NAMA's bright future.

OK. This starts out a little boring, but bear with me.... The end is exciting!

Your NAMA Board over the last two years has taken an in-depth look at our membership trends over the last several years to gain an understanding of who our members are and were. then to understand our members' needs and motivations in the effort to not only serve the membership better, but to understand how to grow the membership. (See a summary of this research in the next issue.)

The following is only my personal analysis of what I have seen so far ...

The rapid growth in dot com companies in the few years prior to the tech stock collapse in late 2001 was reflected in NAMA's membership. Add to that the consolidation of ag companies and subsequent merging of marketing positions and you'll have a pretty good understanding of why NAMA's membership has slumped in the last five or six years.

The face of the upturn appears to be very youthful, which is fun to see! I believe the Agri-Marketing Bootcamp was a brief look at NAMA's new growth. For those of us who were lucky enough to have attended, we saw a very young and very bright group of people in attendance. I mean REALLY sharp.

This is great news for NAMA--when we blend the young, sharp, new members with the experienced current members, the future for NAMA is bright and sustained.