THE EG: The Entertainment Gathering

Originally published on 1.1.2019

December 11 – 13, I made a return appearance to the EG conference, this year held in Monterey.  Founded by TED creator Richard Saul Wurman, EG is very much in the tradition of the early days of TED – 20-minute talks, big ideas, the movers and shakers in the audience as impressive and influential as those on the stage.  Last year I debuted an original talk entitled “How Magic Works,” which I’ve since presented for a number of software and designer audiences, including Intuit, Adobe, Electronic Arts, the Flash Forward conference, and the Serious Play conference at the Art & Design Center in Pasadena.  This year I was invited by conference producer Michael Hawley to come and perform interstitial magic pieces that I created to reflect the theme of the various segments I appeared in.

The EG is a very special event, and once again I had a terrific time, meeting friends both old and new.  This year there were two presenations by magician friends, namely Eric Mead and Teller.  David Pogue, who writes the tech column for the New York Times, gave a great talk – along with the many Mac and computer books David has authored, he is also an amateur magician who wrote the excellent Magic for Dummies, for which I was a contributor.  And my pal Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame gave a terrific talk about his obsessive and ongoing attempts to create a perfect replica of the Maltese Falcon.

New friends were made as well, and you can see some of them at this dinner table, where we gathered after the conference concluded.