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Insurance & Technology: The Blog« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 » September 26, 2007Why Google Earth Images Could Eventually Affect Insurance Policy RatesA recent article detailing the launch of a new satellite for Google Earth started me thinking about how much the imaging industry has changed. The new satellite will have an accuracy of about 10 to 25 feet. If you checked your house using one of the public mapping services several months ago, you probably saw a photo that was years out of date. A fresh check of the satellite services for my house showed a photo probably taken within the last couple of months. More that just a voyeuristic pursuit, the satellite services have been used recently to look for Steve Fossett. State and local governments have long been using these services. One of the uses is zoning enforcement. Geographical information systems are fed information about zoning. It is matched with satellite maps. New images are used to determine if any encroachments or new construction has taken place. Some counties use these systems for property tax enforcement, checking for new additions to existing property. Searching for how satellite information has been used by the insurance industry does not yield much. I was able to find how one company used satellite information in a fraud case. We have to realize that satellite images will be more accurate and current in the future. One day, someone taking an insurance application will view a satellite image on screen after inputting the address. Using that image, basic information could be associated with policy information. Satellite image information could be used to determine new construction just as counties are doing now. Of course, you will no longer have to ask "how far do you drive to work?" You just enter the work address, and a map with distance information will be displayed. It will be interesting to see how policy administration vendors utilize this new source of information. -Howard E. Kennedy Posted by Howard Kennedy at 12:31 PM | Comments September 25, 2007From CSC Future Focus 2007: Chubb's June Drewry Discusses How to Cultivate Future CIOsIf I've learned anything from the many conversations I've had and heard here in Orlando at CSC Future Focus 2007, it's that insurers are aware of the potential dangers that baby boomer retirement could bring to their enterprises. Most of those conversations -- including one during part of a panel discussion with Steve Forte of Gartner, Chad Hersh of Celent and IBM's Carol Stafford -- have revolved around retiring IT workers and the recruitment of young college graduates to replace them. Meanwhile though, similar turnover threats have not been widely discussed when it comes the CIO position. June Drewry, Global Chief Information Officer for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, addressed that topic on Monday afternoon in Call to Action: Mentoring the Next Enterprise CIO. "At some point, if this isn't our primary job," Drewry said of grooming future CIOs, "then we're going to retire and we're going to leave the company high and dry." Historically, outside recruitment has been a key approach to filling leadership roles in the industry, but Drewry says that continuing with that method could prove troublesome. "The demographics indicate that recruitment will be a much more difficult option in the future. The next generation of leaders is much smaller in size," Drewry said. Drewry told the audience that internal staff need to know that the top job is not closed off to them and urged CIOs in attendance to reassess their priorities when they return to their offices. "Think about how much time you put towards your customers, how much you put towards learning and your outside network, and how much time you put towards developing your senior team," she urged. The Chubb CIO suggested that a more developed and empowered senior team could allow a CIO more time to focus in those other areas. "The more all the rest of that work you'll be able to get done," she said. "I ask you to go back, reassess and give your top priority to developing that competitive advantage -- your staff." Developing future leaders in IT will require relinquishing some control today. At some point, CIOs can inadvertently obstruct leadership development by doing too much. "We need to get out of the way so [future leaders] can grow on their own," Drewry explains. A more federated model can help, Drewry believes. In insurance, that requires a company to organize itself by strategic business units (SBUs), which in turn creates CIO positions within each SBU. As a result, senior IT leaders can take ownership of entire projects and initiatives within their unit, earning valuable experience. "We as CIOs would no longer be responsible for making decisions or setting the strategy. We would be responsible for creating the environment within which everyone can accept responsibility for these tasks. The entire senior leadership team comes to the table and is held accountable," Drewry explains. Such a system also allows for better business alignment. "IT eventually becomes one more proficiency within the business unit. When the senior team [in a specific SBU] is gathered, IT is a part of it," she said. And that's important, if future enterprise CIOs want to retain the 'seat at the table' that their predecessors earned. Many present day CIOs have earned involvement in top-level business conversations and have even picked up some non-IT responsibilities within their organizations. "It's my observation that these 'seats' were earned by particular people, not by the IT function," Drewry related. "As a result, as CIOs retire, IT is apt to lose those functions unless we groom our successors to be natural replacements in these areas." Broad knowledge across an organization is also something that carrier's will look for in a future CIO. That can be a tough skill to development, even within the SBU model, because individual business groups are often hesitant to let their IT leaders accept an assignment elsewhere in the company. "Building that enterprise wide experience is a tough one, but it's well worth it," Drewry said. "People who have that experience are more prone to be considered when that next big job comes up." She suggests rotating senior IT leaders in different SBUs, such as by periodically asking a senior IT leader within a business unit with applications responsibilities to fix an infrastructure problem, or vice versa. "Let's have someone other than the infrastructure person lead that project, as a learning experience," Drewry explained. The overriding theme throughout Drewry's speech was stepping out of the way. She described today's CIO as a large oak tree with far reaching branches that block the sun and subsequently stunt the growth of smaller trees residing underneath it. While it may be easier for a CIO to assume all responsibilities, such an approach will stifle the growth of future leaders. "This is much harder than doing it yourself, but it's the only way, I believe, that you can grow people in this area," Drewry said. Posted by Nathan Conz at 01:54 PM | Comments Vanguard Test Drives $10 million Web 2.0 Project On Its EmployeesThere's an interesting InformationWeek article about Vanguard Group, one of this country's biggest mutual fund companies, and a $10 million project to turn its employee intranet into a personalized, customized destination for information. The new employee intranet portal will be called, creatively, eVanguard. (MyVanguard must have already been taken.) From InformationWeek: Instead of being a broadcast platform to communicate messages out to employees, the intranet portal's now built around personalization, giving the company's 12,000 employees better tools to communicate with each other. Vanguard's also using the employee portal to test interactive tools that it can then apply to its client-facing Web sites. Vanguard employees can use the portal to customize their site by creating access to their Lotus Notes e-mail, selecting news feeds and managing a calendar. The company expects to save $10 million through the project by 2009, according to the article. While the project is not yet complete, eVanguard has already provided some early functionality, as employees can now manage their time-off and benefits, seek travel approval and collaborate with co-workers via e-mail and online document sharing. The goal of the eVanguard project, it appears, is to leverage a few Web 2.0 concepts and technologies, such as social networking and Ajax, to enable employees to more easily collaborate with one another and gather data. And while that's all well and good, what struck me most of all is how Vanguard will be using the employee portal as a way to test out new interactive tools that it could later introduce on its client-facing Web sites. The common knock on the insurance vertical is that it's usually last to the party when it comes to adopting new technologies. While sometimes those hesitations are for good reason, too often the industry's "risk averse" nature causes it to ignore up and coming technologies until it lags behind other areas of financial services. While some insurers are exploring uncharted waters, many more are too afraid to leave the dock. Perhaps by creating similar initiatives to eVanguard, insurers can leverage their own employees to beta test Web 2.0 projects, away from public scrutiny. Posted by Nathan Conz at 12:36 PM | Comments September 21, 2007From Google's Industry Press Day: Leveraging the WebI spent yesterday morning at Google's Industry Press Day, held at the company's new(ish) NYC building where, aside from checking out the office space, I attended presentations by Tim Armstrong, Google's president of advertising & commerce in North America and Jon Kaplan, the company's industry director for financial services. More importantly though, let me tell you that Google's office is populated with many large exercise balls, free food and drink areas and Razor scooters. In fact, outside of many meeting areas there are racks build specifically for scooter parking. That last tidbit I particularly appreciated -- New York's lack of on-street scooter parking has grinded my gears ever since the parking authority towed my Razor Scuttle Bug from a fire zone outside a Starbucks on 6th Ave. (I was just running in for a second to pick up a latte!). As for the presentations, both were mostly focused on marketing and advertising concepts but there was still very applicable takeaway for IT, particularly in Kaplan's financial services breakout session. Kaplan pointed to some March 2007 Nielsen NetRating numbers that showed nearly 63-percent of all financial services-related Web searches are made via Google, a number that is 7-percent larger than Google's overall search engine share. Also, internal Google data showed that insurance companies, on average, spent $2 million more in the first quarter of 2007 than in the same quarter of 2006 (and they're seeing substantial growth in clicks over that same time period). While all that may be more useful to your advertising and marketing partners, it does provide further evidence that there are opportunities to expand an insurer's brand awareness and reach new customers in unique and sometimes extremely successful ways. TurboTax, for instance, made a bold move last tax season when it leveraged YouTube (a Google property, if you've been living under a rock) in its Tax Rap marketing project. The tax preparation software company asked users to submit tax-themed rap videos and offered a $25,000 grand prize to the best entry. Seeing as how Vanilla Ice -- who 16 years ago was a one hit wonder rapper and 10 years ago was a crazy washed-up rapper -- acted as its pitchman, the contest could have turned out to be an exceedingly brilliant marketing ploy or extremely embarrassing hit to TurboTax's reputation. When YouTube's natives, skeptical of any and all things corporate, believe an initiative is contrived or -- even worse -- utterly and completely lame, they can turn on a company very quickly. The TurboTax initiative, however, generated a mostly positive response. Kaplan says that 370 conetst entries were submitted and 40 million ad impressions were generated for TurboTax. 700 blogs and newspapers mentioned the contest. That's some priceless buzz generated by leveraging a Web 2.0 technology -- an effort that would likely involve some IT input and involvement with a marketing plan. As insurers talk more and more about multi-channel distribution and reaching customers through different mediums, perhaps we will see a carrier take a similar chance with a YouTube project. Considering the site sees 51 million unique US visitors every month, there are certainly reasons to take the plunge. Posted by Nathan Conz at 12:31 PM | Comments September 17, 2007GPS Tracking In Cabs A Valuable Opportunity For Insurance CompaniesRecently, taxi drivers in New York and Philadelphia held a one-day strike to protest the installation of GPS systems in their taxis. They claim that the cost of the systems is excessive, but it has more to do with tracking the location of taxis. Soon, passengers will be able to view their progress on a screen. This is part of a larger trend to include GPS systems in all vehicles. For insurance companies, it's another opportunity to gather information about mileage and driving habits, also a growing trend. GPS tracking systems have been part of commercial trucking fleets for years. They are now being installed in commercial auto fleets and other commercial vehicles. The information is used to record and analyze driving behavior. It is also used to assist in the recovery of stolen vehicles. This will help to calculate more accurately the risk for a particular commercial fleet. School districts are also part of the trend. No parent wants to hear from the school district that the bus driver is lost and they have no idea where the bus is. School districts will know if a bus is stopped for an excessive amount of time and will be able to dispatch help. These systems also have the ability to define approved boundaries for a particular bus and create an alert if a bus deviates from its approved route. The trend includes personal vehicles with such systems as OnStar® or other GPS options in higher-end vehicles. The availability of the systems will only increase, becoming standard equipment in all personal vehicles. Some insurance providers are already offering discounts to drivers that provide data from their systems. A few states are mandating a discount for vehicles that have GPS tracking systems, a trend that is sure to increase in the future. For policy administration system providers, this presents both opportunities and challenges. The first opportunity is to manage this information and provide it to carriers as they need it. The second opportunity is to model the data to show trends. One of the challenges is to quarantine data when a vehicle changes ownership. Another challenge is that as GPS tracking moves from the commercial realm to the personal, privacy concerns will need to be addressed. Finally, we will have to adapt and respond to any regulatory changes. Navigating these waters can be tricky but will surely provide added value to insurers from policy administration system vendors. Posted by Howard Kennedy at 04:34 PM | Comments September 15, 20079-11 Musings: Business Continuity Readiness TodayProbably the anniversary of 9/11 was observed more or less this year the same way it was last year. However, it felt different to me because I happened to be in New York, where I worked at the time of the attacks. The memories lasted beyond the date since the dull, humid weather of this year’s 11th gave way on the 12th to conditions very similar to those on the day of the terrorist authorities. My industry-related memories went back to stories of business continuity efforts, some of which we wrote about. Overall the financial services industry got mixed reviews for its response, which was likely much better than it otherwise would have been if the World Trade Center itself had not been attacked in 1993. Where do financial services and, in particular, insurance companies’ capabilities stand at this six-year remove from the day when devastating attacks closed down lower Manhattan, presenting firms with unprecedented business continuity challenges? For insight into that question, I turned to Mike Hager, enterprise security advisor and senior security architect at Unisys. The insurance industry has done somewhat better than others, according to Hager, but he claims that there remain shortcomings associated with the difficulty of keeping track of the continually changing profile of mission critical systems and processes. “Many companies today do not have a business continuity management process that provides for current up to date information about the critical business functions needed to continue their critical operations, nor up-to-date information about the mission-critical systems that support these operations,” Hager said. “Also the level of risks associated with their company not being able to recover are not formally identified and considered in the BCM process.” Because companies are undergoing constant change, Hager recommended performing a business impact analysis at least every two years. However, he cautioned, “if you don’t have an effective change control process and a good system development life cycle process in place, the BCP [business continuity planning] and DR [disaster recovery] plans quickly become out-of-date and incapable of providing recoverability should something go wrong.” Insurers also need to improve on training employees to be ready for their disaster event roles and on testing how plans function, Hager said. Without demonstrating the adequacy of a plan through testing, a company can’t really know whether the plan will really keep it going in the event of disaster. “While some companies, such as USAA, do an excellent job at making their exercises realistic, many do not provide adequate training and testing of their plans,” Hager asserted. Insurance carriers share with their financial services counterparts the problem of maintaining the availability of data across geographically dispersed facilities, Hager noted — all face the challenge of ensuring that data is recovered within the period predetermined within their business continuity plans. “Today many are looking at replicating data between facilities and locations to ensure that data is available when needed, however I would caution that that data/technology is only one of the key elements of an effective recovery plan — people and facilities must also be considered,” Hager concluded. To summarize Hager’s critique: First, while the insurance industry may be first-rate in its business continuity/disaster recovery efforts, BC/DR is not a once-and-done task — at a minimum, analysis and re-planning should be done on a two-year cycle, and at best, some kind of change management process should track mission-critical changes as they happen. After all, disasters can hit anywhere within the refresh cycle. Second, when all is said and done, planning is a theoretical exercise. As with most extreme situations, one never knows how one might perform until the day of reckoning. However, prudence demands thorough testing of BC/DR plans, preceded by initiatives to keep employees updated as to their BC/DR responsibilities. Finally, BC/DR is far from simply a technology challenge; it is a people, process and technology problem, and one, moreover, that must pay special attention to the physical facility within which those people, processes and technology elements are located. I encourage those who agree, disagree or have other observations than Hager to share them with me. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 07:23 PM | Comments September 13, 2007Smelling a Rat at ZagatIn the age of e-commerce, insurers need to look beyond their own industry for examples of online customer engagement. This goes for examples both to emulate and avoid. My recent online experience with Zagat.com falls, unfortunately, into the latter category. In New York City for the fourth meeting of the IT Strategies Executive Roundtable, I had need of some Manhattan-focused restaurant intelligence. Where to go but Zagat? (Useful trivia: Zagat rhymes with “Cat in the Hat”—as I once heard an heir to the Zagat empire say on a New York radio station.) Zagat is the authoritative source for New York restaurant information and has expanded over the years to cover other geographies. One of the ways restaurants prove their credentials as establishments that matter is to display their Zagat review in the window. For the discriminating New York restaurant customer, if you’re not in Zagat you don’t exist. Like other long-standing information-providing businesses, such as newspapers, Zagat had to cope with the consequences of an online world. The company’s revenues came principally through sales of their books containing all the restaurant information. If memory serves, they provided full information online for a time. They eventually transitioned to a pay site model, which was probably unavoidable. Today they charge a subscription fee of $24.95 annually and $4.95 for 30 days. As a business traveler only planning to be in town for a few days, the latter figure seemed perfectly reasonable. The site provided the means of subscribing using credit card information. What did not seem reasonable was that Zagat would automatically renew the subscription at the expiration date. Although Zagat was upfront about the renewal itself, only by reading the fine print of the subscription agreement could one learn that canceling the automatic renewal would be more difficult than the convenient online subscription process: Your Subscription will continue and renew automatically, unless terminated by ZAGAT or until you notify ZAGAT by telephone or mail of your decision to terminate your Subscription. Surely many tourists and business travelers could benefit from a temporary subscription and might even be willing to pay the $4.95 for a mere week. Why make the default assumption that the subscription ought to continue and effectively put obstacles in the way of those who don’t want to renew? As a user of the Internet, I may be used to getting a great deal of content free, but I was willing to pay for this particular service. I was not willing to have to work hard to get these people to stop extracting funds from me. The effect of this practice for the temporary user was to feel ensnared by trickery to pay indefinitely for a service that would be useless once one left the geography. If other consumers react the way I did, Zagat is harming its brand. Zagat may be an authoritative source of the information in question but, to invert an adage, sharp practice can negate a multitude of virtues. The general customer relations message is that trust is essential to a brand. If there is a specific e-commerce lesson to be learned, it is that trust is even more important in a channel selected for its convenience. Consumers use the Internet to get things done quickly; don’t use their haste as an opportunity to exploit them. Opt-in or opt-out functionality should always favor the consumer’s interest. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 12:02 PM | Comments September 11, 2007Humana Launches Video Game InitiativeWhile insurers have begun to look at various Web 2.0 technologies as a means to reach customers, especially those from younger demographics, they've largely ignored the realm of video games -- a widely adopted technology that's been around since before even Web 1.0. Maybe they've ignored it for good reason, as there's very little room for business opportunity within the 2D world of traditional games. However, as the video game industry increasingly connects gamers to one another -- via XBOX Live or Playstation 3's online network -- and as video game technology evolves -- changing the average gamer from a passive participant to an active contributor – the opportunities for insurance carriers within this space are growing. Last Friday, Louisville, Ky.-based heath insurer Humana (11.3 million members) became one of the first carriers to embrace the potential of video games when it established a multi-pronged initiative to find the best ways to connect with consumers using game technology. According to a press release, Humana will be working with Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Games for Health project and J.C. Herz, a social networking and multiplayer online world expert, as part of the initiative. Dr. Miguel Encarnacao, Humana's Innovation Center director of visual analytics and advanced human-media interfaces, told me that there are various drivers behind the initiative. "On the one hand, video games are obviously a very popular medium. Since Humana is always exploring new ways to engage with its members, we have to look at new media and games are on top of the list at this point," Encarnacao explains. Encarnacao also says that Humana considers itself a forerunner in changing healthcare in treatment and prevention. "People are very engaged in games. From early childhood we are using games to learn and to socialize. One question [for Humana] is: Are games a way that maybe we can influence health behavior?" he asks. In our interview, Encarnacao specifically mentioned "exer-games" as one possible focus point. "Looking at virtual running paths while running on a treadmill and Dance Dance Revolution are typical [exer-game] technologies where people can get a lot of exercise in a very entertaining environment," Encarnacao says. One objective of exer-games would be to influence consumers' exercise behavior. "If these are the types of games that will get people physically moving, then the next research question becomes: how can we take the experiences gained in that environment to get people to exercise when they are no longer in such an environment, in the real world?" Encarnacao says. Humana has assembled a team to carry out the initiative composed of members from different parts of its Innovation Center, including those with expertise in customer engagement, clinical research, market research and interactive technologies. The team is considering several different opportunities to impact consumer behavior, many through collaborative efforts with academic institutions and video game industry partners. Under one such partnership, with Touchtown, Humana is targeting nursing homes and assisted-care facilities. "We're working with Touchtown to roll out exer-game technology to these environments to see how these technologies might help elderly people to maintain or even regain physical mobility," Encarnacao says. Touchtown will field test the exer-game technology, which Encarnacao declined to discuss in further detail, in the coming weeks at Florida and Tennessee-based elderly facilities. Humana plans to roll out the system in the following months, according to Encarnacao. "We're working with Touchtown to roll out exer-game technology to these environments to see how these technologies might help elderly people to maintain or even regain physical mobility," he says. According to a press release, the Humana team will also be collaborating with the University of South California's GamePipe Laboratory to research and develop new video game interfaces "to tie real world exercise to virtual worlds." Encarnacao says the Humana team is currently waiting for a project description from USC regarding the types of games students there will be working on. "Most of the [game development] will go to outside vendors. Humana is focused on getting the right content into games and the right research out of games," Encarnacao told me. Because the initiative is so broad, success of the program will likely be measured on a project-by-project basis. "Based on the types of games we will be looking at, there will be different measures," Encarnacao explains. For games that aim to influence behavior, Humana's Miami-based health services research center will perform long term quantitative research. Posted by Nathan Conz at 05:22 PM | Comments September 06, 2007Further Reflections on OutsourcingSubsequent to my recent Editor's Note and article about alternatives to offshore outsourcing, Ed Williams of EWA reached out via e-mail with some further thoughts. It's not clear that Williams meant to address the following comment left in response to the Note, but he might as well have:
Of course retired IT professionals could very well have skills on par with anyone anywhere, but the commenter makes an excellent point. Here's what Mr. Williams had to say: 1. The federal Government allows the affected unit to bid and compete with outsourcing (on-shore). I am not aware of U.S. industry allowing the affected group to compete. 2. Greater involvement from internal and outside auditors on cost and savings, before and after the deal. Hold the management responsible for outsourcing to achieve savings. 3. Our best Universities are educating international students to compete against us. They should have a preference for U.S. student admissions. Federal and state govt. need to offer scholarships, tax benefits lower cost loans to encourage our young people to study technology. 4. Develop centers on American Indian territory. 5. Increase corporate internships for disadvantaged American students. Mr. Williams’ point might be synthesized as follows: To some extent offshore outsourcing might enjoy more advantages than it ought to owing to a lack of domestic interest in developing under-utilized talent at home (points 3 to 5), and also due to a lack of internal scrutiny at the businesses that use it (points 1 and 2). I’d be interested to hear whether others (who may prefer to remain anonymous) agree that insufficient efforts are made by companies to seek alternatives and whether, as Ed suggests, management is often less than diligent in evaluating the success of outsourcing initiatives, placing CYA before ROI. Other comments on the subject are welcome, provided the commentor doesn't misread me as saying that offshore outsourcing is an unmitigated good for everybody—and doesn't affect to have "obvious" arguments without being willing to expose them to scrutiny. Losing your job stinks, but outsourcing is simply part of the world we live in. Posted by Anthony O’Donnell Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 04:51 PM | Comments September 05, 2007Whitehill Technologies Now "Skywire Software Canada"With the finalization of its acquisition of Moncton, New Brunswick-based Whitehill, Skywire Software (Frisco, Texas) brings itself closer to its stated goal of “being able to manage the complete life cycle of insurance information,” as the vendor’s president and CEO Patrick Brandt has expressed it. In an earlier blog entry, my colleague Kathy Burger argued that the then proposed Skywire/Whitehill deal was “unsurprising and logical,” given Skywire’s ambitions and Whitehill’s assets in the document management space. That view is in keeping with what Celent’s Matthew Josefowicz said to me yesterday: “The Whitehill acquisition helps Skywire broaden its customer base and achieve an even stronger position in document automation,” he observed. “I suspect that Skywire will continue to make strategic acquisitions of additional companies in other areas, but I’d be somewhat surprised if they acquired further players in document automation in the short term.” In terms of the more logical and obvious benefits flowing from the merger, Skywire’s Brandt comments that take it “further and deeper” in its capability to manage the insurance information, for example with the addition of Whitehill’s Tracker compliance solution, which Brandt says will “integrate nicely with our document automation, rating and quoting products.” On the not-so-obvious side, Brandt says the acquisition brings a variety of “soft” benefits, such as Whitehill’s employee base, which he characterizes as having notable longevity and domain expertise. “It gives us a much deeper talent pool to do some really cool stuff with our products,” he says. Whitehill also brings a senior management team with skills that complement those of Skywire, according to Brandt. Brandt claims that the two organizations have very similar visions and corporate cultures. “It’s not just a good 'spreadsheet' merger,” he claims, “it truly is a ‘one plus one equals three.’” Whitehill boss Paul McSpurren, now Skywire’s chief strategy officer and general manager of Skywire Software Canada, agrees. “Skywire’s core values of ‘company, customer and community’ are very well aligned with Whitehill’s core values of ‘innovation, customer satisfaction and business performance,’” he says. “Looking from the outside, you wouldn’t see that alignment: the focus on customers, on people.” Corporate compatibility will likely prove important, since Skywire's plan is to fully integrate the Whitehill organization under the Skywire brand. "Our goal is that we're under one brand with a common leadership structure so that we can truly leverage the value of the merger," Brandt comments. "We believe that's a differentiator in the market from some of our competitors that have made multiple acquisitions and kept multiple brands." It would appear to be fortunate in another respect that Skywire and Whitehill enjoy a high degree of corporate compatibility since, as Brandt acknowledges, the merger effectively joins two local cultures separated by a common language. Allowing that Texan could count as a "derivative" of English, McSpurren agrees. McSpurren says no decisions have been made yet as to the disposition of Whitehill’s massive inventory of legacy stuffed lobsters, famous to trade show attendees. “Who knows? They may just have a Skywire logo on them,” he speculates. Not a bad idea. Posted by Anthony O'Donnell Posted by Anthony O'Donnell at 01:29 PM | Comments
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