Introducing BrickMap

Posted by Huw, 25 Jul 2014 16:56

The LEGO CEE team has recently completed a project which aimed to create an overview of the different categories and sub-categories of user-created businesses and services that positively add to, strengthen, and expand the LEGO hobby.

A sizeable team of Ambassadors and other AFOLs worked with CEE to collect, analyse and organise the data and recently the output was published as an Excel sheet.

A website, BrickMap, has just gone live that makes the data more accessible. I think there's work to be done to make it a truly useful resource but it's the closest thing the community has to an index of LEGO websites and businesses and is a definitely step in the right direction.

If you notice anything missing, there's a suggestion page to get it added.

0 likes

11 comments on this article

By qiadris in Denmark, 25 Jul 2014 17:37

Sounds like a cool initiative, but was it necessary to use a 1995 web design?

By Aanchir in Canada, 25 Jul 2014 17:45

Cool beans! I just suggested ModaltMasks, a store that sold me an awesome custom-painted BIONICLE mask (http://modaltmasks.deviantart.com/art/Tribal-Kakama-366832145) at last year's Brickfair. There aren't a whole lot of folks doing strictly BIONICLE-related customs commercially, but these guys have a real knack for it.

This site will be a great resource if I ever find myself needing some type of custom LEGO item and want to compare options.

By Jumpinbeans in United Kingdom, 25 Jul 2014 20:52

Only thing I see missing is being able to see results for certain countries/regions rather than seeing all listed sites globally.....will suggest that as an option.

***well I would suggest it if there was an option to suggest it......they need a contacts page as well so I can point out the typo in their suggestions page :-)

By fipat in Australia, 25 Jul 2014 21:08

Yes, as qiadris remarks, the '95 design is curious. The biggest issue I have is that I can't see at a glance the location of different events/shops. I would like to see what's going on and available in my country.

By BricksOnTheDollar in United States, 25 Jul 2014 21:30

Awesome! I'm on there twice. The designation for my blog is hilarious: "Uses Online Buy and Sell Data to Analyze Investment Trends of LEGO Sets."

By Telcontar in United States, 26 Jul 2014 05:07

What a cool site. I love the idea of the whole thing and I'm (happily) surprised to see my site got put up. :-) With a few tweaks to the web design this would be an even more useful resource. Props to all the people who worked on it.

By roygal in United States, 26 Jul 2014 08:16

Umm, where is the link for LUG websites?

By The_Sly_Fox in United Kingdom, 26 Jul 2014 11:49

A brick sorting service?
I would never have imagined such a thing existed, if I'm honest.

By Cwetqo in Slovenia, 26 Jul 2014 12:58

Hello all. As one of the people behind this site I'm just letting you know that topics like this are being watched and every suggestion is welcome. Our main task was to create good database. Website was just side product, made to make this vast database more accesible. It was made in short with almost no resurces and by people (mostly Nathan Bryan from BrickZen) who are not experts in that are. Design could be (and will be) worked on, but our first goals were functionality and ease of use.

LUG sites and TLG based sites were filtered out because CEE team is preparing new technological platform which will (among many other things) also host those lists. We wanted to keep "BrickMap" separated from that and also independent from TLG, to avoid any kind of influence from them (although it did start under the impulse of CEE team's Yun Mi Antornini, but we were given completely free hands).

You are of course very welcome to propose any new sites or improvments!

By danny316p in United States, 26 Jul 2014 13:57

Blargh - I had a long, nuanced critique typed up, but Brickset (or something between my browser and Brickset) seems to have eaten my comment.

I'm finding the data available on BrickMap to be extremely inconsistent, to the point where it's difficult to tell where to start for the suggestion form. Is there any chance that a faster way of improving the data will become available?

I'm also very curious as to what policies are in place for determining what should be included. Some of my favorite online resources are currently only accessible on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Similarly, for blogs and news sites, there's the matter of whether or not sites that are no longer up to date should be included. There's also the issue of services used by AFOLs but decidedly not "By AFOLs for AFOLs" - if YouTube and Garage Band get nods, then why not archive.org and GitHub?

By Duq in Ireland, 26 Jul 2014 16:07

Could be just me, but based on the name I expected to find a map....
And yes, the lack of design is bit sad to see.