Speed Picking Competition - Trip to Turkey!

[Omikron]

Hello All!

I just wanted to drop in and announce that this year's winner of the Speed Picking competition will be winning a trip to the 2010 LockCon event in Turkey!

At the ELF meeting in Poland I was approached by the President of ELF Turkey. I learned the Turkish Locksmiths now officially became part of ELF (European Locksmith Federation) and will organize the yearly ELF convention in 2010 in Turkey. He then asked me if it was possible to organize our yearly lockpick championships at this ELF convention in 2010. A great offer, especially if you keep in mind they are willing to sponsor us financially to make it all happen. But instead of saying ‘yes Sir’ immediately, I asked for some time to think about it. After all, the lockpick championships we have in Sneek (The Netherlands) are the most international lockpick championships in the world, but only because they are part of our yearly ‘lockcon’ conference. It is the combination of LockCon and the Lockpick championships that make it such a great event.

After some thinking about it, we made him a counter offer: we are willing to organize the lockpick championships in Turkey, but only if we can also host LockCon at the same event (a day before the ELF convention). And today I (finally) received the green light!

Personally I am thrilled about this deal as it really means something for the locksport community to be taken this serious by the industry. With only nineteen days before this years championships at the HAR conference in Vierhouten (The Netherlands) I have an important announcement to make: As part of the sponsorship deal with ELF, the winners of this years lockpick championships at HAR 2009 will win an ‘all in’ ticket to LockCon/ELF Turkey 2010 (’all in’ means plane and hotel *). The same goes for the winner of the impressioning games and the combination lock manipulation game. So three ‘all in’ tickets can be won! (* disclaimer at the bottom of this posting)

The same goes for the lockpick championships in Germany. The winner of the German SSDeV ‘hand opening lockpick contest’ will win an ‘all in’ ticket’ to Turkey too. And since Oliver Diederichsen already won the 2009 impressioning games in Germany he will get his trip to Turkey sponsored too.

The last ticket we will get sponsored is for the winner of the US lockpick games at DEFCON17. Toool.US will be organizing these games in the lockpick village at DEFCON, and the winner of these games can represent the US locksport community at the official first European lockpick championships in Turkey 2010!

And I will personally see we all (the participants of previous LockCon events) will benefit from this sponsorship deal. So you do not have to win any of the games to get a good deal!

I am now packing my gear to go to DEFCON17 (Las Vegas) and look forward to see my friends in the lockpick village soon!

Details about the rules and procedure will follow sometime on Thursday!

Get your picks ready!