Part of why I’m here as a regular contributor is to provide a sort of guide to emerging from the “dark ages.” Over the coming months I plan to write a little bit about various ways that people can become more active in different kinds of LEGO communities or activities. The order may not make sense for other people, but it’s autobiographical. I could start with how to write comments on TBB, but that would just be silly. I’ll just lead by bad example in that arena.

So I’ll start with LUGs. A LUG is a “LEGO user group,” and they take many forms, but mainly fall into three types: special interest (Battlestar Galactica, etc.), train, and geographical.

I am a member of a geographical LUG (SandLUG) that covers mainly San Diego, CA, though members travel from as far away as Los Angeles to attend our monthly meetings.

Some of the great things I’ve experienced in my particular LUG are:

1. Interaction with real people, including great builders who may not be very active online.
2. Seeing fabulous creations in person.
3. Family and food.
4. Diversity in the backgrounds of the builders, their experience levels, skills and interests.
5. Group activities like trading, contests, drafts and cooperative builds (more on those later).

(Above Right: SandLUG member Matt Armstrong’s [monsterbrick] bionicle Admiral Ackbar)

There is a lot of diversity in the dynamics of the LUGs out there, with some people having mediocre to bad experiences (complete with schisms and cliques). Some are just very different from my LUG because they’re more structured, exclusive or engage in different sorts of activities as well as regional or national variations. The good things I’ve experienced and described above could potentially exist in any LUG. I’d really appreciate feedback in the comments section about those differences because, well, I just like to learn stuff.

Think. Consider. Is this something you’re interested in doing? I know it is. You can’t hide it from me.

Next on an all-new Lugging: How to find a LUG.