Earlier this year, we started to plan for this year’s Expo with the same fun fair. The highlight would be a “Building Newark” activity to let all teams collaboratively build New Jersey’s largest city on a gigantic map out of 70,000 LEGO bricks.

When the pandemic swept across the entire world, we were certain that the Expo would not happen at all. Boy were we wrong! The Expo host, LRC FLL team Flame Machines, started to plan a virtual Expo while busy collaborating with other kids and adults in the LRC community to redesign face shields for frontline workers (#LivingstonShield https://www.livingstonrobotics.org/livingston-shield/). In the end, 18 teams submitted video presentations and participated in the virtual Expo and award ceremony on the exact day on which the Expo was scheduled.