – Portugal
Ludo Soete – BeLUG – Belgium
Stacy Sterling – MOCpages & TwinLUG – USA
Saso Tomat – Slobricks – Slovenia
Jenn Wagner – BrickLink – Canada
Marcin Witkiewicz – LugPol – Poland
Cagri Yuz – TurkLUG – Turkey

Reminder: Testimonials needed for 2009 LEGO Ambassador nominees

LEGO Ambassadors logoAs many LEGO fan communities discovered last year, convincing community members to step up and say something nice about each of the nominees proved to be harder than anticipated.

Some communities were even unable to submit their nominees due to lack of testimonials. Unfortunately, this part of the process is proving no less challenging this year.

So, this is a reminder for all of you out there to go to each of the communities where you’re active and write a testimonial for your LEGO Ambassador nominees.

Here are the three nominees for The Brothers Brick:

Classic-Castle.com | Nominees:

Classic-Pirates.com (process complete) | Nominees:

  • Bonaparte
  • Zorro

Comunidade 0937 | Nominee: Pedro “El_Gordo” Silva

Eurobricks (process complete) | Nominees:

FBTB | Nominees:

Flickr | Nominees:

HispaLUG | Nominee: Lluís Gibert

MOCPages voting is over, and testimonials are being collected by the individual nominees.

Palikkatakomo | Nominee: Tuomas Kukkamaa

PLUG | Nominees:

RoLUG | Nominee: Adrian Florea

SandLUG | Nominee: Fradel Gonzales

TurkLUG | Nominee: Cagri Yuz

Kockice | Nominee: Matija Grguric

I’ll be adding more lists of nominees as I encounter them. Other contributors are welcome to edit this post and do the same. Commenters are encouraged to add links in the comments as well.

If you’re wondering what a testimonial looks like, check out the three testimonials I posted for the nominees chosen by the LEGO fan community on Flickr.

Vote now for The Brothers Brick’s LEGO Ambassador!

LEGO Ambassadors logoTechnical difficulties prevent us from using the poll feature we used last year, so we’ll use the approach that seems to work reasonably well for LEGO fan communities on sites like Flickr.

Learn more about the nominees

You see their posts here on The Brothers Brick, but who are the people behind the names? Read brief bios about each nominee and learn what you can expect from them during the 2009-2010 cycle.

Each nominee also needs three testimonials from members of the community that nominates them. Feel free to leave a testimonial for one or more of the nominees on the posts I’ve linked to above.

Vote! Vote! Vote!

We can submit up to three nominees to The LEGO Group. Conveniently enough, we only have three nominees. Still, it’s important for us to communicate to LEGO which of the three nominees we believe will best represent the interests of The Brothers Brick readership community.

Please leave a comment on this post with your vote for one nominee.

Note: To keep vote tabulation simpler, please ask your questions about the process on the original post (LEGO Ambassadors Cycle 7 nomination process for The Brothers Brick) rather than here.

Daniel Rubin: LEGO Ambassadors nomination bio and platform

With apologies for the delay — I’ve given up on trying to get the poll to work again — we now bring you brief biographies and “platforms” from the three people nominated to serve as LEGO Ambassadors for you, the readership community of The Brothers Brick. This is the first of three posts.

About Dan

Daniel Rubin is a long time space builder. He is the main administrator of the forums on classic-space.com. Dan is also a blogger on The Brothers Brick, where he largely covers space, mecha and sci-fi creations.

Dan’s Platform

  • Continued pressure on the LEGO company to produce more and better space sets
  • Continuing work on a new Idea Book project, which he proposed and began work on during the last cycle of the Ambassador program
  • Continued attempts at getting AFOL desired parts into production
  • Bringing the complaints of the people to the ears of those at LEGO who have the power to affect them

Feel free to ask the nominee questions or leave comments of support on this post, but please don’t forget to actually vote!

Nannan Zhang: LEGO Ambassadors nomination bio and platform

This is the second of three posts about the LEGO Ambassadors nominated to represent you, the readership community of The Brothers Brick.

About Nannan

Nannan became involved with the online LEGO community in late 2004. He is now 20 and has been a builder for as long as he can remember. Nannan builds in a variety of themes that often overlap with the science fiction universe; other times they are purely made up ones. In addition to building, Nannan is familiar with blogging, collecting, and selling a small part of his collection to fund the hobby. In addition, he attends LEGO conventions throughout the year and participates in his local division of TexLug. His varied activities across multiple communities make him a knowledgeable and active fan when it comes to the brick.

Nannan’s Platform

The key characteristics of a LEGO Ambassador should be communication and visibility in the community. As a communicator who shares information with the company and the public, I will actively participate in both professional and fan-based communities. Such participation includes contributions to forum discussions, providing feedback to the Community Development Team, and spreading announcements. In addition, I will uphold my visibility to the public, which is important to the representational role that Ambassadors play. I plan to achieve this through displaying enthusiasm for the hobby in online and offline communities, sharing my creations, and attending LEGO conventions and local events.

Feel free to ask the nominee questions or leave comments of support on this post, but please don’t forget to actually vote!

Tim Gould: LEGO Ambassadors nomination bio and platform

This is our third and last post about the potential LEGO Ambassadors nominated to represent you, the readership community of The Brothers Brick.

About Tim

Tim Gould has a relatively long and fairly varied history playing with LEGO bricks. As an adult he began his serious model building with virtual bricks (an interest he hopes to revive again) but has now expanded his interests to the real thing. With ‘theme’ interests beginning with trains and progressing through town, space, a bit of castle and dribs and drabs of other things, he has played around with many bricks in many different ways. He’s also fortunate enough to have worked on a couple of projects with the LEGO company including the 10183 hobby train set.

Tim’s Platform

As a long-time multiple hat wearer I’ve had a long history with dealing with varied communities. In fact, one of the things I enjoy most about The Brothers Brick is its broad appeal and broad spectrum of interests. My view of the LEGO Ambassadors program is as a facility for communication between AFOLs and TLG and I hope to leverage my history and interests to help that communication.

Ultimately I believe that the fans’ best interests are best served by a pragmatic dialogue and I feel I am able to deliver this dialogue.

Feel free to ask the nominee questions or leave comments of support on this post, but please don’t forget to actually vote!

LEGO Ambassadors nominations all over the Web

We’re not the only ones nominating LEGO Ambassadors for Cycle 7 of the program.

We’ll add to this list as we encounter more nomination processes as we learn about them. Feel free to suggest links in the comments.

LEGO Ambassadors Cycle 7 nomination process for The Brothers Brick [News]

UPDATE: Voting is now underway for this cycle.

——–

As LEGO announced earlier today, nominations are now open for the 2009/2010 or “Cycle 7” of the LEGO Ambassadors Program. To keep things manageable, I’m posting the process we’ll be using here on The Brothers Brick separately from LEGO’s announcement.

LEGO Ambassadors logoFirst, some of you may be wondering what the LEGO Ambassadors Program is. Glossing over LEGO’s official definition, the program is designed to gather feedback from LEGO fans and provide that feedback to The LEGO Group. Although communication from LEGO does occasionally flow back to LEGO fans, the primary purpose is to flow information to LEGO — product and quality feedback, suggestions, demographic data about the adult fan community, and so on.

Second, I won’t be accepting any nominations myself to be a LEGO Ambassador for the next cycle. I still believe in the value of the program, but I’d like to focus my LEGO energies more directly on The Brothers Brick, Classic-Castle.com, SEALUG, and the other LEGO fan communities I belong to.

Third, we learned from the way we did things last year and we’re making a few adjustments. Feel free to discuss these changes and make suggestions, and we can make further tweaks along the way, if necessary.

Finally, an online community like ours that’s centered around a blog has some unique considerations that are different from other LEGO fan communities, such as online forums or offline LEGO clubs. Before we begin nominating people to represent The Brothers Brick in the LEGO Ambassadors program, I want to share a few thoughts based on the discussions and nominations last year.

  • The successful nominee must be able to communicate with you, the readers. Practically speaking, this means the LEGO Ambassador would need to be a contributor to The Brothers Brick.
  • That’s not to say that the successful nominee must be a current contributor! In the open and democratic process I’d like to see us follow, it’s possible that you may nominate and ultimately vote for someone like an active commenter instead of a current contributor. This may mean bringing the nominee on board as a team member.
  • This is the nomination process for The Brothers Brick; other LEGO fan communities will be nominating LEGO Ambassadors themselves. I’d like to ask you to avoid nominating LEGO fans who aren’t active here in this community in some way. Being a regular reader or even being blogged frequently doesn’t necessarily equate with being an active participant.
  • As the Editor-in-Chief, my commitment is to bring you a high-quality LEGO blog experience. To ensure this for all of you, I must reserve the right to say “No” occasionally — including bringing someone on to the team who doesn’t share our blogging philosophy or vision.

Phew! Enough words from me.

Here’s how this is going to work on The Brothers Brick:

  1. Between now and June 10 at 9:00 PM Pacific Time, leave a comment on this post with your suggestions for people who you would like to see nominated. Nominating is not the same as voting.
  2. On June 10, I’ll tabulate all of the nominations. Each nominee must receive two additional comments of support to move on to the voting stage.
  3. Between June 10 and June 13, I’ll contact each nominee for a brief bio and “platform.”
  4. On or before June 13 June 17, I’ll post the bios, platforms, and a public poll so all readers can vote on who they want to represent them.
  5. On June 27, we’ll close the voting to ensure we have enough time to create the nomination package that The Brothers Brick will submit on the nominees’ behalf.
  6. On or before July 1, we will submit up to three nominees for consideration by The LEGO Group.
  7. Around July 8, LEGO will announce their picks for the next cycle of the Ambassadors program.

Okay, readers, nominate away!

Nominations open for LEGO Ambassadors Program Cycle 7 (2009/2010) [News]

First, the complete announcement from The LEGO Group:

Hello LEGO Enthusiasts,

We’re happy to announce that the nomination process for LEGO Ambassador Cycle 7 is now open.

The LEGO Ambassador Program is designed to give the AFOL Community a direct line into the LEGO Company. The Program is essentially a gathering of community representatives that speak on behalf of the larger communities they are a part of. This group is able to bring forward the interests, concerns and questions directly to LEGO Employees.

Who’s allowed to nominate?

Any AFOL Community Group (online or on the map) will have the opportunity to submit nominations from their group (up to 3 people if they so choose). Not everyone can be selected for the program in order to keep the group manageable.

If you choose to submit a nomination it does not mean that your candidate will be chosen, but it does mean that your group will have just as much an opportunity to get involved in having a direct representative in the LEGO Ambassador Program. We will try to get a diverse group of people who are able to represent the whole AFOL community as good as possible.

Groups can certainly nominate someone already in the Ambassador Program, but the program has a two term limit in order to opportunites for more people to be involved. After a term out of the program, a previous Ambassador can be re-nominated (this rule only started with cycle 6 so all current Ambassadors are still eligible).

A group that submits a nomination for the LEGO Ambassador program should be established and known within the LEGO Community.

What should a nomination have in it?

  • Name and age of the nominee.
  • Where is the nominee from?
  • Which Group does this nominee represent?
  • Does this person consent to being nominated (Please do not submit a nomination on behalf of someone you have not discussed with beforehand).
  • Explanation of who the nominees are, what their activities are, and why they would be a good representative of their community (at least 3 testimonials from members of nominating group are required)
  • Key interests of the nominee (themes, building styles, and some examples of their building)
  • NEW!!! Platform – The nominations should now include a list of the goals that the nominee and the community he/she represents are looking to accomplish as part of the program. Remember the LEGO Ambassador Program is all about the AFOL community having representation into the LEGO Group, so this is an effort to have you think ahead as to what you really think would benefit your communities the most.

When is the Nomination Due?

July 1, 2009 by midnight GMT. If a nomination is received after this time it will be automatically rejected. The new cycle will be announced on approximately July 8, 2009.

Who Should the Nominations be sent too?

Nominations should be sent directly to steve@lego.com

What might a LEGO Ambassador be committing too?

  • LEGO Ambassadors are committing to represent their communities interests to the LEGO Group.
  • There are projects that Ambassadors can take part in, it is up to the individual to decide what they may or may not be interested in working on. It all comes down to how they feel they can best represent their community.
  • Online discussions will be held for the Entire group of Ambassadors that will include members of the LEGO Community Team and other LEGO Employees as well.
  • In order to get the most out of the program you should be willing to give some time to in order to help discussions along. If you don’t give time to it then you may not be dishonoring the nomination you received from the community.
  • There is no NDA requirement to take part in the LEGO Ambassador Program for Cycle 7. There may be an instance where a special project will come up and the Ambassadors may have to sign an NDA to participate in that, but it will take place in a separate forum in order to limit confusion as to what can be said outside of the Ambassador program. Otherwise, anything shared in Ambassador Discussions can be shared with the AFOL Community.

    This next session of the Ambassador Program will last approximately one year.
    Thank you all. Your nominations are very valuable for helping the LEGO Community Team choose the next round of LEGO Ambassadors.

    Steve Witt – LEGO Ambassador Lead
    &
    Tormod, Jan, Jim, Lenka, and Phil
    The LEGO Community Team

Next, I’ll be posting separately about how this is going to work here on The Brothers Brick. (And to consolidate comments where they’re most relevant, I’m going to lock comments on this first post.)

LEGO wants to hear from you! [News]

The LEGO Group would like to hear from LEGO fans like readers of The Brothers Brick in a new online survey.

Read on for more information, including results from the December 2008 survey.

Note: For our American readers, note that commas and apostrophes are reversed in numbers. For example, 2,4=2.4 and 1.000=1,000. I’ve also added links in a few places.

As Adult or Teenage Fans of LEGO, you bring an important perspective to the LEGO Group. We respect your creativity and passion for the LEGO brand.

In December 2008, we did an online survey to learn more about the global AFOL (defined as ages 20+) and TFOL (defined as ages 13-19) communities and for your information, we have listed the key findings below. Now we ask you to take this survey again. It include some of the same questions, but also a set of new questions for you. These surveys will be conducted on a quarterly basis this year.

Please take a few moments to complete this short online survey to let us know your opinion on how we are doing.

You might notice that the link refers to the LEGO Kids Inner Circle; this is because Satmetrix, which hosts that site, is also supporting our efforts to track AFOL/TFOL opinions. Rest assured that this survey is for AFOL’s and TFOLs only.

Here are some of the key findings from the December 2008 survey:

  • The survey was completed by 6.500 (!) AFOLs and TFOLs. 19% of respondents were TFOLs, 81% was AFOLs. 94% were male, 4% female and 2% did not want to share gender.
  • When asked about likeliness to recommend LEGO products and services to friends and family, AFOLs are more likely to recommend than TFOLs. When asked what the LEGO Group can do to improve willingness to recommend, most frequent answers was, “better pricing”, “re-release classic sets”, “less custom made pieces” and “no more stickers, print on bricks”. This feedback has been communicated to relevant business units within the LEGO Group.
  • 47% of AFOLs/TFOLs are NOT members of a LEGO User group. Among those who are members of LEGO User Groups, they are in average members of 2,4 LUGs.
  • In average AFOLs and TFOLs are spending in the area of USD 1.000/EUR 700 on LEGO product annually. 20% of this is spent on second hand purchases.
  • Favorite websites include Peeron, LEGO.com, The Brothers Brick, shop.LEGO.com, Eurobricks, Brickshelf, Bricklink and Flickr.

Thank you,
The LEGO Community Team

Take the Survey