BOW WAVE 242

Bow Wave Issue 242--Moving Image Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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(c)2004 WavyLine.com	Issue No 242 12 Jul 04
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Quarterpoints for July 04
3. World City London
4. Maritime Manning and Training now On-Line
5. Introducing Ora-Maritime Risk Management
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Dear Readers:

Bow Wave will soon start appearing on a new and improved Web Site which will allow more graphics and photographs to be displayed and which will collect together the previous editions into an easily searchable whole.

We need a new and handsome logo for this. Readers with an artistic or photographic flair--could you spend an few minutes to sketch or capture a suitable image for our banner? We will happily publish your ideas and sing your praises.

The Editor

New Readers this week include:

Tony Nunn of consultants Ora
Professor Francis Reynolds of Oxford University
Business development specialist Irene Lembesis of Lochain Patrick John L David of Global Claims Mangement
Surveyor John C Fairclough of Brookes Bell
Solicitor Michael Ellis of Winter Scott

News of Readers

Andrew Trasler the talented and multi-lingual claims man has now retired from the TT Club. In addition to his linguistic abilities--he speaks French, German and a smattering of Italian, he is also a first class journalist. We have met few freight forwarding claims specialists on a par with him.

If you need his advice, contact him at:-

relsartam@tiscali.co.uk

Readers Write

James Wannell writes:-

After some 18 years with the Naxco Group , latterly as Vice- President for Corporate Development, I have left to seek new challenges . I wish the Group, where I leave behind many close friends, a successful outcome to the re-structuring processes in which it is engaged. Concurrently , I have also finished my mandate as Vice Chairman of Multiport Ship Agencies network and Regional (Mediterranean , North Africa, Adriatic and Black Sea) Board Member for the last 4 years.

It is a paradox that in today's booming and profitable bulk and container market , agency groups in mature markets are having a very tough time not only due to the dollar slide over the last 2 years , but also the shrinking amount of traditional business for agents. The inevitable path to diversification (to counter these trends) is strewn with pitfalls, not least the different cultural challenges of investing either outside one's own territory, or in an upstream or downstream service business that is held to be complementary.

After starting my career as a Vessel Operator in London, hereafter moving to Ethiopia and Djibouti, I have spent some 24 years in France and Belgium in shipping agency , shipowning, logistics and transportation services. I remain a consultant to the United Nations, and have worked on secondment to transport ministeries in developing nations .

contact James at:-

jnw2@wanadoo.fr

Taken from the trenchant writings of Richard Gordon of the Singapore marine insurance correspondents SEAsia who opines in the most recent edition of their newsletter Sea Watch:-

"I was fascinated by a recent review published by Lloyds List (see 21 May 2004) on maritime practices in London,Singapore, Hong Kong, the US and other major jurisdictions. The general moan is that, firstly, the Clubs have hired in all the young guns they need to do the bread and butter claims normally used by lawyers as a training ground for "articled twerps" and junior assistants. Result: no space for solicitor trainees and no replacements for law firm Admirals.. Secondly, the downward pressure on hourly rates has encouraged senior assistants and salaried partners to bail out of the big firms and open their own "lean and mean" specialist shops. Moaning aside, the reality is that there is a serous downward trend in external P&I claims handling and this is also impacting very badly on P&I correspondents. Are we a dying breed? I like to think not but it may well be time to hang up my spurs and start thinking about a Starbuck.s franchise".

Read it in full at:

http://www.seasia.com.sg/base/newsletter/seawatch_may2004.pdf

Over recent weekends your editor has been on a course learning how to photograph and edit movies on digital video, hence the thoughts in Item 2.

Enjoy.

2. Quarterpoints for July 04

Your editor's most recent column in Lloyd's List returns to the subject of digital insurance on which there is a promise of more.

The Moving Image of our Digital Future

We who come from the economy of atoms are moving rapidly to the economy of electrons. That was essentially the message from Nicholas Negroponte in his celebrated book of 1995 called Being Digital. He meant that the world of things, manufactured things, wrung by the sweat of our fathers' brows is passing and our livelihoods today are in the realm of ideas, systems, software, binary streams and services produced in very different conditions and societies.

I paused to think about Mr Negroponte's ideas this weekend, when, overcome with a need to scratch an old itch, I took myself off to a short intensive course at the London Metropolitan Film School in Clapham to immerse myself in the world of filmmaking, which has changed out of all recognition over the last 20 years. I have always been a film buff and there was a time in my life when I thought I might like to make a profession of my enthusiasm. I began as a teenager in an amateurish way to learn the photographic arts and the crafts of scripting, shooting and editing super 8 and 16 mm film. To attain basic proficiency in the film world was the work of years and the product of much expenditure of cash, patience and time. Today, a video camera, an edition of Adobe Premier 6 and some basic creative ability will take you some way down the track. In the last decade, the conversion of the film process world from an exclusive and difficult collection of atoms to a broad stream of electrons has left profound marks on the whole business of the moving image. A digital video camera of sufficient quality may set you back UKP 300. The editing software you can buy for UKP 100. A boom and microphone UKP 60. A set of lights UKP50. The rest will still take considerable taste, skill and enthusiasm. But the point is that what was once a basic craft as difficult as stone carving or french polishing or plastering, has in the digital age become as accessible to enthusiasts as a long weekend in Milan.

What in the world of insurance is comparable to this digital revolution in the production and editing of video? I well remember the specialist film editors I knew who would spend their working lives in darkened rooms, surrounded by strips of film, sorted to be coaxed and cut into the fluency of moving pictures. These editors, who were once more like artisans than technicians are now full blown citizens of the digital world, able technocrats, who more and more depend on the computers around them to carry out the basic business.

This is also becoming truer and truer of the insurance world. If it is possible to write software which will allow you to cut, splice and smooth the transitions between moving images and sound so as to render them virtually impossible to notice, is the era of digitalised insurance so far distant? What does it take to produce systems which will capture underwriting data, allow analysis and produce a quote and a wording which are equal to the old atomic processes of application, assessment, broking, underwriting and quotation? It is difficult to believe that there is anything very technical in the way of the creation of an Adobe Underwriter which, available to all manner of men, will do all the basic work which once fed the fax machines, the binders, slip cases and the manuscript wordings. Insurers are spending a great deal of time and money ensuring that this is so.

But the comparison with the world of film bears up. For like film, a digital approach to insurance which fails to capture the creativity and diversity of the human being, which does not succeed in elevating teamwork and trust, which does not stand in awe of great skill and attention to professional detail and does not respect the pride of practitioners stands no hope at all in the future.

Perhaps this is one reason why the first wave of enthusiasm in the late 1990s for virtual insurance produced a wave of crashed portals, over-leveraged exchanges and failed maritime dot.coms. Were they were too aimed at the quick buck, too prone to cut out the enthusiast and the professional, unempathetic to the role that reliance and trust must play between insured and insurer, Member and Club? Were they pandering too obviously to the control freaks, the stiletto wielders, the fellows who planned to trouser the loot asap?

There is no doubt in my mind that becoming digital in the world of insurance will require the casting away of many things which presently keep the industry in a paperful, semi automated present. A return to a greater sense of diversity may be required, a resort to a more provisional present day, to help us get to the time when software and systems will be cheap and ubiquitous and the more human qualities of skill, knowledge, discrimination and trust hold the key to our future prosperity. A description of what being digital in marine insurance means will follow in a column to come.

3. World City London

A recent survey (based on 2001 sources) in the London Evening Standard provides food for thought. The
Metropolitan Police recently decided to provide the capital with a 999 service equipped with translators on the grounds that of the 8 million residents, 3 million do not have English as their mother tongue. They have found that there are 150 languages spoken in London.

During the three month pilot programme, speakers of the following languages made the greatest use of the service:

Portuguese, Turkish, Punjabi, Spanish, French and Somali, followed by Tamil, Bengali, Arabic, Italian and Polish.

Certainly it is interesting and rather surprising to read the numbers of people in London who speak another language as their mother tongue:-

The figures given for Polish (7 200) and Romanian (2000) look very out of date to this citizen of London but who would have thought the figures for French, Arabic and Spanish would stand out in this way?

4. Maritime Manning and Training now On-Line

The first issue of this recently launched shipping industry magazine highlights the problem of fatigued officers working unacceptable hours in its cover story "Manning Scales on the Rocks".

The magazine which appears under the pen of David Hughes, the shipping journalist behind other on-line ventures and is setting out to provide a mixture of news, analysis and, sometimes controversial, opinion, covering its twin subject areas.

We understand the next issue will come out in time for October's ISF Conference on Manning and Training. Topics being covered include "Security as it affects the seafarer", "Basic entry courses" and "The ILO Super Convention".

In addition the magazine's website links through to the manning and training news web page on MGN.com which is updated regularly

For further details contact David at:-

david@anderimar.eclipse.co.uk

http://www.maritimemanningandtraining.com

5. Introducing Ora-Maritime Risk Management

It was at a reception held last week in Stephenson Harwood's office in One St Paul's Churchyard that we learned of the hopes for a new consultancy headed by Aleka Mandaraka-Sheppard which also includes people like Tony Nunn, Archie Bishop and Capt Trevor Bailey.and your editor's old boss David Martin- Clark. The fields the new organisation wants to address are those we often cover in Bow Wave and we wish Aleka and her colleagues well. You can read more about this on their site at:-

http://www.ora-mrm.com/index.html

6. And Finally...

Many thanks to shipping writer Sharon Cunningham for these excellent rules of thumb:-

Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice. Eschew obfuscation.
A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
About them sentence fragments.
As far as incomplete constructions, they are wrong. Check to see if you have any words out.
Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. Don't abbrev.
Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
Don't write a run-on sentence you have to punctuate it. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
In a letter themes reports articles and stuff like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.
It is important to never ever under any circumstances split an infinitive.
Its very important that you use apostrophe's right. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
Just between you and I case is important.
The active voice is preferred. Use of the passive voice is to be avoided.
Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into our language. When dangling, don't use participles.
Don't use no double negatives
Don't never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
All generalizations are bad.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement. A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with. Down with categorical imperatives.
If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
Puns are for children, not groan readers.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations."
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!! Remember to end each sentence with a full stop
And last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague, they're old hat.

PS from Theodore James:-

A man was walking in the city when he was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking bum who asked him for a couple of dollars for dinner. The man took out his wallet, extracted two dollars and asked, "If I give you this money, will you take it and buy whiskey?" "No, I stopped drinking years ago the," bum said. "Will you use it to gamble?" "I don't gamble. I need everything I can get just to stay alive." "Will you spend the money on greens fees at a golf course?" "Are you nuts! I haven't played golf in 20 years." The man said, "Well I'm not going to give you two dollars. Instead, I'm going to take you to my home for a terrific dinner cooked by my wife." The bum was astounded. "Won't your wife be furious with you for doing that? I know I'm dirty, and I probably smell pretty bad." The man replied, "That's, OK. I just want her to see what a man looks like who's given up drinking, gambling, and golf."

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