I was a member of this organization for my first few years of trading. It served a two fold purpose of education and self-promotion. The guru of the week would speak at each meeting, and then people would rush to take lessons from this person or group. After the internet boom, the owner sold the business to Richard Reub.
I consider Richard to be a well meaning guy, with certain abrasive quirks, who bought that business at the wrong time. I found the way he ran the meetings insulting to the audience and the speakers for the most part, however, the meetings are still a good benefit to the organizations' members. The educational value is the only reason people attend the meetings. Eventually though, most leave because they are made to feel uncomfortable by the owner at meetings. I thought that that aspect of the group was supremely unprofessional. Nobody likes to be insulted when they have sincere questions, and that even happened frequently. As a former teacher I was appalled at the way many meetings were moderated.
Most of the gurus from the boom days disappeared as speakers probably in direct proportion to their dwindling account equity. Attendance and meetings dwindled too.However, a few very knowledgeable and real traders continued to speak and attend meetings in the past few years. The ones that I have learned quite a bit from have been: Ray Grant, Dave Floyd, Sammy Chua, and Fernando Gonzalez to name a few. To me, these gentlemen are good, teachers and excellent traders. Tony Oz was a frequent speaker there as well, although I don't put him in the same category as the teachers/traders I previously mentioned. Tony was more showbiz than the other guys who seemed genuinely interested in teaching. Everyone did promote to some extent though.
Its a good organization, with good material and its nice to go to those meetings and listen to speakers. Sure most will try to sell you something and the group itself has a bent on promoting things too. But if you take from it, like here at ET, good info and apply it, its useful as an educational tool and a place to perhaps meet other traders with whom you may enjoy getting to know.
I recall that I was one of the few professional traders at most of the meetings. Most attendees were newbies and sheep, and definitely are looking for someone to follow. Mostly all the traders are retail, in my opinion because thats most of what is promoted at the meetings. Richard and Dan Gibby, this kinda annoying little merlin from Pristine trading, seemed to be in each others pants a lot, so I imagine they had some kind of kickback scheme to direct traders from the meetings to that firm. A lot of talk about selling courses, no talk about the fact that you could go to a firm, get a license, and get trained for free. I found that definitely negative, but i can understand their viewpoint, albeit not in the best interests of all members. And some of the training may be good, but I would be very selective.
Conflicts of interests could be found in every corner, but if you are interested in learning it has some good value for a member.