Brick.ie The Irish Association for Adult Fans of LEGO®

Hello Everyone!

You are receiving this because you opted in to the newsletter for Brick.ie, the Irish group for Adult fans of LEGO. We only send very occasional emails, and we do not share our mailing list with anyone. If somebody signed you up without your knowledge, or if you would prefer not to receive these messages, just click the link at the bottom.

2010 was a great year for us. While we're still quite small, the group has continued to group has continued to grow. Our members participated in several events around the world, and we took part in LEGO's LUGBulk programme. We hope 2011 will be even better.

Meetings

We had several meetings in 2010, but as people were away we were never able to get everyone. This year we're taking a slightly different approach. Meetings will take place every month on the third Saturday. The location for the next few will be the Long Stone pub on Townsend Street in Dublin. We hope to do more outside Dublin too, but the nature of Irish public transport means that a lot of people would have to go through Dulblin to get to meetings anyway.

Because of the distances and expense, we don't expect everyone will make them all, but please come to a few to meet up with fellow LEGO fans, show off some of your models. We may also have surplus bricks available and small competitions from time to time.

The first monthly meeting will take place next Saturday, 15th January. We hope to see a lot of you there.

LUGBulk

Last year we took part in the LEGO LUBBulk programme. The purpose of this programme is to make parts available in bulk quantities to assist AFOLs putting on displays.

We plan to participate again this year, and the limits on how much we can order have increased (though the the minimum order quantity has also increased). If you're building a large model, this is generally a much cheaper way to get bricks for it than either BrickLink or Pick-a-Brick online. And if you don't want bricks for yourself, please consider filling in the section anyway. It costs you nothing, but will allow the club to increase it's order size.

If you would like to participate, I've added a section to the member profile, which you must fill in. We need to provide this information to LEGO, but it will only be visible to the order administrator. To access this, log in to the site, click "My account" on the left menu, then the "Edit" link at the top, and select the "LUGBulk" tab under it.

Member Map

We've added a new feature to the Brick.ie website, a map showing where members are located.

We hope you'll want to add your location. It's only visible to other members, but if you're worried about someone using it to steal your precious LEGO collection, just position the marker in your local park or some other nearby location to give us a general idea of where you are.

To position yourself on the map, go to "My account", click "Edit", then scroll down and find a section called "Location". You'll need to click on it to expand it, then you'll see a map of Ireland. Click the "+" to zoom and and pan around to find where you are, then click once on the map to mark where you are. You may also enter a Location name, which I'd suggest should be your town or city.

We hope this feature will he helpful to see where members are concentrated, and it may prove helpful for planning future events.

Future Events

We are hoping to display at several events this year. We've been talking to the South Dublin Model Railway Society about taking part in their annual display in October. We've also been approached by the Wexworlds Festival of Science Fiction, which will take place in November.

If you know of other events that would be interested in a LEGO display, why not post on the forum?

Forum Access

There are quite a few people who have signed up for the forum but not introduced themselves on the Introductions forum. This is all we ask to get full membership of the club.

I suspect some of these are automated spammers, but some would seem to be real people, so if you had difficulty getting into the site (sometimes the confirmation emails get marked as spam or go missing), please drop us an email and we can help you to get full access.

We hope 2011 will be a great and LEGO filled year for you all.

Looking forward to meeting some of you at next week's meeting.

All the best,

James Shields
Brick.ie LEGO Ambassador