We have an exciting set of PDWs planned for this year’s entrepreneurship division of the Academy meetings. The Ent Division has sponsored 47 hours of PDW sessions, and it is co-sponsoring another 20+ sessions for an additional 50+ hours in professional development workshops. A wide variety of interesting workshops on research, teaching, outreach, the informal economy and combinations of the foregoing are available. The Sheraton Hotel is our “home” venue, but events occur in some of the other hotels as well.

Northeastern University, a short, convenient walk from the Sheraton is the home of our Early Career Development consortium (ECDC) and of our Doctoral Consortium this year. We have Tim Reed, the head of our Events Planning Committee and Kim Eddleston, faculty member at Northeastern, to thank for these arrangements.

David Deeds and Donna Decarolis are running Friday’s ECDC which includes over 40 participants and 15 contributing faculty members. Joe Coombs and Keith Hmieleski are running the Doctoral Consortium on Friday and Saturday, an event that involves about 25 faculty and 25 students. We had over 50 student applicants this year.

Finally, the pre-Conference time is capped off by our annual Entrepreneurship Social Saturday night at the Skywalk of the Prudential Center, a venue virtually next door to the Sheraton and offering a stunning panoramic view of downtown Boston. Tim Reed made the arrangements, including scheduling the Red Sox in for a Saturday night game against the Minnesota Twins. Bring your binoculars, as Tim swears you can peer down into Fenway from the Skywalk!

If you haven’t registered yet for the Social, you may do so at http://meeting.aomonline.org/2012/PDWReg/list

Harry Sapienza

PDW Chair