The Inaugural Amp Conference at SeaWorld Resort last week has been met with very positive feedback. The quality of the presenters and the insights imparted have been roundly applauded by attendees as addressing important issues. “The quality and diversity of presenters was bang on” wrote one member.

Post conference research has overwhelmingly endorsed the conference format and the value it provided. Read the Full Conference wrap up here.

Priming the conference pump, keynote presenter, Craig Scroggie, alerted the audience of just on one hundred retailers and wholesalers of the exponential growth of the influence of technology and connectivity, including the fact that more data has been created in the last two years than in all of human history and that data has become the world’s most valuable resource. His presentation contended that data would drive the 4th Industrial Revolution. Mobile is growing faster than any technology ever before – the numbers were staggering. We heard about Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Robotics, Synthetic Biology and more into the near future disruptives. You can hear some insights from Craig here

The NAMM Financial Boot Camp sessions ‘Fuelling profitability through inventory and financial management’ were presented by Alan Friedman over two sessions of fairly intensive training on margin retention, buying, stock turns and so on. The sessions were punctuated by ‘real life’ retail clips at Tommy Gun Music  ????

Tom Folenta presented two practical sessions on firstly building The Ultimate Music Dealer website and secondly, how to have people find it and the how to have people help it be found by the use of SEO and social media.

Last, but not least, on our list of guest speakers was Richard Harris, MD of IQ (Education) at the Association for Data Driven Marketing and Advertising. He referred to the rapid growth in the use of data driven & digital marketing practices, however we have not been investing in developing our skills to keep pace with these developments. He gave insights into Privacy and the collection and use of data, misleading conduct in marketing and other regulations, prize Giveaways & competitions, intellectual property, copyright, use of photography, testimonials, trade mark infringement and international boundaries and more.

The conference came to a compelling conclusion with short presentations from Nick Smethurst of Reverb.com, Mark Smith from Roland gave his insights on digital marketing and an elephant in the room, Amazon was discussed by Yamaha’s Michael Shade, Roland’s Brendan Callinan and our international guests, Alan Friedman and Tom Folenta. The skills gap particularly was discussed by Richard Harris.

Oh, and we all had a great time catching up with each other over several happy hours, lunch breaks and dinner.

If you didn’t make it you can tell us why and at the same time help us serve you as members better in the future – it’s a short survey which you can link to here.