This Is Water
NYAn afternoon whereserious operators finallyput their data to work.
With the support of
September 8, 2026
The High Line Room @The Standard High Line
New York
In digital commerce,data is everything.
You're told to be data-driven, to personalize every moment, to win on insight instead of instinct. You have more tools, more signals, and more dashboards than ever—and, of course, you have AI.
So why, with all of it, has the customer quietly turned into a number on a screen?
Commerce Symposium: This Is Water is an afternoon about seeing the person behind the data—the unglamorous work of capturing what's really happening when measurement is falling apart, stitching scattered signals into a single source of truth you can bet your budget on, and turning data that's been dying in a dashboard into a customer you actually understand. Through the words of operators at the top of their game, we'll talk about what it takes to look past the metric and find the human it was standing in for.
Attending brands
Speakers
Alessandro De Santis
Partner
Kate Huyett
General Manager, E-Commerce
Sandy Gilsenan
Chief Retail and Customer Experience Officer
Bryan Mahoney
CTO
David Cost
VP of Digital and Ecommerce
What to expect
~50
Senior commerce leaders from $50M+ DTC brands, in one room.
3
Panels on capturing, unifying, and activating your data.
$3B+
In lifetime sales represented by our speakers' brands alone.
The Venue
The High Line Room@The Standard High Line
Rising above a former elevated train line that has become downtown's favorite public park, The Standard, High Line is located in New York City's Meatpacking District.
Agenda
4:00 PM
Check-in & welcome cocktail
5:00 PM
What the Hell Is Water?
In digital commerce, data is everything. As an operator, you're told to be data-driven, to personalize every moment, to win on insight instead of instinct. You have more tools, more signals, and more dashboards than ever. And, of course, you have AI. So why does it still feel like the decisions you make are driven by vibes rather than facts?
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
5:30 PM
Finding Your Why: Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative Data to Build a Unified Customer View
Numbers are generous with the what and almost silent on the why. They'll tell you where a shopper paused, left, or came back, but never the quiet human reason underneath — the hesitation, the small hope, the half-formed intention. Picture the brand you could build if behavior and motivation finally sat together: the spreadsheet and the story, reconciled into one honest portrait of the person you're actually here to serve. This session is about getting there — folding customer voice and context into the metrics without dulling the edge of either, and what opens up once you can see a customer whole rather than in fragments. Our panelists have come at this from both directions, those who live in the data and those who live with the customer, and they'll share what the pursuit has taught them about understanding who buys from you, and why.
Moderator
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Panelists
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
6:00 PM
Hunting the HIPPO: The Art and Science of Building a Data-Informed Culture
In every brand there's a quiet contest between the loudest opinion in the room and the evidence sitting just out of reach. Often the opinion wins, and the test that might have surprised everyone never gets run. Now picture a team where curiosity moves faster than hierarchy, where a hunch is the opening of an experiment rather than the close of a discussion, and where being proven wrong is something people are glad to discover. Building that culture is as much craft as method: earning real trust in the numbers, giving people room to be wrong out loud, and letting the strongest idea win on its merits rather than its sponsor. This panel looks at how that shift actually takes hold, and how an organization begins to feel, a little faster and braver and more honest, once it does.
Moderator
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Panelists
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
6:30 PM
Under Your Nose: Creative Approaches to Activating the Data You Already Have
Most brands don't have a data problem—they have an activation problem. You've spent years and real money collecting it, and most of it dies in a dashboard nobody opens twice. Meanwhile the personalized moment, the smarter segment, the timely win-back the data is practically begging you to build never ships. Closing the loop means turning insight back into experience: feeding what you know about a customer into what they actually see and feel. This panel gets concrete about activating the first-party data already sitting in your stack—where the highest-leverage moves are, what good personalization actually looks like now, and how to stop admiring your data and start compounding it.
Moderator
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Panelists
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
Alessandro De Santis
Nebulab
7:00 PM
Aperitif & afterparty on the terrace
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