Canadian Music Trade - December / January 2020 | Page 24

By Michael Raine
FOCUS ON
THE 2020 NAMM SHOW
Each year, The NAMM Show
grows and adds to its mammoth assortment of exhibition
features, educational programming, and entertainment
experiences. Of course, the last two years have seen the ad-
dition of a whole new building to the Anaheim Convention
Center, which welcomed the much larger presence from the
pro audio and live event technology industries to the annual
MI fair.
Obviously, the 2020 show is sure to provide a few new
advancements and surprises, but with The NAMM Show, it’s
often the familiar that can be most valuable – those reliably-
thoughtful NAMM U sessions, the old friends who can
become new business partners, or the decades-old company
with an innovation that could bring new customers through
your doors. (With 2,000 exhibiting member companies
representing 7,000 brands, there’s sure to be a few of those.)
But in order to make the most of those jammed-packed
four days in January, you need to start planning well ahead
of time.
We’re here to help…
24 CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE
A Word with NAMM
President & CEO
JOE LAMOND
CMT: What’s new for The 2020
NAMM Show that attendees should
be most excited about, or will appre-
ciate the most?
Joe Lamond: For our members, The
NAMM Show is a real-time reflection
of where the industry is and where
it’s headed; we call it a Complex
Adaptive System – always responding,
compensating, and evolving for new
developments within its ecosystem.
The strength of this system lies in the
fact that each member can observe
the trends at The NAMM Show in
real-time, and through observation
and well-informed decisions, create
their own strategies for success in this
next decade. Members and industry
professionals looking to expand their
businesses and asking themselves
“what’s next?” will find the most im-
portant clues at The NAMM Show.
CMT: In the two last years, The
NAMM Show has expanded greatly,
in both educational programming
and exhibition space, to incorpo-
rate more from the worlds of soft-
ware, pro audio, lighting and video,
staging, etc. What have you learned
from those last two NAMM Shows
about how to serve these related but
different sectors, including your
core MI member base, in a manner
that everyone feels like the show is
serving them well?