A broken record

[Josh]

I’m not sure if I’ve said this on the forum, in written form, but I know I say these things a lot at the business meetings. When I thought about the new faces at this past meeting north of the city, and the new faces at the first time we did the north meeting, I realized that not everyone hears these words as often as I say them. I want to make sure these sentiments were captured here, so they can be referred to by others, stumbled on by others, and reread by others. This might stray into the verbose, but I’ll try to keep it laconic.

There are 2 things I want to make sure are very clear. These are the statements that are “written in stone” as the inside joke goes. I don’t think these 2 statements will ever be questioned, and the further we lean into these statements as fundamental truths, the more they’ll feed each other, and the stronger/deeper/wider Steel City will grow. The converse is also true; the more we stray from either of these statements, the weaker/more superficial/close minded Steel city will become.

1) Steel City LUG is a social club, sustained, driven, and developed by its members. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
2) Steel city LUG is a sought after resource, by the greater Pittsburgh area, and ultimately, the world wide LEGO community. We are part of something bigger than us.

While these statements could, on the surface, draw some criticism for being directly oppositional, I believe they’re so intertwined, that they’re inseparable.

• We do public events to attract new members. Just like our existing membership is diverse, we should seek to attract diverse people. That means geographically, demographically, and interests. We can’t all be mindstorm programmers. We can’t all be humanoid sculptures. We can’t all be collectors and deal seekers. We need to be at connection points for all kinds of people to be able to get plugged in.
• We do public events to care for existing members. Let’s be very clear, a social club can meet at a library on saturdays and build sets together and talk shop. That’s great. We have the opportunities, to do do that, and we do, as evidenced by build days at people’s houses. We are a social club! How much more awesome is it that we can get sets and parts for being part of the LUG? We get paid to do some events as a club so that we can buy stuff like signage, business cards, tables, bins, sets, or anything else the club members think will benefit the lug. That makes us entirely sustainable, so long as we have enough members, in quantity, quality, and/or both, to continue contributions.
• We get invited to do events because of our members – Who staffed the first children’s festival in 2013? We did. And we’ve been paid, adored, invited every year since. We’ve been asked to do more events as a result of what we do at children’s festival. The event is the interchangeable variable. Plug in Trolley museum display instead of children’s museum. Plug in S.W. Randall window display instead. Plug in Fayette County Fair. Plug in Cranberry Library. The list goes on and on. We do these events, and we do them well. If we didn’t, they wouldn’t ask for us.
• Because of our members, we do events. We build stuff. We’re proud of that stuff and want to show it off.
  We’re interested in LEGO and want to talk about it with other members. We sit around at an event and talk about LEGO with members and anyone from the public that wants to be part of that conversation. We know how much LEGO means to us. We want to share that connection so that others can experience the same thing, be it a child or an adult. We want parts and sets from the inventory, we do events to earn the credits. Not everyone will identify with all of these statements, but not everyone goes to all the different kind of events.

We get asked to do a lot of events, and there is criteria in the handbook to help guide how we select what events we do, but I have said it a lot of times, the LUG’s ability to reach its potential is only limited, and always reached, but its members. If members stop showing up, there won’t be anything to show up to. If you can’t do an event, encourage others to go. If you can, encourage others to go with you! We are over 200 members…I’m sure there are at least 2 or 3 people before every event that just need that extra social club push to be part of something awesome.

Play well.

[Tim]

Well said.

[Author]

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