17An Ear for Leadership
Zach Phillips serves as the director of professional development for NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants. A musician and passionate educator, Zach oversees all educational programming at NAMM. Scott has spoken on three NAMM stages and attended the conference four or five times, several with our older kids. In our experience, conferences or trade shows of NAMM's size often become bigger than themselves and forget about people—but NAMM is different, with a focus on attendees, vendors, and staff—and Zach is a big part of making that happen.
(Highlights from our interview, recorded June 2, 2023.)
AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMER, IT'S easy to fall into the mindset of providing what you think people need to be learning about. At NAMM, our strategy is to evaluate the wants of our membership and provide education programs based on those wants; we're totally focused on relevance. We track attendance trends and take feedback from members when evaluating education programs. We're always on the lookout for talent, new topics, and educators who are best suited for our membership. The growing needs of our members and our ability to meet them requires long-term planning, even beyond the next NAMM show. Many of the newer communities we're serving benefit from hands-on education, which is somewhat new to us. For instance, when you're talking about a pro audio attendee, maybe a live sound engineer, they want to get their hands on the gear. They want to try ...