The VirtuaLUG Story
The humble beginings of VirtuaLUG can be traced as far back as Brickworld 2008 when a few members of VirtuaLUG first met each other in person and began to forge life-long friendships. Most communication in the "early days" was done on MOCPages and over e-mail. At first with only a small group of people, this worked quite well. Over the next three years, more friends came into the group and the communication started to increase at an exponential rate. In a nutshell, the LUG was really born out of necessity. As the online chatter increased, members found themselves needing a dedicated place to meet/chat where they could also archive conversations and other infomation. A private forum was created to support this and the LUG was born in August 2011. The forum quickly became a great collaborative workspace where LUG members could post work-in-progress photos and get critiques as well as engage in general day-to-day chat. As we are from all over the globe, the forum is a great way to bring everyone together.
As part of becoming "official", the LUG has regstered with The LEGO Group and now has this website as an official online presence. As our group is a very tight-knit group of friends, we continue to be an invitation-only LUG which is quite different from many of the other LUG's out there. Wrong or right...we feel it's the best decision for our group.
VirtuaLUG holds meetings/gatherings both online and at LEGO fan events all over the world. Our primary meeting event is Brickworld, which is held every June just outside of Chicago, IL. Additionally, we have exhibited at the La Crosse Model Train Show, Bricks by the Bay, and BrickCon. As part of our community outreach, many of our members also host informational sessions, building workshops, and displays in their respective local communities under the banner of VirtuaLUG. Other gatherings also occur throughout the year whenever multiple members are able to be in the same physical location. Online events include Skype, Go-To Meeting events, and other video chat sessions along with extensive use of our private forum.
VirtuaLUG is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating and maintaining public awareness of, appreciation for, and fellowship related to LEGO, LEGO Trains, and other LEGO-related hobbies, primarily through discussion and presentation at events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of LEGO to the hobbyist community.
