INSIDER Files

Management Summit transitions to new ownership. The oldest independently owned symposium for accounting firm executives was sold by Atlanta-based Hudson Sawyer to The Growth Partnership of St. Louis. Hudson Sawyer owns INSIDE Public Accounting, which was not part of the transaction. The sale actually

closed several months ago, and both organizations collaborated on planning and operating the 2006 conference, held in January in Las Vegas. Martha Sawyer, president of Hudson Sawyer, will continue to be heavily involved with the planning and operating of future Management Summit conferences. She sold the conference to devote more time to her consulting engagements. Jeff Pawlow, CEO of The Growth Partnership, recently joined The Advisory Board, which sponsors the Winning Is Everything conference, also held annually in January in Las Vegas, but the conferences won't be combined, he told IPA. "We made a firm commitment to recognize and leverage the strengths of each conference. There's no talk of combining the two conference into a single event. The strategy is to maintain the appeal of both conferences to their respective audiences."

Wine fine for the cell bell... Ireland San Filippo in San Jose, Calif, imposes a $20 fine on partners whose cell phones ring during partner meetings. In true California style, the proceeds are used to buy wine. But Bacchus hasn't made an appearance at the partner meetings lately. "We've been underfunded for the past 18 months since there haven't been any violations," reports MP Robert Lee. "It works."

iPod, you pod, we all pod ... Stonefield Josephson of Los Angeles started the year by giving each of its non-officer staff members 30 GB iPods engraved with the firm's logo. "We wanted to give the staff a unique and hip gift they could use both at home and work," said President Jeff Garrison. Each iPod plays music, videos and slide shows. Retail price: $299 each. The hip MP3 players were purchased and engraved through local vendors. Stonefield Josephson has FY05 net revenue of $27 million, 25 officers; 130 total staff and four offices.

It's not on Letterman, but... The AICPA has issued its annual list of the Top 10 Technologies to watch this year. They are: 1. Information security. 2. Assurance and compliance applications. 3. Disaster and business continuity planning. 4. IT governance. 5. Privacy management. 6. Digital identification and authentication technologies. 7. Wireless technologies. 8. Application and data integration. 9. Paperless digital technologies. 10. Spyware detection and removal.