Earlier this year, we were invited to attend DixieLUG. If you don’t know what a LUG is, let me explain. LUG stands for LEGO User Group. It’s the vehicle that LEGO uses to help AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO) get together and hang out and share ideas.
Each LUG is situated in areas where someone has specifically taking on the responsibility for running the group and being a LUG Ambassador. They become the link between the group and LEGO corporate. In the Atlanta area, the LUG is called DixieLUG. (And while it looks like they have a website, it hasn’t been updated any time recently…) From what I understand, there used to be two LUGs in the area: DixieLUG and a train specific LUG. However, it was decided to combine the two groups… something to do with attendance and management.
By the way, in case you don’t know, the LEGO Monthly Mini Build and the LEGO Club Meeting are only for kids between the ages of 6 and 14. After the age of 14, you really don’t have a place to go share ideas or learn more about building with LEGO and using different LEGO techniques. So, if you have a teenager who is really into LEGO, a LUG is an excellent group for them to join.
As I was saying, we were invited to attend a meeting; however, my husband generally works on Saturdays and that meant in order to go to the meeting, I would have to go alone with the girl. I wasn’t exactly sure how she would handle it since I was expecting the meeting to be 3 – 4 hours long. (You don’t have to stay for the whole meeting and time certainly flies when you’re having fun!)
So after missing two meetings, we finally decided he should just take the Saturday off and we could all go together. At first, it was a little intimidating hanging out with all of the other LEGO enthusiasts who were obviously highly involved in their LEGO hobby. But once we started talking, it was exciting to get to know them.
The cool thing about the LUG meeting is that people bring along builds they’ve been working on… and we got to see some pretty awesome creations. If we had known, we probably would have brought some of our own.
One of the things DixieLUG has been working on is getting a moonbase layout ready to go for BrickFair Alabama in January 2016. The cool thing about this is that since it is a moonbase layout, there are certain rules for building moon base layouts such that you can connect one moonbase to another regardless of whose moonbase it is and where or how it was built. (I’ll make sure to share more about that in another post.)
As the people arrived to the meeting, it was neat to see the moonbase grow as new additions were added. We would definitely like to add to the LUG moonbase layout, so we are working on our own creations to add and potentially share with the group at BrickFair Alabama 2016.
Oh, and I just found out the other day we missed out on seeing the moonbase setup with a running monorail system during the July 2015 DixieLUG meeting.
The other awesome thing about the LUG meeting was that there was a building contest. LEGO provided the LUG ambassador with a box full of red 2×4 LEGO bricks. We had 30 minutes to come up with a creation and build it using only those bricks. After the 30 minutes were up, we were each given one red brick to use as a vote for our favorite mark. There were lots of awesome builds!
I ended up building a sphinx with a pyramid.
The husband pandered to the group and wrote out the name of the group DixieLUG in bricks, along with a guitar and rose.
However the winning build was this awesome amphitheater that was built by not connecting the bricks fully on one side. The winner got to walk away with the LEGO Creator Toy and Grocery Shop set.
Between the engagement, the opportunity to see other awesome builds and the potential for contests, I don’t know why you would ever pass up joining your local LUG. If you would like more information about joining DixieLUG, you can visit their Facebook page. The next meeting is November 14th, 1pm at the East Cobb Library at 4880 Lower Roswell Road in Marietta. We would love to meet you there!