Lady Locks - Picking Time

I’m writing in to have Picking Time considered as one of my Epic Quests toward my black belt.

Picking Time was created to bring together the community in a way that hasn’t been done before. Some of us don’t live near or have any access to the TOOOL meetings and so I wanted to create something that everyone could be a part of no matter where they lived. It all stemmed from me wanting to pick with someone else, as I was feeling quite alone picking at home and not able to actually pick with anyone else. So with the help of LockHeat Lockpicking, Picking Time was born.

We do a weekly meetup of locksporters, where we exchange ideas, help one another, promote each other’s projects and channels, cheer each other on, we do locksport related giveaways and most importantly we help keep people involved and interested in locksport and the locksport community.

Our giveaways are mostly items that are donated by lock pick manufacturers or other locksporters ie. custom picks, plaques, signs, pins, etc. I also try to keep it in the community by purchasing items made by other locksporters when we don’t have donated items to give away.

I search around on FB and Reddit for newer pickers and gift them with some of the locks donated to Picking Time for this purpose. This helps bring them into the Picking Time community as I invite those people to join us and I have had people actually join in this way. This is part of what Picking Time is about. I do this to try to help the newer pickers feel like they are a part of our community, try to help keep them interested in picking and offer them any help they would need also.

We may not have a strict schedule of events for each meet up, but we let it flow depending on what people need or want to see or have questions about that week and we aim the subject of the shows toward that. We have a couple black belt seasoned locksporters that join each week and they offer advice and lessons on certain locks. Sometimes we run over 3 hours and could actually go longer bc people really love that they are able to pick with each other this way.

LockHeat and I have even created a discord channel for Picking Time where we have over 40 members. This was done so that the people who are on Picking Time don’t have to wait a week to talk with the others if they have questions or want to show off something they’ve accomplished. They can converse with or seek help from one another any time they need to. We have a help tab where a couple of our black belt members specifically offer help.

All locksporters can join us on camera and pick with us or they can just pick with us at home while they join in the chat. They get to know each other and become more involved each week.

We’ve been going for 27 weeks and our participants are only growing. I feel like this shows that the pickers that cannot attend official meet ups or are just feeling alone, can now feel included in the community in a different way.

In addition to this, Picking Time offers our Stream Yard to any one of our community to use to go live or create their own shows with. We also offer the entire show to be hosted by anyone who would like to host. Knox Locks just hosted a show for his birthday, qnd there are 2 locksporters working on putting out a show utilizing the Picking Time stream yard. And Greenish and I are doing an 'Impressioning Time' show as an offshoot of Picking Time, where we show our journey together while he teaches me impressioning. We offer any of this anytime to anyone in the community.

I believe this qualifies as a tier 2 or 3 quest as it checks these items on the list:

A promotion and organization continuously maintained of a subtype of picking activity through the creation of a group that benefits the community as a whole or a subset of pickers interested in this picking related activity.

A promotion of locksport through live presentations.

A creation and maintenance of an informative locksport related channel.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Lady Locks