Archive for the ‘LockCon’ Category

LockCon program

Wednesday, August 17th, 2016

Although the desire to be at LockCon is normally not related with the official program, we do get some questions about what lectures will be given. So, we have made a (preliminary!) program. You can download it from here: lockcon2016.ics.

Apart from competitions in lockpicking, impressioning and lever lock picking, lots of socializing and generally having lots of fun, these lectures/workshops are planned:

  • Contemporary Chinese Locks by MH and Lucas Zhao
  • Bypassing electronic safe locks by Jord Knaap
  • Keyed-alike industrial standards by Deviant Ollam
  • OpenSCAD by Kenny McElroy
  • Surfing the wave! (a pin lock picking tools analysis) by Jimmie & Cocolitos
  • Elements of Cylinder Design by Peter Field
  • CNC Milling EVVA 3KS Keys and decoding the Masterkey System by Jan Morawek and Michael Weiner
  • AccuReader by Eric Scaillet
  • Why safe lock manipulation works by Jaakko Fagerlund

LockCon progress

Saturday, July 2nd, 2016

LockCon 2016

Things are moving along rather nicely. The registration has opened and a lot of the usual suspects have already registered. We are however still missing quite a lot of our regular visitors. Please do not forget to register, because we have a limited number of rooms. Just showing up on the day will probably mean you cannot get in anymore!

Lots of people are submitting talks. We love it! Keep them coming! People who have submitted a talk will be contacted later, when we have a preliminary schedule. There is room for lightning talks as well.

There is a logo for LockCon 2016 as you can see. This year, we have decided not to print shirts, to avoid a pile of left overs once LockCon is over. Anybody want to buy a shirt from 2014? This year we do have shirts, but they are printed on demand and you can order them yourselves. We offer these on a non profit basis via the shirt shop of our good friends at Hack42. You can order either a man’s T-shirt, women’s T-shirt, mini person T-shirt or a hoodie.

If you want to use a different (local/cheaper/DIY) printshop, feel free to use the logo above.

LockCon 2016 – dates

Tuesday, April 19th, 2016

LockCon logo

The weekend of September 30 – October 2, the LockCon conference will once again be held! This time, it will not be in Sneek, but in Garderen, in Hotel Overbosch Garderen. Garderen is less than 2 hours from Schiphol Airport when using public transportation.

LockCon is an invite-only conference. Members of Toool NL and affiliated lockpicking groups can visit, as well as people that have visited LockCon before. Others need to be endorsed or need to convince us they should be there 🙂

Registration is not yet open and the price is not yet known. This post is for you to take note of the date, and also to ask if you are willing and capable of giving a lecture or workshop at LockCon 2016. If so, please let us know at lockcon2016-submit@toool.nl.

Apart for the interesting lectures and workshops, the Dutch Open lockpicking and impressioning championships will also be held during LockCon as usual.

 

LockCon 2014 – the aftermath

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

Wow – we are all still buzzing with energy after this years’ LockCon! With a fully packed program spanning three days, there was something to learn and do for everyone. People showed up from all over the world, making new friends, discussing new locks and lock opening techniques and just having a good time in general.

An important part of LockCon is the Toool Dutch Open Championships in lockpicking and impressioning. And, thanks to Jord, this year we also had a lever lock opening competition.

Unfortunately, the impressioning competition was nullified due to irregularities. Therefore, there are no winners.

The lockpicking competition was exiting, with for the first time a Dutch winner. In an exiting final, all three final contestants opened one out of three locks within 15 minutes. The fastest time was for winner Walter Belgers, with Christian Holler getting second and Marc Bromm third place.

The lever lock competition was won by Tomás, who opened all four within the 3 minute time limit per lock(!). Oli Diederichsen became second by opening three locks, Lars Jelonnek was the fastest opening 2 locks making him number three.

And finally, the Toool competition, open only to Toool NL members, was won by Walter Belgers. The second place was for Christian Holler (quite a feat since he only had one day for it) and third place for Jos Weyers.

Our thanks go to all the participants who have made this LockCon a great event. Also many thanks to the sponsors. Abus sponsored all the locks and keys for the impressioning contest. Prizes were sponsored by TOOOL.US, Storm Lock Picks, Sparrows Lock Picks, EVVA, M&C, Knaap Junior, Oli Diederichsen and Douglas Bryant.

This year, other than previous years, we will be selling the remainder of LockCon 2014 clothing. So, don’t wait until next LockCon to see if we have reduced the price, we aim to sell the limited stock this year. Instead of T-shirts, we have made high quality embroidered polo shirts sporting the Toool logo on the front and an image of the Sneeker Waterpoort on the back. These will go for 35 euro including shipping. We also have a few VIP “key figure” polo shirts for 45 euro. To order, send your request to merchandise@toool.nl. The first few people ordering will get a LockCon 2014 badge that doubles as a pin tray, courtesy of Datagram. We’ll be posting better pictures soon.

LockCon 2014 addition

Monday, September 15th, 2014

Not many people have experience in opening pump locks (locks using a push key). However, one of the guests at LockCon 2014 has ample experience. And: he has built his own tool to open these locks. This is what it looks like:

At LockCon, you will be able to see the tool in action with live commentary from the maker. You can see a 17-second sneak preview from the ELF conference here:

LockCon’14 is “ON”! (It giet oan!)

Monday, September 8th, 2014

LockCon logo

In a couple of days Toool will host the international LockCon conference in Sneek.

If you planned on spending the Thursday-night at the Hostel, but haven’t stated so when registering: DO register! Spaces are limited and going fast.
Also some of the “old-timers” seem to think they don’t have to register anymore to get in. But as our maximum numbers are set, we kinda need a headcount beforehand.

If you haven’t already, register! If you didn’t get the registration link, please send an e-mail to lockcon2014-registration at toool.nl.

You wouldn’t want to miss out on all this goodness:

the opening will be at 19 Sep 10:15
the closing will be at 21 Sep 16:00 after which we will have dinner.

Jaakko will talk about the process of tool-building (looking for weaknesses, choosing materials and the actual build)
Alexandre has an innovative way of doing dual-component impressioning
Michael will give a talk about locks in German alarm systems
there will be a safe manipulation workshop, lecture and championship
Jord will host a workshop on working with some new safe opening tools
Legion303 will take us through the process of building lock picks
Rob will do a fun talk about lockpicking in movies
on Friday night we’ll try something we have never done at LockCon before (and can’t yet tell you about) -No Press-

datagram will host his famous tamper workshop
decoder will shed some light on the mediahit that is 3d printing of restricted blanks
Marnix will bring some 3D printers, so we can get some hands-on results
Legion303 will show us how to defeat the cyberlock
Jaakko will show his new safecracking tool
we are very grateful we will host our annual impressioning championship on C83 cylinders donated by ABUS.

Alexandre will show us a technique to manipulate and decode Disec locks
And off course we will be hosting the annual Dutch Open Lockpicking Championships.

Ample reason to head to Sneek it seems.  See you in a couple days.

Dates for LockCon 2014: September 19/20/21

Tuesday, July 1st, 2014

LockCon logo

The weekend of September 19/20/21 we will be in the good old youth hostel in Sneek for another edition of LockCon.

More information can be found here and the request for talks / presentations is open!

This year, we have three full days, so there is more time for interesting lectures and workshops. Of course, the Dutch Open lockpicking and impressioning championships will also be held during LockCon.