Idaho LUG Blog

Our August meeting was full of announcements and events. STEM day at the Western Idaho Fair was the day after our meeting. Brickslopes and the Boise Comic Arts Festival were the weekend after our meeting. Bricks and Minifigs is having a carnival and need some help with builds. We are also starting planning for our fall events which include a Haunted Builds contest in October, Festival of Trees and of course our November member appreciation meeting.

STEM Day at the Western Idaho Fair

Every year the first day of the fair includes a STEM event and this year we setup two tables for tower builds. We had over 200 towers built during the event. Many thanks to Shawn and Jerry for working the entire day!

Events

Brickslopes is finally here! We will be carpooling down starting on Thursday August 22nd. Several of our LUG members will be displaying MOCs and appreciation tiles are available. If you are attending Brickslopes Chris has tiles for you to place on your favorite builds. We also have the opportunity to vote for our favorite build as a LUG. We have our exclusive "One Hot Potato" award. We will be getting together on Friday night to decide on our winner.

The Boise Comic Arts Festival is August 24th and 25th at the Boise Center on the Grove. LUG members are encouraged to bring their builds to the event. Loading can begin at 10AM on Friday the 23rd. Thad and Greg are leading this effort and more information is available on our Facebook Page.

There is another opportunity to help out Bricks and Minifigures with their carnival attraction builds. Helping out will earn you a free small tub of bulk. This will be on Thursday August 29th from 4pm - 9pm.

The Village at Meridian has asked us to display Halloween Themed MOCs on October 16th. More details to come.

It's not too early to think about Festival of Trees. Once again we will be displaying winter themed MOCs up in the children's area. We will also have several free build tables as well as a build that can be purchased. 

Show and Tell

Peter - LEGO Store	Austin - Mazda Miata	Austin - Bird

Upcoming Meetings

For our September meeting we will be sorting bulk brick that was donated to the LUG. You will have an opportunity to purchase bricks for your collection. Proceeds from this sale will go towards supporting the LUG.

Bring your "Haunted Builds" to our October meeting. We would like to see your best Halloween and Scary MOCs during this meeting. We may be providing some prizes to the best haunted builds.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the August meeting our next meeting will be on September 19th at 7PM!

We had a busy meeting discussing the many STEM events we have been doing around the valley. We have already supported three elementary school STEM nights as well as the BSU Engineering and Science festival. There are still four more already on the calendar.

To help out with facilitating STEM events Greg has put together kits that contain everything you need to support an event. There are signs promoting the group and MOCFEST!, instructions for several STEM activities and all the bricks you need for the event. Two kits are currently available and there are plans to put a few more together.

HACFORT is doing a technology theme this year and asked us to help out with STEM events. Unfortunately we aren't able to support them this year but there is an opportunity to display MOCs indoors at the Grove on Saturday March 23rd. Contact Greg if you would like to display your MOCs. We would like to be able to display a Great Ball Machine (GBC) during the event next year.

MOCFEST! 2024 is scheduled for 18 - 19 May at ABU Games. We are holding weekly planning meetings and all members are welcome to participate. Contact Greg if you would like to attend the planning meetings. There will be several volunteer opportunities as we get closer to the event.

Only one show and tell this month a throwback to some classic Bionical sets, Core Hunter and XT-4

One of our members has two MOCs up on LEGO Ideas if you have an account you can take a look at his contributions under GeckoGamer004. Gecko Diaoramas is currently a staff pick!

In other LEGO news a new gift with purchase (GWP) Micro Rocket Launchpad will be available from February 16th - 18th for all LEGO Insiders with the purchase of $200 or more. There is also a rumor that one of the collectable minifigure (CMF) sets will be based on Dungeons and Dragons. This will probably be available in September.

Many thanks to everyone that attended the meeting. Next meeting is on March 21st at 7PM!

The Boise State University Engineering and Science Festival was a five-hour event from 10AM till 3PM on Saturday, February 3rd. The event took place in many buildings around campus. We were located in the BSU Gymnasium in front of Extra Mile Arena. 

We setup at 9AM and we had a busload of middle school kids show up about 10 minutes before the event officially started. We had a steady stream of kids and some adults that wanted to build towers. We gave away prizes for the tallest tower every hour which motivated several of the builders. Our tallest tower was 47 inches tall but it wasn't sturdy enough to pass the tip test. 

Overall we had nearly 200 towers built during the event and three people arrived to pick up their prizes. We had about ten LUG members come down and help out during the event. We also had four students from the college of engineering who helped as well. The event went very smoothly with a quick setup and tear down. Plenty of people stopped by to build or just hear about the group despite the bad weather.

There are plenty more STEM events on the calendar for this fall. Watch our Facebook page for more opportunities to help out with these events.