At age 7, Pete Cook staged his first “conference” by forcing his eight siblings to sit in folding chairs, eat Oreos, and listen to a presentation on why he should get his own bedroom. They voted against him unanimously. He’s been perfecting his event format and presentation skills ever since.

Pete founded the longest-running frac sand conference in the industry over 15 years ago, followed by co-founding with Joseph Triepke the leading produced water executive conferences in the industry, and in 2025 they co-founded The Power Connection — bringing together the oil & gas, infrastructure development, power, tech, and finance worlds at a moment when oil & gas and power generation are focal points for American technology dominance. The inaugural Permian Power Conference drew 600+ attendees and 80+ sponsors (which is a pretty good rebuttal to those siblings!).

Pete pretends to be very busy networking with senior executives, but really most of the time he is printing name badges and working on exhibit hall floorplans.