man: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
Please welcome Steven from the Lego company.
[applause]
Canvin: Hey.
Good morning, everybody.
How are you?
It's gonna be a great day today.
I just want to tell you,
I've been given 10 minutes
to actually do a little presentation
just before the keynote starts.
So in ten minutes all the excitement will start,
but I'll show you a couple things here.
I just want to tell you about how we from Lego
have embraced developers out there.
But some of you found the bricks on your seats,
and I just have a little question for you, which is,
so how many different combinations
do you think you can actually put these bricks together?
And please do not Google that.
That would be cheating.
You might get the answer before the end of the presentation.
So we at Lego, we have a big mission,
which is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.
We want to create and make children
become greater thinkers and problem solvers
and prepare them for the future
and the challenges out there.
We also make products for children of all ages.
And also we've seen how people out there
have expanded our products
and taken it beyond its boundaries,
and most of all, with the Lego MindStorms robotic toolkit,
which came out in 1998.
We made a robotic toolkit that was prepared for children
from age 12 and up
with proprietary software,
customized hardware, and software to boot,
but apparently this product
also appealed to adults.
So within the first five months after we launched
back in 1998,
our product got hacked.
The hardware--
our proprietary hardware and software got hacked.
The components, all our vital components
were put in a shopping list on the internet.
Our legal department was freaking out.
And they wanted to take action.
They wanted to take these people down
and stop them right there.
Well, we said, "Let's see what happens."
And actually, this was not harmful.
It actually, expanded--
It actually started the community around it
of the adult fans out there.
So actually we learned some lessons
that when we in 2004 wanted to introduce
a new generation of Lego MindStorms,
which we launched in 2006,
we said, "Let's embrace all these developers out there,
because they will hack our products anyway."
That's one of the lessons we learned.
They will take our pieces apart.
So let's see what we can do and actually take these people in.
And also, another important lesson is
that these guys knew more about our product than we did.
I certainly believe that.
So how do you go about actually finding these fans out there
who actually know more about--
these developers that we need to bring in?
Well, as I said,
there was a community that had developed and formed
around Lego MindStorms,
which was quite a first for Lego.
And as you can see,
we call adult fans AFOLs--
Adult Fans Of Lego.
Well, it's actually a name they made up themselves,
but we adapted to that,
and we work with these guys,
and I find that they're really, really strong
when it comes to Lego MindStorms products.
So, back in 2004,
we actually opened up a little work forum,
closed work forum.
Invited four people in.
Which we called-- we called the forum
MindStorms User Panel, hence the name "the Muppets."
It was their own nickname. They came up with it again.
But what we did was,
we invited these people in,
into our holiest of places, into our R&D.
You wouldn't normally have people invited into your R&D
just coming from the outside.
Of course they signed the agreement,
but we took a calculated risk.
This time we did not ask the lawyers for permission,
because we found it would be better
to actually ask for forgiveness.
[laughs]
[applause]
Thank you.
So as you can see in this picture,
we have, on the left side here,
Steve and David talking to our designers,
sorting out elements.
They actually came up with new elements
that we hadn't thought about.
They actually suggested an ultra-sonic sensor
that we hadn't thought about,
because some of the old-- in the old generation,
some of the fans had actually hacked
and made their own sensors, right?
So also today, what we see is a great amount
of software applications
that has been made, because we said,
"Let's go open-source with all this.
Let's open up to the community."
So today, on our website, you can find
a software developer kit, a firmware developer kit,
a hardware developer kit, and a Bluetooth developer kit,
all for the sake of proliferating our products.
And it's the fans who have actually born our whole product
as it is today.
As you can see, with all the names
of all these different software applications,
there are no limits and boundaries
to what you can actually do with this.
So if any of you guys out there
actually have played with Lego MindStorms
or have helped expand our products,
I salute you and thank you.
Keep pushing.
We definitely appreciate that.
But also, of course, on the model sides,
I could talk for hours
about the thousands and thousands
of inventions that fans have made out there.
Of all ages.
I guess we're all children inside.
Especially that's what we believe at Lego.
As you can see,
getting a robot to solve a Rubik's cube,
yeah, you can make that.
There are instructions for that on the internet.
Getting to interface with the iPhone,
you can do that as well.
Making it work with Android
would probably be the next thing coming.
Also, if you want to have the perfect game of Wii...
[laughs]
I actually met the inventor last night.
It was really a thrill.
So we recognized that these guys
really expanded that.
Getting to fetch your soda cans.
There's some product placement right here,
but, yeah, you can do that as well.
There are no limits to what you can do with this.
But as I said,
I salute the guys out there
who are actually working with this.
Last year in 2008,
we had the ultimate drop test.
We actually sent some of our robots up in a balloon
that went to the edge of the atmosphere.
And one of them actually got dropped from up there
from 80,000 feet up.
It deployed a parachute,
but actually came down quite safe.
But it was the ultimate drop test for us.
Native Chris Anderson from the Bay Area,
famed from Wired magazine,
actually made a Lego UAV.
He wanted to prove that he could make a UAV,
Unmanned Aero Vehicle, for under $1,000,
and he choose our products as control of the plane,
which is quite amazing.
We also--we've been into space.
Been cleaning up the space station
together with Russians.
This goes back a while,
but we definitely are going to go into space again.
So back to my original question.
How many different combinations?
Did you figure out was in it?
The tally would probably be--
Some of you might have this number--
102,981,500 different combinations.
But that has actually been recalculated
by a Danish math professor,
so in essence, there are 915,103,765.
If any of you guys had that combination,
please email me.
So enjoy the rest of the day, guys.
This is it for me.
And thank you.
Keep up the development with MindStorms.
[applause]