Cooridnator Bios:


Adam Reed Tucker
Founder

1996, he received a Professional Degree in Architecture with an emphasis on Philosophy and Design Theory at Kansas State University.

2002, while thumbing through The World of LEGO® Toys, he set out to explore his passion of Architecture by envisioning his use of the brick would be no different than say paint to a painter or metal to a blacksmith.

2005, after 3 years of development, the concept of ARTitecture™ (now known as Brickstructures, Inc.) was born. A LEGO based educational platform emphasizing the studies of Architecture, Engineering and Construction.

2006, Adam and Bryan Bonahoom created Brickworld, Chicago's new LEGO brick convention. Brickworld originally rose from the ashes of Chicago House of Bricks, where the compliments of 10 unique talents all came together: Steve Hassenplug, John Brost, Brian Davis, Joe Meno, Matt De Lanoy, Kevin Lauer, Bryan Bonahoom and Adam with recognition going out to both Felix Greco & Kevin Clague.

2007, Brickstructures, Inc. formally joined forces with The LEGO Group forming a partnership to offer a new line further developing his vision called LEGO Architecture.

2008, Adam became a LEGO Certified Professional focusing specifically on the design & construction of skyscrapers and other architectural structures.

2009, he started implementation of LEGO Architecture into the classroom where students learn hands-on the power the LEGO brick has beyond its identity as just a toy.

2010, the ART of Architecture, Art + Science = Architecture exhibit was officially debuted at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago with plans for a nation-wide tour.


Bryan Bonahoom
Executive Director

Bryan is one of the founders of Brickworld. He is heavily involved with Mindstorms. He also coaches FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Robotics teams. Bryan regularly competes in robotics competitions using his LEGO robots against other LEGO robots and against custom made "sheet metal" robots. His most well-known robot plays Tic Tac Toe against a human opponent. He is also one of the founders of the Great Ball Contraption (GBC). Bryan began venturing into some artistic uses of LEGO after being inspired by the creations he saw at Brickworld 2008. Bryan is also a member of the Mindstorms Devloper Program (MDP) and Mindstorms Community Partners (MCP) Program.


Steve Hassenplug
Event Advisor

Steve has been building LEGO robots for competitions for several years. His most popular robots include 'Legway' which is a self-balancing 'Segway' style robot, made from LEGO parts, and 'Stick' which plays a challenging game of Connect Four. In January of 2005, Steve was selected by The LEGO Group as one of four people on the planet to participate in the Mindstorms User Panel (MUP). These four people consulted with The LEGO Group about the design of their newest robot creation, the Mindstorms NXT. He also participated in the Mindstorms Developer Program (MDP) and is currently a Mindstorms Community Partner (MCP). Steve helped develop the standard for the Great Ball Contraption.


Jeramy Spurgeon
Event Advisor

Jeramy Spurgeon's fascination with trains began at an early age. He began at age 5 with a 4' x 8' HO scale railroad that slid under his bed. This was also about the same time that he received his first LEGO set. This sparked his creativity and imagination like nothing else and eventually, he would merge his two favorite toys. Now at age 30, his LEGO collection has grown to fill an entire room, and his enthusiasm for the hobby is as strong as ever. His recent projects have included a model of the Indianapolis Union Station, with a train shed that stretches more than 12 feet.

Aside from being the Train Layout coordinator at BrickWorld 2007, Jeramy was the co-coordinator for the ILTCO (International LEGO Train Club Organization) layout at the 2006 NMRA National Train Show in Philadelphia and currently is working with other coordinators on the 2007 NMRA National Train Show, to be held in Detroit in July. Jeramy is a member of IndyLUG, the Indiana LEGO Users Group, a diverse collection of individuals with interests from castle to trains and everything in between. He plans to launch RailBricks.com in the summer, an online Brick Railroader Magazine.


Joe Meno
Program Coordinator

Joe Meno is the Editor to BrickJournal and came back to the LEGO hobby in 1998, when he got the grey LEGO X-Wing at the LEGO Imagination Center. From that return, he has done many different projects, from events (both local and national) to consulting on LEGO projects. Currently, his project is working on getting BrickJournal to printed form, and in BrickWorld Joe is International Liaison, talking to the LEGO Group and groups overseas. What that really means is that I send lots of e-mails!

Kathie Bonahoom
Event Coordinator
Tom Phillips
GBC Coordinator
I started playing with LEGO at the age of nine or ten, when a friend introduced them to me. I loved to make small semi-trucks or anything that pulled a trailer. Later I started building airplanes. When the Technic and Mindstorms came along, I thought they seemed too technical for me. When both my sons, Chad and Troy, were young boys, I got my old sets back out for them to play with, but I could not keep my hands off them either. There's just something about building with these things! Steve Hassenplug hosted a LEGO Robot workshop at a local science museum. I signed up Chad (and of course, I had to come along, too) to expand his building talents in the form of ROBOTS! We were both hooked. Soon after that, Troy got into LEGO robots, too. We were now a Mindstorms family. I'm proud to say we were involved in early GREAT BALL CONTRAPTION (G.B.C.) trials and errors, back when we tried Ping-Pong balls. Between my son's and me, we have built about half a dozen G.B.C.'s. I look forward to being this year's G.B.C. coordinator.

Brian Williams
Town and Train Co-Coordinator
Brian Williams has been fascinated by LEGO trains since he first saw them at a Chicago LEGO promotion in 1978. This led to a lifelong interest in railroads and 26 years experience building scale HO, Z and military models. In 1994 he came out of his 'dark ages' and built "The Royal Train," a LEGO model railroad popular for its detail and steam era German Storybook theme, which was exhibited at Chicagoland NMRA shows through 2000. In 2001 Brian became a founding member of the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club, where he modeled city scenes and local Metra commuter trains. In late 2007 he turned his attention to another childhood fascination and began building "Indiana Jones Brick Adventures," a 9 foot square award-winning showcase of scenes from the Indiana Jones films and television series. This is Brian's second year as Brickworld Train Coordinator.
Dave Sterling
Town and Train Co-Coordinator

Dave began collecting LEGO sets at a very young age. Being a very 'hyper' child, his mother found that giving him LEGO sets instead of candy was a good way to keep his mischievous energy in check. In reality, it may have actually saved the second dining room table from succumbing to the fiery fate the first one endured. As a child, his main love was Classic Town, but he also dabbled in Castle, Classic Space, and Pirates. He was always building in any spare moment he had and was lucky enough to have a small 4' x 8' building area in the basement where he could keep his treasured creations displayed all of the time.

In 2002, Dave married his best friend, Stacy, and they purchased a small house together. During the move, they happened upon Dave's LEGO collection and decided to build the official LEGO sets from his collection together. They found that they really enjoyed building together and that the time spent in their 'LEGO Lair' was bringing them closer together. About this time, they also stumbled onto the online LEGO community and met a group of fellow AFOL's at a local train show. The rest as they say... is history.

Dave is an active poster on Eurobricks, MOCPages, and LUGNET, along with having Brickshelf and Flickr accounts. He is a member of Twin-LUG and founded the Town of Trempealeau LEGO Users Group (aka ToT-LUG) in 2008 with Stacy and (his Beagle) Allie. His LEGO interests now span a number of genres including: Town, Train, Star Wars, Pirates, Castle, Harry Potter, and Space.


David Gregory
Castle Coordinator

David Gregory is returning as the Castle Coordinator for 2010. He has spent the past year helping with LEGO events, such as the Yoda build at the Orland Park LEGO Store grand opening and the Brickworld Indy expo. He has continued to study and experiment with different styles of building LEGO mosaics. He will once again be giving a presentation on mosaics this year.

David is a member of IndyLUG, and until he is successfully assassinated, is still its current President. As a member of IndyLUG, he has helped build and coordinate several displays for Castle, Space and Town layouts.

Benjamin Ellermann
Pirate Coordinator

Ben began building at the age of three and has always been interested in history and architecture. Naturally, his favorite childhood themes were LEGOLAND Castle and Pirates. Currently he is a co-founder and administrator at Classic-Castle.com and ForbiddenCove.com, two fan websites dedicated to Castle and Pirates respectively.

Ben works on maintaining sets archives; hosting two large annual LEGO building contests, The Colossal Castle Contest and Jolly Roger Contest; writing articles; and creating building standards such as the Classic-Castle farm standard.

He has been a presenter and theme coordinator for these themes at various North American AFOL festivals since 2004. As a LEGO Ambassador over four cycles, Ben actively participates in community projects such as the design of Castle 2007, LEGOfan.org, and the AFOL Issues List.

Nannan Zhang
SciFi/Military Coordinator
Nannan became involved with the online LEGO community in late 2004. He 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. BrickWorld 2008 was his first LEGO convention, and he has been coming back each year. In real life, Nannan is a medical student and lives in Dallas, Texas.
Steve McDonough
M-Tron Coordinator

John Brost
Mindstorms Competition Co-Coordinator

John had a passion for LEGO bricks and all things mechanical at an early age. However, the interest waned, and like most AFOLs John went through his "Dark Ages" in high school & while attending Purdue University. The release of the Star Wars LEGO sets brought a renewed interest in LEGO bricks to John. But it was a chance encounter with an announcement of a LEGO robotic sumo competition being held locally that brought John back to LEGO building 100%. It only took this single event to get John hooked. Less than 2 weeks later, John had his first Mindstorms RIS kit, and has been busily building robots and all sorts of mechanical LEGO contraptions since.

John has participated in several Mindstorms competitions of all sorts, winning a few here and there. He has also been a coach for LafLRC's (Lafayette LEGO Robotics Club) FLL team for several years. John was lucky enough to become a member of the MDP program for the NXT and is currently a member of the MCP (Mindstorms Community Partners) program.


Brian Davis
Mindstorms Competition Co-Coordinator

Brian Davis exited his dark ages when the local school wanted somebody "technical" to run a LEGO robotics after-school program sometime back in 2000 or thereabouts. He rapidly gravitated into the MINDSTORMS line and hasn't looked back (or even slowed up the pace) since. After meeting Steve Hassenplug at a Sumo event, he branched out into various projects & discovered LUGNET. He is also very proud to be one of the people behind the creation and organization of the GBC. He was a member of the first "MUP expansion" (the lucky 14 that came after the really lucky first four MUPpets) and has been working on some aspect of the NXT product, in one form or another, ever since. Recent projects have included autonomous high-altitude payloads that survived a trip to 97,000' (higher than a SR-71 Blackbird) as part of the HALE project and further understanding the NXT-G language.

Eric Arndt
FLL Community Coordinator

Eric can remember playing with LEGO bricks as far back as kindergarten. Building things has always been a source of entertainment, and having a brother eight years younger allowed him to continue playing with those colored blocks with a valid 'excuse' well into high school. When his mom sold the childhood home, Eric was quick to lay claim to the family LEGO collection on moving day. Being a kid at heart and an engineer by training, Eric spent many years admiring the LEGO RCX system, but it was not until the appearance of the NXT that he finally admitted that he wanted one for himself. Sparked by that purchase, Eric has since founded a successful FIRST LEGO League (FLL) program at his kid's middle school; helped expand the club to include FIRST Tech Challenge, which also uses the NXT system; joined the INSciTE Illinois Leadership team (the FLL partner for Illinois); and is now working with Brickworld to engage with the growing FLL community to the benefit of both organizations.

David Pagano
Cinema Coordinator

David Pagano is an award-winning animator and the "brains" behind Paganomation -- a creative entity which aims to merge art and animation with humor and retro fun, topping it off with a dollop of deadpan.

After graduating from NYU's animation program in 2007, David worked on a number of television programs, including "The Wonder Pets!" for Nickelodeon and "3rd and Bird" for CBBC. In addition to his personal films, David has done commissioned LEGO animation work for ABC News and The Wall Street Journal, and has lately been working with The LEGO Group on various animation projects, like 2009's "Space Police" web series.

In his spare time, David co-hosts a podcast called "The New York Geekcast," where he and his friends discuss a variety of nerdy topics on a semi-monthly basis. He also enjoys video games, but has no time to play them. David currently resides in New York.

Jenn Wagner
KidsWorld Coordinator
Jenn came to the hobby as an online seller looking for a way to pay for all the Star Wars LEGO sets she wanted in 1999. After many years on both ebay and BrickLink, she decided to give a fan convention a try and attended her first one, Brickworld 2007. It was not long before she decided that events like this were much more fun than staying home pulling parts orders for shipment, and thus, a true LEGO event junkie was born!! She is currently enjoying her first cycle as a LEGO Ambassador, has co-founded two LUGs, and also mentors three FLL teams locally. She is thrilled to have been invited to lend her enthusiasm to Brickworld 2009, where she will help launch a new KidsWorld Program for the event's younger attendees.

Barbara J Price
Extra-Event Logistics Coordinator

Many people could say,"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Steve Hassenplug", but Steve Hassenplug would not be here if it wasn't for Me. I have a son involved in the LEGO hobby; a Daughter, Bunnie; her son, Brandon; and Steve's two sons. They will all be teaching me how to create with LEGO bricks. I appreciate the time and energy all the participants have devoted to this "hobby". I come in with the conference experience of having helped with the State Motorcycle Safety Administrators conferences for the past twelve years. Their conferences move to different states every year. Owning my own businesses and raising a great family is all the experience I need to assist in logistics. Arranging transportation and getting things going is all part of the process.

Michael Huffman
Web Site Coordinator

Michael came out of his dark ages around 1998-1999 after discovering Pirates & RTL. He been apart of the LEGO community ever since. You can hear him & his friend Mike Cotterman and David Lukens on the BrickNebula podcast... which is in desperate need of an update... Or you can check out BrickBuildr, a web-site dedicated to viewing LEGO related photos from Flickr & iPick-a-Brick -- view somewhat updated PaB inventory from LEGO stores world-wide.

Mike Cotterman
Web Site Coordinator
Roy T Cook
Dirty Brickster, Dirty Buildster, and Micropolis Coordinator

Roy T Cook emerged from his dark age in 2004, when he began to think about the artistic possibilities of building with the LEGO brick. Since then he has been involved with his local LUG's (DelVaLUG at one time, then co-founding TwinLUG in Minneapolis). He has given talks at various AFOL events on the aesthetic potential of the brick and also wrote a guest editorial on the topic at Brothers-Brick.com. He is also a former LEGO ambassador.

Jeremy Moody
Minifig Speedbuild Contest Coordinator
Jeremy has been surrounded by LEGO bricks his entire life. He participated in FLL Tournaments while in middle school, stayed involved by mentoring teams while in high school, and continues to volunteer at tournaments in college. His first LEGO convention was Brickworld 2007. He is currently studying physics and math at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His other interests include the Rubik's Cube and similar puzzles, and billiards.

Matt De Lanoy
Awards Coordinator

Matt started out with LEGO bricks at an early age with a gift from his aunt and has been building ever since (although there was a brief Age-of-Insufficient-Light in the high school years). In 2005, in spite of not owning a single train piece, he brought his Star Wars creations to the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club and has now participated in numerous shows throughout the Chicago area. He is a regular at FBTB under the handle of Pepa Quin. Matt works as a graphic artist in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Brittny Tucker
Public Relations Director
Tim Courtney
Corporate Relations Coordinator

Tim Courtney is a longtime contributor to and participant in the LEGO fan community.

Between 1999 and 2005 Tim co-founded and led LDraw.org, the LEGO CAD developer and user community that surrounds the popular collection of software and parts libraries that enable LEGO builders to document models virtually and create custom rendered scenes and building instructions.

In 2003, Courtney co-authored the book Virtual LEGO with Steve Bliss and Ahui Herrera (No Starch Press, 2003). He has also spoken at several LEGO fan conventions across the United States and Europe, as well as industry events, including the graphics industry conference SIGGRAPH.

Today, Tim looks for opportunities to leverage LEGO as a medium for creativity and innovation to professional audiences.

Heather Hassenplug
Prize and Raffle Coordinator

Heather Hassenplug grew up playing with LEGO bricks. She can remember going to Grandma's house and playing with a castle set. We had to build our horses back then; they weren't a piece in the set. Her parents still have a LEGO Space set from her youth that her boys play with (yes, all 3 of them). Heather is married to Steve Hassenplug; you may have heard of him. Anyway, they have (2) boys, Matt (age 8) and Kurt (age 6). One story that we like to tell is when Steve and Heather were dating, Steve showed Heather some of the new LEGO sets, Throw Bots. He asked which set he should get, and Heather's response was "Whatever you don't get, I'll get." The rest is history as some might say. Moving on, some may know that Heather and Steve introduced Bryan Bonahoom to LEGO Mindstorms. Heather likes to take some credit as she knew Bryan first, when they lived in Cincinnati, OH, playing volleyball and cheering on the Purdue Boilermakers. Heather graduated from Purdue University in Construction, Engineering and Management. She currently works at Purdue in the Construction Department. Yes, she bleeds gold and black and building is in her blood. She has a couple favorite areas: Castle (which includes Harry Potter) and Town. Being Prize and Raffle Coordinator is very satisfying. She loves seeing people's faces light up when they win something.

Kevin Lauer
Logistics Coordinator

Kevin Lauer loved playing with his LEGO collection as a younger boy. He had a large number of town and pirate sets, as well as the LEGO Space Monorail. However, a tragic decision by his parents to sell off/give away (details are fuzzy on this) most of his Collection at a garage sale around the age of 13 plunged him into an unexpected dark age. It would only be during college, around the turn of the millennium and after meeting and starting to hang out with another Brickworld coordinator, Matt De Lanoy, that Kevin pierced the veil and saw the light once again. At first, he spent most of his energy simply building and playing with official sets, but after a time, began displaying his own works starting at House of Bricks 2005. That first display MOC was a small Star Wars vignette less than a single baseplate in size. In the years to follow, he would begin working on a vast display portraying scenes and locations from the 1993 movie, Jurassic Park. His current layout is roughly 14 feet long by 8 feet wide and Brickworld 2010 is the final time this layout will be on display for the foreseeable future.

Stacy Sterling
Layout Coordinator

Stacy's passion for building started when her brother received his first LEGO Castle set. Borrowing pieces from his collection, she built LEGO homes of every shape and size, and the bricks became a creative outlet for her. She found her passion for the brick again in 2002 when she and her husband, Dave, discovered his collection in his parent's garage. Most of her creations center around the world of Harry Potter, but she also enjoys replicating well-known buildings, businesses and houses. She and her husband (collectively known as ToT LUG) enjoy sharing their creations and passion for building with the community.

As a LEGO Ambassador for Cycle 7, she has been working to grow the female fan community and inspire female builders of all ages to explore their creativity through the hobby. Some of her contributions to the community are the establishment of the "Ladies Lounge" forum on the Eurobricks website exclusively for female fans to discuss the hobby and an upcoming display at a local library that will highlight female fans of LEGO. Stacy was involved with the FFOL Roundtable coordination and Kids Build event at Brickworld 2009.

Mark Larson
MOC Card Coordinator
Mark Larson currently works as a model designer for the LEGOLAND development team in Carlsbad, CA. A Chicago native, he moved to California a month after last year's Brickworld after being recruited by LEGOLAND at the event. It's been a crazy year filled with big changes, but he's happy to be back for his third Brickworld event, his first as a coordinator. Mark runs his own website, BrickZone.net, where he writes comics Fabuland Housewives and The Whacker and the Walrus. He is also a Root Administrator for Eurobricks.com.
Kyle Peterson
Auction Co-Coordinator
Kyle began imagining with LEGO bricks at age 5 and often used his bricks to build fortresses and spaceships for his Star Wars action figures. Soon LEGO sets & minifigs took on a universe all their own and Kyle began to focus his adventures there. In addition to enjoying & experimenting with Castle & Space sets he felt compelled to personalize the minifigs by swapping and painting body parts. Quite a few years later, Kyle's ambition picked up where his childhood left off as he started to design custom decals/stickers and sculpt custom accessories for his minifigs. Through websites such as The Minifig Customization Network, Classic-Castle & Eurobricks, Kyle provided instructions, templates and guidance to others who enjoyed the same hobby. Along with fellow minifig customizer, RedBean; he helped co-found BrickForge - a pioneer in professionally made custom minifig accessories. Kyle, his wife Rachel, and their two boys enjoy building and displaying LEGO sets as well as coming up with crazy MOCs on their own.
Rachel Peterson
Auction Co-Coordinator
Larry Pieniazek
Auctioneer

Larry Pieniazek started playing with LEGO bricks in 1966 while living in Canada, well before LEGO bricks were available from Samsonite in the US. Larry's other childhood love was model trains, and he's always been a railfan. Larry picked up the bricks again in 1997 when he (and his kids) helped build a 25 foot model of Cinderella's Castle at Disney Village in Orlando, FL.

Larry has been active in the LEGO community for many years, joining LUGNET "before the beginning" and after the 2001 train summit, helping found ILTCO. Larry runs Milton Train Works™ as a commercial outlet for custom kit designs and for exhibit/show work. Larry has helped organize many fests and shows and is active in MichLUG, the Michigan LEGO Users Group, and its subclub MichLTC, the Michigan LEGO Train Club. Larry is also active in Wikimedia Foundation projects as a steward and administrator.

Alice P. Leber-Cook
New Attendee Coordinator

Alice has been building for about five years, having caught the LEGO "bug" from her husband, Roy T Cook. She is a former member of DelVaLUG and a co-founder of TwinLUG. She builds mostly town-style creations, with a particular interest in recreating memorable neighborhoods and favorite scenes from her childhood.

Mark Peterson
Presentation Coordinator

I have been building with LEGO bricks since a very early age, with nearly no dark age. I am a founding member of IndyLUG and CILTC. I am a contributing member to Railbricks. I enjoy building towns and train layouts.