SMA 2008 will be held at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, Florida, October 29 through November 1, 2008.

The SMA will hold its 2008 annual meeting Wednesday, October 29 through Saturday, November 1 in St. Pete Beach, Florida. If you are wondering whether this is a nice location – it is! The TradeWinds Island Resorts of St. Pete Beach are located 20 miles down the white, sandy beaches of the Gulf of Mexico from Clearwater Beach, one of our favorite SMA meeting locations of recent years. The TradeWinds Island Grand is a AAA four-diamond, family-friendly resort and the Sandpiper Hotel and Suites is a more intimate setting providing the best of all the beach has to offer. The standard group rate for SMA 2008 is $129 single/double.  The meeting dates this year include Halloween, so plan to bring the children for trick-or-treating, and bring your costume for the beachside costume party on Friday, October 31. (I am sure that we can make arrangements to provide costume prizes in a variety of categories.) 

The Call for Papers is available on the SMA website at http://www.southernmanagement.org/meetings/2008/.  Please note that the deadline for submissions this year is April 4, 2008.  This is somewhat earlier than previous years because of the earlier date of the meeting – don’t let it sneak up on you!  All submissions should be made through the online submission system, which will open in February.

The quality of the SMA program depends entirely on your involvement. So please consider submitting your work to the conference.  In addition, to ensure a quality conference, we need good reviewers. You can use the online system to sign-up to be a reviewer.  When doing this you can also express your interest in serving as a discussant or session chair. Our outstanding track chairs (listed in the Call for Papers) rely on your help in all of these areas to put together a quality program.

We learned from the survey of the membership conducted in 2006 that the SMA membership values a high quality program.  The Program Enhancement Committee (Allen Amason, Gary Castrogiovanni, Claudia Cogliser, and Angela Miles) was formed in 2007 to develop ideas to enhance the SMA program.  Two of their ideas will “enhance” the program this year: (1) a newly formatted Paper Development Workshop and (2) the Most Innovative Session Award.  More information about each of these enhancements is available elsewhere in this newsletter and on the SMA website. We hope that you will consider participating in both!

The SMA continues to thrive with abundant human and financial resources.  So please make your plans to submit your work, to serve as a reviewer, session chair, or discussant, and definitely join us on the beach in St. Pete.

Margaret L. (Peg) Williams
2008 SMA Program Chair