Word: legos
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Last year Danish toymaker Lego announced plans to outsource most of its manufacturing to Eastern Europe and Mexico. Of 1,200 blue collar jobs at Lego's headquarters in the town of Billund, only about 300 would remain...
...might think this would make union leaders at Lego hopping mad. You'd be wrong. "We thought it was the best way to keep as many workers' places in Denmark as possible," maintenance man and union shop steward Poul Erik Pedersen tells me. "We aren't against the management. We want to make sure that they make money and we make money." Then, unprompted, he takes the argument a step further: "There are some good things about outsourcing. Where the jobs go, the standard of living is growing, and then they can afford to buy more Legos or other things...
...they talk? That's the secret of character animation. Even though it's a completely unbelievable thing, people invest in it," he says. "If we do our job on this one, audiences will empathize with, and invest in, a rat." That's because the creative children at Pixar's Lego- like headquarters in the San Francisco suburb of Emeryville realize that movies, and especially cartoons, are not just talking pictures. They are motion and emotion pictures. And if you don't have heart...
...Activities like Ewok landscaping, LEGO building and droid races filled out the geek slate. Tom Jozwiak, 46, an engineer from Chicago, brought the R2-D2 he has been building for three years to race. "It's a hobby, a very time-consuming one," Jozwiak admits, in what is a frequent refrain among a culture of diehards with day jobs. The crowd was about 70% male, even more so in the droid builders group. But Nikki Miyamoto, a costume designer from L.A., brought the R2 she's been working on for two years, with brushed copper plates...
...mother of two, "we had a cake with our family and maybe one or two friends." She describes a party she went to recently for a three-year-old, in which the kids went on simulated space rides, then after pizza and a clown, made their own toy dolls, Lego trains and balloon sculptures, all in the span of a couple of hours. "The kids didn't have a chance to take in what they were there for," she says, "which was to celebrate their friend's birthday...