The GMA 2012 Executive Conference running from the 25 – 27 of August brings together retailers and manufacturers to discuss issues that affect the grocery industry. The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) Executive Conference being held in Colorado Springs aims at bringing together industry players to converse on issues and trends that the grocery industry are facing. The theme of this year’s conference is Connecting Today to Grow Tomorrow. The event promises innovative topics and insights from the scheduled speakers and debates that are to be held throughout the conference.

The conference had some new features this year with the name badges having barcodes that would help to verify registration of attendees. There was also a downloadable Executive Conference app that an attendee could use to get updates on sessions, get biographies of the speakers and also select sessions that one is interested to attend.

One of the speakers featured at the event is Lisa Sharples, president of AllRecipes.com, a website that carries recipes and advice for cooking at home. Her presentation highlights the rapid increase by users of mobile devices to access the site. She noted that of the web traffic that the website witnesses, 35% now comes from mobile devices and half of that number is done while in grocery stores. With this observation she says that manufacturers and other industry players have to take note of this trend and be there at the point of purchase if they want to make an impact to this segment of the market.

Other speakers in the GMA 2012 Executive Conference, include Doug Rozen, Senior Vice President, General Manager, MXM Mobility, The Hyperfactory; John Caron, Vice President of Marketing, Catalina.