Please Complete the Application and Build Something

Imagine the next time you go for a job interview, someone doesn’t ask you what your biggest weakness is, but rather, plugs you into a LEGO building challenge that reveals your biggest weakness is being out of touch with creativity, fun and lightheartedness. Apparently the HR folks at Google have been hosting job fairs in which part of the recruitment is an introduction to Google culture – fun, creative exercises – like a LEGO building contest – that help them separate the wheat from the chaff. Check it out here.

No Cooties for Jamie Kennedy

Check this out: A link to the video to the hippest song ever about cootie immunization, Circle Circle Dot Dot by Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone. This stop-animation masterpiece using Lego mini figures proves that Jamie should do more rappin and less Kickin.

IT Solutions: Just Like Building with LEGO Bricks

Think child’s play doesn’t affect who a person becomes and the contributions they make to the workplace? Check out this story about an executive consultant for IBM who waxes nostalgic about summer days spent with his grandparents building with LEGO bricks, then likens his passion for building as a boy to his passion for problem solving as a software architect – where the challenge is to piece together various programming blocks to create a software solution. He suggests taking a child’s approach to LEGO building as a way to prepare an organization for change readiness and successful project management with these three tips: 1) visualize the end of the project 2) focus on the details, but keep and eye on the big picture 3) consider the challenges or obstacles to success and work around them.

Toys Make Adult Life Easier

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It’s never too late to learn from LEGO Toys!

It’s not just students who are learning with LEGO bricks in this Boston classroom, teachers are using bricks too! Check out this story that shows how this toy is teaching deaf children about technology and improving a retired couple’s sign language skills.

A LEGO Kid Remembers…

Here’s a post from a designer about the joys of growing up a LEGO kid: One choice quote: “I’d make anything and everything I could with Lego. If I didn’t have a certain toy or if there wasn’t one for it (for instance—when Ghostbusters first came out, their Proton Pack guns hadn’t been released in any kind of toy form), I’d do my best to recreate it from Lego. I had a lot of Lego.”

Nice Ghostbusters reference, huh? He also includes some cool images from an old ad campaign that will bring on a serious wave of nostalgia for anyone who remembers their first set of LEGO bricks.

Kids Weigh in on warming

LEGO in the classroom.

Putting a LEGO twist on a longstanding rivalry helps stress collaboration

Even Google recruits are using LEGO bricks! In a mind match between Stanford University and University of California Berkeley at Google’s corporate headquarters, Google college recruits challenged 120 students to build bridges out of LEGO bricks. “’It's a little stressful,’ Oehlberg, who earned her bachelor's at Stanford but attends graduate school at UC-Berkeley, said of the fast-paced competition. ‘Everyone is like `We've got to do this right away. We've got to do it and do it right.”” Read on to see how the intensity of the competition unfolded.

RIM uses LEGO to Test Blackberry

Matthias Wandel, RIM engineer, “was able to construct a device that could rotate the 950 through it’s horizontal axis and vertical axis, looked sweet, and likely cost all of 10 bucks to make. We commend anybody who can create useful real world tools with toys, though of course we expect RIM can now afford Robots for this type of chore, or at least LEGO robots.” Check it out here.

Autistic Man with a Passion for Building

Read about Master Lego builder Matt Ward, an autistic man who graduated from UW-Madison and has a passion for building.

FLL World Festival Video

See all the action from the FLL World Festival, held in Atlanta.

Being blind hasn't stopped creative man

Check out this story about Larry Freeman, a 61 year old blind man from Fort Lauderdale, who creates model towns out of LEGO bricks.