gapCon 2013

Each year, gap intelligence hosts gapCon, a conference that celebrates the people of gap intelligence, our work, and shares our unique culture with the outside world. If you would like to know the multiple benefits of hosting your own conference, check out this wonderfully written column on Forbes.com, the author is truly brilliant.

Though attendance at gapCon is limited to gap intelligence employees, their friends and family, and “Friends of gap”, we treat the event as an actual conference. We have opening speakers, keynotes, panel discussions, booths, and presentations. We give away schwag, host contests, and give away prizes. While gapCon is small in numbers, the day delivers a very big message.

This year’s gapCon was hosted at Barracks 17 in Liberty Station and the 75 people in attendance were treated to a series of wonderful speeches, presentations, and discussions. Opening the festivities was Richard Nares, founder of the Emilo Nares Foundation (ENF). Richard just recently completed a 700 mile run across the state of California in an effort to raise funds for his foundation. The Emilo Nares Foundation provides logistical support and services to low income families in the San Diego area who have a child fighting cancer. ENF is closely tied to gap intelligence philanthropic efforts and Richard’s speech touched on how gap intelligence’s efforts have directly impacted his organization. (did we mention that we won the 2013 Heilbron Award for making the biggest impact on the local San Diego community?).

City of San Diego Small Business Ambassador, Lisa Gordon-Hosch, was gapCon’s keynote speaker and her speech touch on the importance of small business in the city. Well over 90% of the businesses in San Diego are under 50 employees, which collectively contribute the vast majority of jobs and revenues to the city. Lisa’s speech was both comical and inspiring and spoke about gap intelligence’s unique company culture and the importance of finding passion in what you do.

gap intelligence’s management team (aka: The OGs), followed our speakers by debuting the highly anticipated film “10 years of gap intelligence”. The film received phenomenal reviews including:

“It was soooooooooooooooooo hilarious I cried from laughing so hard.” – Erin

“I thought it was a funny, comprehensive overview of where we’ve been and it wasn’t too serious, which fits well with our culture.” – Deron

“The OG movie is the uplifting story of one company’s battle to survive and triumph in its first decade in business and move forward fueled by the human spirit and the fear of being a poop sandwich. A must see for any movie lover!” – Betsy

The Analyst Team was next and described “What is an Analyst?” The team went on to detail all of the critical roles and services gap intelligence analyst provide our clients every day, as well as their affinity for the products that they follow every day.

gap intelligence Television Market Analyst, Deirdre Kennedy, gave a wonderful presentation on the burgeoning smart television market. Deirdre detailed how smart TVs are becoming more commonplace on retailer shelves and the hurdles both smart TV manufacturers and consumers alike will face in the future.

After a quick break, gap intelligence’s Software Development Team, unveiled the development of gapPiDB, the future of gap intelligence future data mining capabilities. gapPiDB promises to be the cornerstone of gap intelligence future business and will make our data exponentially more scalable for us to process and more actionable for our clients. The Software Development Team received a roaring ovation from their presentation and inspired the entire crowd on what is to come for the company.

Inkjet Printer Analyst Adam Gajo gave a tremendous presentation on page-wide array technology, which has upped the ante for inkjet printer manufacturers to compete against laser device in the SMB market. Adam’s presentation stressed the go-to-market strategy for page-wide array devices in their effort to push back against the long held “laser bias” that most SMB customers still have.

This year’s panel focused on company culture and gap intelligence invited four San Diego businesses whose work and culture we admire. The panelists included Red Door Interactive, goVavi.com, Continental Maritime, and Banyan Tree Learning Centers. The panelists gave wonderful insights on the importance of culture to their companies and how each company supports culture to naturally develop within the organization. We learned that culture is important across a wide arrange of industries, from ship building to education, and grows from the executive level to new hires.

Identify your company values and hire those who meet them

Culture is organic and can naturally change by the people in your company

Culture not only inspires passionate work, but innovative ideas

Culture is constant and reinforced in everything the company does

The foundation of company culture is communication and reinforcing your values every day

Christine Boersing, gap intelligence’s Home Appliance Market Analyst, followed with her excellent presentation on smart home appliances and their growing adaptation in retail. Led by Samsung and LG, who enjoy established networks of connected consumer electronics devices, the Smart Appliance market is forecasted to be a $250 billion industry by 2019.

gap intelligence System Operations team with a game of “SysOps Jeopardy” that was played by representatives from every team within the company. Question categories included “Name that SysOpper”, “Retail Regions”, “SysOps to the ReSKU!”, and “All About Excel”. To the surprise of everyone in attendance, the two-Tom sales team won Jeopardy and a lavish first place prize!

gap intelligence Vice President, Chris Barnes, closed gapCon by giving a “first-look” of gap intelligence’s future Price & Promotions database. The new database is energized by PowerPivot and makes gap intelligence’s detailed market intelligence information infinitely more actionable. The new platform allows our clients to view our data in countless ways instantly – from shelf share pie charts to net pricing trends, gap intelligence’s new PowerPivot platform makes analyzing data just a click away.

While gapCon is a conference with limited focus and attendance, the event itself is immensely powerful for gap intelligence. gapCon provides a forum for cross-team communication as many of our team didn’t know what wonderful project other groups were working on. gapCon pulled our Analysts away from their desks and gave them a forum to present on their markets from a holistic vantage point. The event also served as a forum for gap intelligence to re-broadcast its vision and corporate values. Finally, as always, gapCon 2013 held true to gap intelligence’s mission statement – it was hard work, but we had fun along the way.

gapCon Award Winners!