An interested audience listens to Jaco van der Molen present LDraw via the projector.

Kids and parents alike enjoyed using the software.

L-R: Jan-Albert van Ree, Tim Courtney, Jaco van der Molen, Dan Crichton.

Dan Crichton leans in to answer a question.

Tim Courtney teaches an attendee the finer points of MLCAD.

LEGOWORLD 2002 - A success...again!

For the second time LEGO, IJsselhallen, Fox Kids and the Dutch LEGO Club "De Bouwsteen" organized Europe's greatest LEGO event: LEGOWORLD 2002. With a visitor count of 25.000 last years everyone's expectations were high. This year we had a fourth hall and the hall for "De Bouwsteen" was larger then last year. The event sold out again and had 35.000 visitors!

LEGO had various expositions with nice models like the Tower Bridge and jungle animals. The most impressive, to me, were the life size statues of Hagrid from Harry Potter and Boba Fett from Star Wars Episode II and the true size model of the Silver Champion made of regular bricks. Furthermore LEGO showed new sets in various product lines like Racers, Star Wars and Harry Potter.

For De Bouwsteen [Dutch LEGO club] we had a lot of volunteers to help out and show their models and collection in our own hall. Also this year we presented LDraw to the Public. Tim Courtney attended the event, as well as Daniel Crichton from the UK helped us out at the LDraw booth. A big thanks goes to Jan-Albert van Ree and Jeroen de Haan who were there too to help.

Unfortunately I was not there during setup and decorating the hall, but when I came there Saturday morning I had a very good feeling about it! Especially the LDraw corner, where I would be stationed the coming four days, was great. We had a big screen to show what we were doing on the laptops and the big vinyl LDraw banner was hanging proud on the ceiling. Many new people were introduced to LDraw and reactions were great. Especially, like last year, people found it amazing that is was free and downloadable from the Internet.

As members of "De Bouwsteen" we had the chance to speak to Brad Justus, who is the Senior Vice President of The LEGO Company and head of LEGO Direct, and ask questions which was very nice.

We had a great time together at the summer camp in Heino were we all slept. In the evening laptops, LEGO and more were put on the table and we had many good conversations and discussions not only about LEGO but also about a lot of things. It was a lot of fun because many nationalities were present: people from the Netherlands obviously, but also from Belgium, Italy, Germany and the United States!

All in all we had a great time and we can look forward to next year.

Many greetings from Jaco van der Molen.