Meet the Speaker

Peter Dering

Founder, PeakDesign

I started a company called Peak Design, and a non-profit organization called Climate Neutral. I’ve never taken a dime of outside investment, and don’t desire to do so. I’m the son of a firefighter and a nurse who really thought he was going to be a professional baseball player despite being a right hander who topped out atan 83 mph fastball. Early signs of being a dreamer. The thing I’m probably best at in life at this point is playing squash. Having said that, I don’t think I’ll ever be better than a 4.7 rated player (the scale goes to 6). This means I’m shirking mediocrity, but not by all that much. I love skiing, mostly for the potential for adrenaline rushes. I find those same adrenal injections happen everyday that I ride my bike in SF with headphones blaring. I find the risk/reward interplay fascinating. I have a daughter who’s almost 8 who’s lived in Chicago since she was 2. I’ve logged over 1200 hours in the sky on that journey to and fro in an attempt to be a very present father. My Southwest status is my highest outward achievement. Seeing the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular as a 22 year old in college is one of my most formative experiences to date. So are the 8 other times I’ve seen this show, including once at the Sunset Center in Carmel. Seeing the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular on mushrooms and purchasing an inflatable hot tub are on the top of my “things I think people should do” list. I frequently fantasize about running for president, but fear my list of “things I think people should do” will hinder this effort. More Info

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Peter Dering, Founder, Peak Design (EG13)

What is EG?

EG is an annual gathering and a community of brilliant innovators driving our most creative industries.

The EG community is full of inventors and educators, artists and designers, writers and thinkers, scientists and engineers, musicians, magicians, icons, iconoclasts, young and old. Some are national treasures, or household names (depending on your household); many are not yet discovered. It is a talent pool like no other.

The annual EG conference gathers every spring in Carmel, California and comprises over 500 members of the creative community, roughly 50 of whom give presentations about their passion projects. It is a touchstone for innovators in every imaginable field — makers and doers of extraordinary things, breakers of boundaries, explorers of frontiers, busters of myths.

We hold the conference because creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Or on a clock. Or when you pay for it. Or by staying in your comfort zone. It’s a collective discipline, and there’s no substitute for being immersed with the best, ready to think differently. More intimate, more concentrated, more consistently surprising than any other gathering in the world, and definitely not stuck in any narrow industrial rut, EG explores the new and the different by engaging a remarkable mix of people. It is not just an ideas conference. It is a place to learn from people who have made their ideas real.

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What People Are Saying

EG is the single best event of its sort in the world.

Jason Pontin

Three days of unrelenting inspiration. A chance to hear, dine and play with one’s artistic heroes in person. The most profitable and exhilarating short vacation I can imagine.

Teller, Magician