Navy Gold Coast Small Business Conference

The Department of the Navy (DON) Gold Coast, small business opportunity event began with the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Port Hueneme Office of Small Business. NSWC had a strong need to interface with the Defense Contractors who were or would like to do business with the government in that area. The industry meetings became known as Gold Coast for the beach areas north of Santa Monica, which carried the same name. Gold Coast industry meetings were successful in attracting companies from Southern California as well as local Oxnard Plain firms. DON Small Business Deputies from the San Diego area began to attend and participate as well in the early 1990’s. The success of the program led to a joint decision to share the load and rotate the responsibility for putting on an event with government agencies from each of the participating systems commands being represented. Gold Coast would be rotated through several agencies in the Southern California area. The first Systems Command to lead Gold Coast was Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) the forerunner to Naval Information Warfare (NAVWAR) Systems Command in 2004.

About the same time Gold Coast was active in the Oxnard area, SPAWAR had established a relationship with the San Diego Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) several years prior to 2004. When SPAWAR moved from Crystal City (Northern Virginia) to San Diego in 1997, the Commander, RADM George Wagner. reached out to the local NDIA Chapter to assist SPAWAR in establishing an ethical and legal forum to enable communication between SPAWAR and Industry. The initial events were called the SPAWAR Industry Conferences that took place shortly after arrival until 2003. The events were very well attended and successfully met the requirements of SPAWAR. The relationship between SPAWAR and NDIA-SD flourished as NDIA was able to work with the government to introduce SPAWAR Programs and contractual requirements to Industry.

Right after the 2003 SPAWAR Industry Conference, the SPAWAR Deputy for Small Business, Ms. Susan Burrows called the NDIA-SD President, Jim Lasswell, and asked if NDIA-SD would be interested in co-hosting the first San Diego Gold Coast event with SPAWAR. Expanding upon the SPAWAR Industry Conference format, the San Diego Chapter working with SPAWAR was able to put on an outstanding event. For several years following this first event other commands in the San Diego area also worked with the San Diego Chapter of NDIA to put on successful events. Eventually, the SECNAV Office of Small Business Programs decided to consolidate their outreach efforts and took over responsibility for Gold Coast in San Diego from the local commands and combined it with another event on the east coast called Sea Air Space, giving them two large events on both coasts. Since that time, the San Diego Chapter and the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) have been successful in the Gold Coast outreach event, which now features all the US Navy Buying Commands as well as several non-Navy government Agencies.