July 09, 2021 I Event
Summer NAMM Returns This Week
Joe Lamond
For the first time since January 2020, the association will meet physically during Summer NAMM on July 15-16 at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee. COVID-19 forced the cancellation of last year’s Summer NAMM and this year’s Winter NAMM Show, but the association is now going forward with the event.
Joe Lamond, NAMM president and CEO, commented on its meaning.
“Summer NAMM is an inflection point for the industry,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’re in the eighth inning or top of the ninth of the pandemic, but this is the point where the industry looks forward and builds and comes out of what has been an amazingly disruptive period. The attendance is going to be made up of key company decision makers, owners. The people there in Nashville are the ones who are going to be shaping what this industry looks like going forward.”
Lamond felt Nashville is the perfect place for this process to start. “There are a lot of people excited just to be out again and to be coming to Nashville,” he said. “I can’t think of a better place to be inspired for music. Nashville is absolutely on fire with the music industry’s resurgence. I just think there’s no better place to be inspired right now.”
Lamond stressed that it is incumbent on MI overall and business owners in particular to preserve the lessons it learned from the pandemic and quarantine, and this is reflected in Summer NAMM’s schedule of educational sessions.
“One of the key points I think we’re going to make with the education track is we’ve learned some really valuable lessons through this,” Lamond said. “Let’s not lose them. [There is a ] tendency for humans to go into amnesia and move forward, but we really learned some great things about how to improve our systems and business and service. Let’s make sure we don’t forget those things and then let them take us into a better future.”
