On one hand, I love it!

It’s the one place where you can openly discuss dating and pickup with other similar minded people.  It’s the one event where you can meet and talk directly to the gurus you’ve learned and read from on the internet for years!

I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I learned a lot from it when I was still exploring the Pickup Community.

It’s thanks to the PUA Summit that I connected with Johnny Wolf, Vince Kelvin, Adam Lyons and other really nice guys!

This year, they had some of the big names again:  David Wygant, Adam Lyons, Speer, Asian Playboy, Hypnotica, Mehow, Daniel Rose, Bad Boy, Brad P., DJ Fuji and many more!  They even had Kosmo speak there.  If you forgot, he’s the season 2 winner of Mystery’s reality TV show “The Pickup Artist” on VH1.

No matter what you are expecting from a convention like this, you won’t be disappointed.  If you need a few new techniques to add to your arsenal of seduction skills, many of the speakers will share with you what they know.  If you wanted to ask some of them about your personal situation, you can get some quick Q&A in after each presentation.  If you just wanted to wrap yourself around the mindset behind how to be a cool and attractive guy, you’d get that too!

It’s at events like the PUA Summit that you can find out for yourself who’s the real deal.  Which guru do you connect and relate to the most?  How do you like their vibe?  How do you like how they carry themselves?  This is where you can find out if you really want to be like them, if you really want to continue learning from them.  Honestly, some of these gurus don’t have very good looking girlfriends.

Worse, I don’t know if I would consider some of these women “high quality”  (in the sense of… what do they bring to your life outside of sex and/or being your arm candy).

But again, I’m not judging here.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The PUA Summit has matured a lot since its first year in 2007.  This time, there’s no strippers dancing at intermissions, no smoke machines and crazy lights.  There are useful booths from various vendors that are meant to add value to your life.  For example, you can get a relaxing massage… or you can talk to Erin Stelzer, the fashion consultant who’ll give you tips for a quick image make-over.

There were also a lot more press coverage this time around.  I met a few people who were there on assignment to hopefully have a story for their respective newspaper or blog.  The other great thing about this year’s PUA Summit was… gasp… there were some women in attendance this time around

Isn’t that why you are trying to learn pickup in the first place?

On the other hand, I hate it.

I feel that for most guys out there, the PUA Summit is way too much information to digest at once.  There’s a lot of techniques discussed here… and for most of guys who just want a little helping hand in finding a girlfriend, it’s too much.  They aren’t ready for that.  Not everyone is trying to be the next Don Juan.

In some ways, I feel that PUA teachings sometimes over-complicate the whole process of man meets woman, man dates woman, man hooks-up with woman.

It starts with you developing some basic personality skills.  Can you engage a girl in a way that intrigues her, that makes her curious about you? Then it continues with:  can you listen attentively enough to her to relate to her and really make her feel special?  And it ends with… can you carry yourself normally, casually (aka in a non-creepy, non-threatening way), confidently and powerfully in the way you walk and talk?

It’s really not that hard when you understand the basics, when you are more honest with yourself and when you really learn to respect the man in you, including the sexual creature in you.  Women feel that!  Women know when you are turned on by them.  But you’ve got to do it in a way that’s congruent and genuine.

When you do, that’s when women respond to you positively.

You’ve got to build that ability to emotionally impact her by your personality, by your lifestyle, by who you are.  You’ve got to develop yourself into the guy she can see herself with, to which she can feel inspired by.

In the end, attraction is a mirror.  You’ve got to develop yourself into that powerful and wonderful man that I know you are inside if you want to attract the caliber of woman I know you want.

So the question I ask now is… is it something you can learn through the mastery of an endless set of techniques?  Is there a magic trick you can use to get the woman you want?

I sure hope that’s not what you were looking for from the PUA Summit because you’d get that… but you may be chasing smokes and mirrors.

Being attractive is about your attitude, your mindset, your identity, your lifestyle.

The great thing about the PUA Summit is you’ll get a lot of ideas on how you can improve all the things I’ve mentioned above, but like in any other convention, the abundance of information may confuse you more than help you.  In addition, are you really going to take the time to apply what you’ve learned?  The PUA Summit gives you a great forum for you to find the knowledge AND the people to help you get where you want but if you aren’t going to apply it, what does it matter?

Take in as much as you can but don’t get bogged down by all the little details.  The worst thing you could do leaving the PUA Summit is to try to over-analyze everything you’ve learned.  Put into practice what resonated most with you and see how it works.

As much as I see the benefit the PUA Summit offers to many men, I can’t see it ever becoming mainstream.  After coming back for the 3rd year in a row, I still wouldn’t tell my friends that I’m going to a PUA Summit.

As soon as I entered the room, I saw a sea of men dressed in variations of Affliction style of t-shirts and jeans.  Lots of guys were dressed as if they were bad-asses.  Lots of guys were dressed as if they were going out at night.  Lots of them had bling bling that made no sense at all.

For Christ’s sake, this is day time!!!  Who dress like that?  If I didn’t know better, I would have called them douchebags.  Some of these men were definitely trying too hard to be cool… and honestly, that didn’t make me want to really associate myself with them.

In short, I recommend the PUA Summit to anyone who’s a little curious about the Pickup Community.  I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s an aspiring Pickup Artist.  Know what you want out of it, go to it, get it and get out.

However, for anyone who’s a little bit more mainstream, who just wants to know a few things or two about women, the PUA Summit would be too much and would turn them off more than truly help them.

David Wygant had a speech to do and as usual, he rocked it.  His energy is absolutely amazing when in front of an audience. 

When he gets on stage, he just gets in the zone.  He never prepares his speech.  Everything is in his head and I think that’s what makes him so good.  He knows his stuff so well that he just get into that flow state. He gets in the moment and everything comes out naturally.

For this seminar, he brought a grapefruit on stage and asked one courageous volunteer to come up.  He then explained:  “I want you to catch the grapefruit. I’m going to roll it either fast or slow.  It’s up to you to catch it.”  Without much of a warning, he then rolled the grapefruit fast towards the volunteer.  The guy missed the grapefruit completely and had to chase it down the stage.

This is what most men do wrong.  They spend their life chasing after women.

The audience went crazy with the analogy.  David moved on to talk about how men need to learn to attract women instead of chasing them.  Men need to learn to have purpose, have passion, be able to observe and listen to truly connect with women on a deeper, higher level.

I’m not going to lie.  I like working with David.  He has a very healthy lifestyle and mindset.  Sometimes, I feel he could teach a little bit more technical stuff for the guys who truly don’t get it but he doesn’t… and I know why.  He really wants guys to understand the habits and behaviors of being an attractive man.  If you “get it”, techniques don’t matter as much.

However, David is not the only dating expert I like to hang around or hear from.  There are a lot of other dating experts and gurus that teach some truly amazing things.

At the “Man Transformation” seminar, I was very happy to see Vin DiCarlo again.  He’s one of my favorite guys in the Community because his writing has always resonated with me.  He’s the guy who coined the term ”Natural Game” for the Seduction Community a few years back.

If you were to meet him, you’d think of him as a totally normal guy unlike some of the other Pick-Up Artists (PUAs) out there.  Ask him about his Star Wars collectibles collection sometimes or if you are into music, ask him about his rockstar aspirations.

Maybe I like him because I’m a Star Wars geek too.

The only difference between you and him is that he just gets laid a whole lot more than you ;p

He’s definitely a bit more of a Pick-Up Artist than a dating kinda guy but his methodoly has always been about bringing your most natural masculine behaviors out without asking you to manipulate women into liking you.  Some of his advanced techniques can definitely be misused by ill-intentioned men towards women but that’s the nature of things.  You can use any pool of knowledge for good or evil.

As I was networking with David, I didn’t realized that I completely missed Vin’s presentation.  Bummer!  I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to say.

I did get to chat with him a little bit though.  He’s releasing a new e-book called The Attraction Code which I’m pretty excited about.

He graciously sent me a copy for me to review so you can bet that I’ll be writing about it soon.  I’ve read 3/4th of the e-book already and the cool thing about Vin is that he realizes that any seduction method out there CAN work… as long as you know HOW TO THINK about attraction.

So if you want to keep yourself up-to-date on his e-book release, make sure to sign up for his VIP list right now by clicking the banner below.  He has some freebies to give away and he’ll be releasing the book to his friends and private list first.

I also got to chat a little bit with Steve Piccus.  If you don’t know him, he’s the guy behind the White Tiger Tantra DVD set.

In those videos, he teaches men how to massage a woman for optimal relaxation and blood flow so you can help her reach deeper, stronger orgasms and squirting.  I remember watching those DVDs a long time ago and wondering how Steve would be like in person.  From his long hair and cowboy/native American fashion style, I was afraid he’d be some kind of woo woo woo new age spiritual guy.

After meeting him, I can say that Steve is CRAZY!!!  He’s not insane crazy.  He’s just crazy because he’s so full of life and energy.  I was there listening to him and David Wygant speak to each other and Steve truly understands how to connect to women on a much higher level.

Steve’s 18-year old son was also present and it was interesting to watch how father and son were both so open with each other about sexuality.  So many fathers out there don’t really teach their sons anything about women.  The funniest part for me was when his son expressed his view that a lot of Pick-Up Artists (PUAs) are just “gay”.  They seemed more interested in chatting with other men than meeting women.

Now, THAT’s something to think about.  This reminds me of what Adam Lyons once said in one of his speeches: 

If you want to meet women, surround yourself with women.  Why are you going out with a bunch of dudes?

Steve Piccus is definitely a manly man.  Everything about him projects a very masculine and dominant energy.  He absolutely abhors the part of the Seduction Community that teaches men to use tricks to meet women or the part of the Community that tell guys to act or dress gay to attract women.  If you want to meet women of quality, be a man! 

Steve curses a storm when he wants to make his opinion well known.  You probably wouldn’t want him to speak if political correctness was an issue.  He’s very passionate about what he teaches and you can tell it’s important for him to have men and women connect genuinely on a spiritual and sexual level.  Just by listening to him and talking to him for a few minutes, I was just amazed at how much he knew about sensuality and health.

I sure hope David and I get to work with him in the near future.

Finally, I got to meet Brent M.  David and Brent have been friends for a long time and I’ve always heard good things about Brent.  However, I haven’t met him until a few days ago.

Brent is one of those guys who also focuses on teaching men to live an interesting lifestyle.  If you live an attractive lifestyle, women will come to you but you have to learn to let go of a lot of your fears, a lot of your outcome dependence, a lot of your insecurities.

Brent is probably one of the best dressers I’ve met in the Community.  He has a very clean yet trendy look.  He wears good jeans, very nice shoes and always sports a nice blazer/sport coat.  The way he moves is very flowing and dominant.  His image alone probably gives him a lot of attention from the kinder gender.

Besides his good fashion sense, he has long shiny hair that would make Fabio (the model for all those romance novels) jealous.  You know what?  Maybe I should nickname Brent “Fabio.”  I wonder how he’d like that.  Anyhow, I didn’t talk to him about anything significant but I know that I’d just get along with him.  There are some people you just know.  You just KNOW you’d click with them.  There’s something about their vibe that puts you at ease and makes you smile.

The “Man Transformation” seminar featured a lot of other guest speakers including Lance Mason from PU101, Mehow, Hypnotica, Grant Adams from Net2Bed, Sean Stevenson, Alex Allman (author of Revolutionary Sex) and Neil Strauss himself.  I didn’t get to hear everyone speak and I definitely didn’t talk to all of them either but it was fun for me to just SEE all these gurus in one room chatting one another up. 

There were even other major players in the industry that just came in to network.  Tyler Durden from RSD, Jae Ellis from AskRomeo and Cameron Teone from AttractWomenAnywhere were there as well.

They may be competitors when it comes to business but when you put them all in one room, they are all friends.

Well… after talking to him on the phone, I got really excited! He’s organizing a 2-day seminar totally dedicated to helping you meet women during the day and guess what? I’ll be there to cover the event!

The best part of the seminar is that he’ll have truly awesome speakers to share their knowledge with you. The line-up is not confirmed yet but I hear Carlos Xuma, Sean Messenger, Cameron Teone and my friends David Wygant and Sebastian Drake are to show up. I don’t know who else is coming but I am really looking forward to meeting the gurus I haven’t met yet.

The seminar will be held on November 10 and 11, 2007 in Los Angeles, CA and will be called:

The Game Plan: Everything You Need To Know
About Picking Up Women During The Daytime.
You can click here to get more info and get some freebies.
Registration opens on Thursday, October 18, 2007.

If you go to The Game Plan site now and subscribe to the email list, there’s a 23 minutes audio interview you can download of him questioning 2 girls (who seem to be college students) about what works on them when guys try to pick them up.

I did listen to it and it’s pretty good. If you’ve been in the Community for a while, you may not learn a lot from it but it’s nice to hear how girls perceive things from time to time. I felt that some of the answers the girls gave were not very representative of more mature or accomplished women but overall, I found that the interview reinforced a lot of the tips I have learned from talking to girls myself; things such as:

• Don’t rush the touching when you approach.
• The “I have a boyfriend” excuse only comes out when you are being creepy but you can ignore it and continue if you are confident and charming.
• Being comfortable with yourself and making the interaction with the girl very casual is highly attractive (in the audio: don’t be try-hard, be cool and sincere).
• Trying to impress a girl is a huge turn-off (in the audio: don’t give too much details about your party life).
• To attract a girl, you need a balance of arousal and comfort (in the audio: don’t go deep too fast but stay playful. During a first date, don’t make future plans too quickly).
• Be persistent but not stalker-ish.
• If something didn’t go according to plans, be nonchalant. Pretend that it never happened (when she denies you a kiss or when she flakes). This is very in line with the “reward good behavior, punish/ignore bad ones” philosophy.
• Having something to say AND being able to make her talk (listen to her) is important when you call her.
• If you leave a voicemail, give the girl a little bit of context to why you called. “Hey this is xyz, call me back” doesn’t cut it.
• Incidental kino is the best prelude to kissing (in the audio: cuddling or having close physical contact is a good lead to kissing).
• Missing a window of escalation that the girl presented to you is unattractive.
• After a good date, texting a short and sweet message the same night or the next morning is sure way to captivate her imagination (aka seduce her mind).
• Instant mini-dates strengthen the impression a girl can have of you
• Respect, honesty and comedy is important to making the girl want to see you again (I would translate that to respect, authenticity, ability to have fun)

So don’t wait any longer. Go listen for yourself and the next time you go out, keep your interaction with women casual and fun. It’s easy for you to be your confident, authentic, masculine and attractive self when you make meeting women not such a big deal