FIDA held its 2009 Annual Meeting at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club on the Atlantic coast in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Weather during the event was beautiful with warm and sunny conditions for the entire stay. The facilities, service, and food were all excellent.

The meeting kicked off this year with a cocktail party on Sunday evening. The annual meeting started Monday morning with a few opening words from outgoing FIDA President Kathy Kennedy and incoming FIDA President Doug Skidmore. The meeting began with our keynote speaker Paul Cherry presenting on the topic of his upcoming book "Questions That Lead". Paul is a well known sales & leadership trainer and has over 20 years experience in training for performance and improvement. Paul presented an engaging seminar with many exercises that kept the group involved and provided a number of tools and strategies to use during the sales process. Paul also spent some time on the topic of sales leadership and how to implement effective sales force management strategies. The presentation was very useful, and there was nothing but positive comments from those in attendance.

Monday afternoon included a presentation and discussion from Steve Golinvaux, Distributor & Inside Sales Manager for Cargill Texturizing Solutions. Steve started with a discussion of the current state of the commodity markets, how they're effecting current food ingredient prices, as well as his outlook on the markets into the future. Steve also discussed Cargill's philosophy on distribution and how Cargill interfaces with their distributor network which provided a number of interesting points of discussion. The day finished with a roundtable discussion regarding key employee succession planning where ideas and suggestions were shared amongst the group.

Tuesday morning began with a video presentation by Dr. Barry Lawrence of the Texas A&M University Distribution & Supply Chain Systems Laboratory. Dr. Lawrence's presentation was titled "Optimizing Distributor Profitability" and was based on research conducted at the Texas A&M lab. Strategies and data were presented to illustrate various ways a distributor can increase profitablility in relation to inventory and customer management. The morning concluded with a roundtable discussion on credit and collections best practices. The meeting adjourned shortly before noon and Tuesday afternoon was open for recreation and relaxation. For those who chose to participate, the annual FIDA Golf Tournament was held and a good time was had by all participants.

The 2009 FIDA Annual Meeting came to a close on Tuesday evening with the traditional closing reception and dinner.

The 2010 Annual Meeting will be held April 25 - 28, 2010 at the Barton Creek Resort in Austin, Texas. The 2010 program will posted in the coming weeks.