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Subject: 
Re: Starting a LUG
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.org
Date: 
Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:37:47 GMT
Viewed: 
783 times
  
In lugnet.org, Jude Beaudin writes:
Hello everyone,

I am looking to see if there is enough interest to get a LUG started here in
Ottawa, Canada and I have several questions for the experienced LUG members.

My first question is, how many people constitute a group? I know 1 is person,
2 is a couple of people, 3 is a few.:-) But when do you have a group? In other
words, what kind of numbers did each of the other LUG's have when first
starting?

Well the first NELUG meeting was 5 people if I recall correctly and that was
more than I was hoping for.  I think if there is just 2 of you that want to get
together and hopefully meet others I would get together and do something and
then post some pictures of you having a great time.  That will probably bring
people out of the woodwork.

BTW The largest NELUG meeting (other than Mindfest) was 17 or 18 and we
currently have 100 people on our mailing list.


My next question is, is it hard to get a group together when interests my
vary? i.e. Trains, space, castle, town, etc... Would you break up the meetings
into specific themes or would you put it all together or what?

Well NELUG has a wide variety of interests and we have yet to break up a
meeting.  We have had a couple of separate meetings for Brikwars and doing a
Castle display but those meetings were set up and announced that way.


Thirdly, what is a good minimum age to have?

NELUG has set an age limit of 18 and I am most of the NELUG crew would disagree
with Shiri when she says that there is no reason to set the age that high.  We
have had to defend our age limit a lot and it does get tiresome but we have not
come close to changing it.  We had a vote at our largest meeting and it was
unanimous in favor of keeping the rule.

The main reasons for the rule are as follows.

1.  In the US that is the age when you legally <- (thats the important part)
become an adult and responsible for your own actions.

2.  We don't want to get into any sort of decision making process to decide who
is mature enough to come to a meeting and who isn't.  Something like this would
very easily be viewed as favoratism and thats not good.

3.  We want this to be a group where adults can get together and talk as adults
and not have to worry about entertaining a bunch of kids that were dropped off.
(I.E. become a free babysitting service).

4.  If we were to set the age at say 16 then people would say well why not 14
or 12 or 10.  By holding to 18 which is a pretty easily defendable age limit
because that is when you legally become an adult.

There are other reasons as well but if you want to see more about it check out
the FAQ page on the NELUG site.

http://www.nelug.org/faq/


We understand that this rule upsets some people like Shiri but it is the only
rule we have for membership and the members of NELUG set it at 18 for a reason
and our feeling is we would be going against the reasons for setting up NELUG
in the first place if we ever changed it.  To tell you the truth some members
would stop comming to meetings if we changed it and that would be very bad.  So
all I can say is that when you turn 18 you are more than welcome to attend but
until then people will have to wait.


Finally, how do you break up responsability, so that not one individual
is "carrying" the group?

Well at first you might find that 1 person does dominate the setup and
scheduling of meetings but in time more people will start to set things up.

As far as NELUG goes we have a very informal structure.  We have no "officers",
we just kind of decide we want to get together and things go from there.

We have also had no real group expenses to worry about, except for the website
which I have decided to cover personally, so there is no need for collecting
dues or anything.

I would suggest keeping things as simple as possible to start out with and then
just let things grow.  You will be suprised but eventually the group will get a
personality of its own and things will kind of just run themselves.  With a
little proding from members of course.


Eric Kingsley

The New England LEGO Users Group
http://www.nelug.org/

View My Creations at:
http://www.nelug.org/members/kingsley/



Message is in Reply To:
  Starting a LUG
 
Hello everyone, I am looking to see if there is enough interest to get a LUG started here in Ottawa, Canada and I have several questions for the experienced LUG members. My first question is, how many people constitute a group? I know 1 is person, 2 (...) (24 years ago, 27-Jun-00, to lugnet.org)

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