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NALC attendee Sharon Willochell, president of Leed’s, says, “I
loved the opening speakers because I thought they really set the tone
well for expanding our thinking, looking at our whole industry and
dealing with outside forces. [The speakers] could have looked at digi-
tal music and the drop in revenue from $15 billion to $6 billion in 10
years and said, ‘this is a disaster’ but instead they asked, ‘What oppor-
tunities could this mean for us? Now we’re going to build our whole
company around digital assets.’ It was fascinating.”
NALC’s education sessions also included sessions on emotional
intelligence, digital marketing, disruptive innovation, 3D printing,
mindfulness and employee engagement, as well as an overview on
market trends from Jim Chappelow, ITR Economics’ managing econ-
omist. Daniel Burrus, one of the world’s leading futurists on global
trends and innovation, delivered a strategic foresight session that
taught listeners how to distinguish between hard and soft trends, and
he challenged them to commit an hour a week to unplug from the
present and plug into the future by thinking about the hard trends and
what opportunities they offer.
“The goal for this year’s conference is to provide participants with
ideas and mechanisms for dealing with the fast pace of change,” says
Catherine Graham, president of commonsku and co-leader of the
NALC Work Group, a team of volunteers who planned the confer-
ence along with PPAI staff. “This ranges from hearing how the music
industry survived massive disruption by technology to techniques such
as mindfulness that Silicon Valley leaders have used to successfully
cope with change.”
Mitch Mounger, president of Sunrise Identity and co-leader of the
NALC Work Group, was excited to see the group’s many planning
conversations come to fruition. “Catherine and I wanted to make sure
we connected the theme of this year’s event to the roots of our host
city, Nashville,” he says. “In business today, we are all feeling the
impact of technology and how fast it is moving. Nashville is a perfect
backdrop to this topic as no other industry has felt the impact of tech-
nology more than the music industry. Our goal is to hit a number of
relevant leadership topics and foster the incredible community and
networking events that the NALC is known for.”
There were also a number of opportunities for participants to net-
work and learn from each other, including roundtable discussions on
business challenges, as well as networking breakfasts, lunches, a mix
and mingle dinner, and the closing evening with networking, sumptu-
ous southern food and an acoustic set by American country music
singer and songwriter Glen Templeton.
“What an incredible couple of days!” says Jay Nathanson, manag-
ing partner at distributor Target Marketing. “What I hope for from
an event like this is to get out of my ‘day to day’ head and learn new
and different perspectives from experts. This year’s NALC did not
disappoint. My biggest takeaway is that no industry is immune from
disruption, whether it’s digital, or demographic, or a profound shift
in what our customers value in how they buy and use our products
and services.”
Registration will open later this year for next year’s NALC in San
Francisco, August 14-16, 2016.
—Tina Berres Filipski
SNAPSHOTS
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NALC drew 120 industry leaders industry professionals from across North America, including 35 first-time attendees.
RIGHT
The
two-and-half-day event featured a number of opportunities for attendees to collaborate and learn from one another.