NVIDIA’s Derek Perez Swaps GPUs for Pucks

In any industry, it’s common to see people come and go, but I’d be willing to bet that in the tech industry, as thriving as it is, it happens a bit more often than you’d expect. Some people jump around from position to position at various companies like there’s no tomorrow, so it’s notable when someone decides to change things up and leave a position that they’ve held for over a decade.

A week ago today, though, Derek Perez, NVIDIA’s Director of Public Relations, posted on his Facebook account that he made the decision to leave NVIDIA after 11 years to set out to tackle a new adventure. He waited a week to fill us in on just what that adventure was, though, and believe it or not, it has not much to do with the tech industry. Rather, Derek is off to become the head of marketing for the Nashville Predators, an NHL team.

Anyone who knows Derek knows what kind of sports nut he is, with an incredible love for hockey (and he’s not even Canadian!). So while this new job puts him in a completely different environment, his expertise with management and marketing, along with his love of hockey, makes the move a no-brainer. In his words: “I think I got a dream job“.

On behalf of our site, I’d like to give Derek wholehearted congratulations and also a big thanks for all the help and support he’s given us for as long as we’ve been doing business with NVIDIA, and we wish him the best of luck. Keep your eyes on the ice, DP!

Credit: Igor Stanek

Here are some quick fun facts. When Derek joined NVIDIA in 1998, it was around the same time that the company moved their offices to Santa Clara, California, where they still remain today. The hot new product of the year? It was none other than the RIVA TNT, the successor to the RIVA 128, and direct competition to 3Dfx’s newly-launched Voodoo2 (NVIDIA acquired 3Dfx’s assets in 2000).

In addition to offering improved texture filtering techniques and trilinear filtering, it also introduced 32-bit color and a 24-bit Z-buffer for gaming. Then of course, the TNT2 followed the next year. Also that year, NVIDIA released their first Vanta graphics card, and also the GeForce 256. Boy, how time flies!