 My name is Bijal and I've been attending the 21 convention since 2007 so this would be my third year and next year would be my fourth year. I got a degree in computer engineering from the University of South Florida. Then after that I had a job for a couple of years and then I decided to take a break and then I went on and did my own thing. I did contracting work and that's where I'm at right now. So the person who organizes it, Dream, he was a part of my local layer so obviously I wanted to go to it and the first year was really good and I just wanted to keep coming back the year after and the year after that. The under 21 convention actually started off as an idea on some online forums of which Anthony was a part of and Anthony decided to take the initiative and build an actual convention out of it. So hence it was called the under 21 convention. It was really geared towards guys who were under 21 who probably did not have access to all the nightclubs, who were not of drinking age, who were most of them who were in college, who had their own specific set of issues to deal with. I remember on his forum he had like a homework section where you could exchange ideas on homework for college students. So that's where the convention started. In the second year of the convention in 2008, I would say the majority of the people were over 21 and probably what happened was Anthony started thinking long term. He wanted to broaden his market and he also realized that all of his people who were under 21 are eventually going to become over 21 one day too. And right now he is 21 too so he can't be over 21 and run an under 21 convention. It just wouldn't make a lot of sense. I think what Anthony decided to do was restructure the way the event is marketed and called the 21 convention so that he could include people both under and over 21. He could cover more topics and he could cater to more on developing yourself as a man in general as opposed to just dealing with issues that someone who is under 21 will deal with. But at the same time, while he focuses on all the issues, he also does take care of the niche market of those who are under 21. Honestly, I went in with no expectations while going to the event. I just went in with an open mind and I got an opportunity to look at some excellent speakers, get some excellent knowledge from people like Manhoor, Libido, Neelatak. Those are the people who came in the first year and their advice really impacted me. Oh, I was totally amazed at Dream's ability to get Kualiti Tan the very first year. I believe he was only 18 years old when he built it in 2007. So that speaks a lot about his character and his work ethic and his ability to put up an awesome convention. My mindset towards the convention the first year was I went in with no expectations and then the second year I was expecting a lot more and he did deliver. He brought in some world-renowned speakers, people like Sin, El Topo was there, Adam Lines was there. That just made the convention that much more appealing. Then the year after that, the third year, he brought in some of the same quality speakers as well as other speakers who could give a different point of view on a lot of things. The thing that has remained consistent all three years is the way the convention has been professionally run. Everything has been taken care of properly. The speakers are of excellent quality. His emails and his blogs gives all the information you need. He's very specific. There's no confusion and that's always a good thing. Anthony and I were a part of the local Lair and so I'd read some of his posts and he's been going out in the field a lot. So it was a good motivation for me also to go out into the field and try out a few things. I lived in Tampa at the time and he lived in Orlando. One of these days I decided to just take the trip and go meet him, go meet this guy, see what he was all about. And learn from him. Anthony has grown a lot in the past three years. I remember when I first met him and if you compare that to right now, he's grown as an individual. He's become a lot more level-headed, a lot more responsible. When I met him he was 18 so he was young and he was a little bit more stubborn now. He's a little more open-minded. Still a little stubborn but that's a good thing. My friendship with Anthony has not influenced my perception of the 21 convention. I've told him stuff that doesn't work and told him straight to his face. So when I say that the 21 convention is an awesome event, I really mean it. As a good friend of Anthony, I feel like I should not just tell him what he wants to hear. I should tell him what he needs to hear because that's how he'll grow as a person. Anthony is really mature in the sense that he understands that I'm not attacking him on a personal level. I'm just giving him constructive advice whether he takes or not that's ultimately up to him. But I feel like as a friend it's my responsibility to tell him how I feel about things, especially when he asks me for my advice which he does on many occasions. So I think really highly of the convention, not because he's my friend, but because of the work and the effort that he's put into it. In any relationship between two people, especially two guys from the community, it's never one person learning from the other. It's always both of you learning from each other. So while I was able to recognize things that Anthony was doing that were not really productive for him in the long run, likewise he was able to recognize things within me that I could improve upon. And I'm always looking for feedback. Even though Anthony is younger than me, I have to put that ego away because someone could be younger than me but I've experienced a totally different life than I have. And they could probably give me a perspective that I might not even have. Even though I've lived on this planet longer, both of us have different experiences. I have different experiences than he does and he has different experiences than what I have. So we always can learn from each other regardless of the age difference between two people. The 21 convention brings in a wide variety of speakers. So one person may want to go out, get laid every night. Another person might be looking for a relationship. Some people might be looking for three girlfriends. Some people might already have a girlfriend and are looking to build their fitness level. Somebody else might be looking to get some business advice. Some other people just want to socialize and hang out and make new friends. So no matter what your need is, you can always get it fulfilled at the convention. Because of the wide variety of speakers from different parts of the country, because of the attendees who are from different parts of the country, you can get whatever you're looking for at the convention. Before you attend the convention, you should always ask yourself, what am I looking to get out of it? And then if you go in with that mindset, you will find what you're looking for. The type of people who attends this convention, all of them are looking for personal development, looking to improve their life in one area or the other. In 2007, everyone was looking to learn how to pick up girls, and that was the whole theme of the convention. The people at the convention were not as socially savvy and attracted a different kind of crowd, mainly people just looking to build their social skills. In 2008, a lot of the same people came back again, and you could tell the difference. It was a much cooler crowd, a much more relaxed crowd, a crowd that was looking to build upon their skill set, but were more chilled. And that was really good to see. I've definitely been able to learn from other attendees. In 2007, there was this one guy in particular who we actually had the approach with him, and I actually took him out and helped him to open sets and stuff like that. Over the years, I've learned a lot from that particular individual. I've built a good friendship with him. There are a few others that I've gotten really close with that I communicate pretty regularly. I've definitely been able to learn from my peers as much as I've been able to learn from the speakers, because two of us can look at the same speaker, the same speech, and both of us will get a different perspective on it. By talking to other attendees, I'm getting a different perspective on the same speech, something that I might have missed that could have been really helpful to me, he could have caught it. So definitely worse my time to mingle with the other attendees and build friendships with them. I've been over 21 all the years that I have attended the convention. It has not bothered me at all. It has not affected me because my first year, I believe I was 23 years old and while there were a lot of people under 21, there was a pretty decent size of people over 21, but more importantly than that, the content of the speakers catered to me. I was able to learn something from it, so I didn't care if it was an under 21 convention as long as I was able to get some value out of it. In spite of the age differences between a lot of the attendees, people are still able to get along with each other and learn from each other, and because the content of the convention is very general towards men. So it doesn't matter what stage of your life you're at, as long as you're a man and as long as you have visions and goals in your life, as long as you're looking to get to a better place in your own life, this convention transcends through all of that. As far as professionally, what the convention did is it helped me open my mind not only with pickup, even though in 2007 the convention was geared towards pickup. I was able to apply those strategies to other areas of my life, and that has really helped me develop myself as a person, enhance my overall lifestyle, and just helped me live a better quality of life. The 21 convention is a new concept for a lot of people. It is a groundbreaking concept. It's something that a lot of people have not heard of before, have not even believed that such a thing could exist. Anthony has received a lot of criticism for it. Some people think it's manipulative. Some people think it's a scam. People have weird ideas about what this convention is all about. I don't think they just don't understand what this convention is about. I think once they understand that this convention is not about being manipulative, it's not about a scam, it's simply about helping men who want to improve their lives, just giving them an outlet, an opportunity to exchange ideas, to learn from each other, and do better so that they have a better quality of life. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's the right thing to do. Our society as a whole is always resistant to change, is always resistant to new ideas. And this being a new idea, a new concept, being something that nobody takes the time to understand, maybe nobody can relate to the kind of people who joined this community. They haven't been at the stage of life that these people have been. Imagine someone growing up not having any social acceptance, not having many friends, not having girls who like them, not getting their social human need fulfilled. Unless you have been there, you really can't judge someone who is over there who is trying to fix this area of their life. You know, it also takes a lot of courage to overcome that ego to admit that, you know what, I do have a problem in this area of my life and I'm willing to admit that and I'm going to take some initiative to fix it as opposed to just staying at home, doing nothing about it and crying about it. The 21 convention started out in 2007 exclusively as a pickup convention. That was the whole goal of the convention that seemed like to be the direction where it was going. Over the two years after that, Anthony changed his vision a little bit. Now he's making it more of a men's success convention. That means you focus on pickup as well because women are really important to a man's life. But so are other things, things like fitness, things like building a solid career that you like, that you can make good money from. Building a lifestyle that you enjoy doing cool things with your life. You know, a person like me, I like to build software products and market them to people. That's something I like. Someone else may want to travel the world and be on MTV. You know, but what his convention is focusing on right now is that you build your own life. Also, you know, build your skill sets with people, be a good people person and the women will come into your life. So I think he's taken this convention to a new direction where he's focusing on your overall lifestyle as a man and not just your skill with, you know, trying to get a woman to just sleep with you. That's a huge fundamental difference in my opinion.