Comparison envy

It is hard, after having been to one of the slickest, best produced and highest information-transfer bandwidth user group meetings in the world last week, the Honeywell User Group, to drop back to the lower speed and lower information-transfer rate of an ARC Forum. The HUG is designed to give value every minute, while it seems that so far this morning there have been more vendor commercials than anything else here in Boston. David Anderson, of Chevron, however, gave a very interesting presentation on e pluribus unum (for those of you who missed your junior high school civics classes, that's the motto of the United States: from the many, one) and its application to the amalgamated Gulf-Texaco-Chevron organization that recently officially became the Chevron Corporation again. "The unanimity of the name is honestly reflective," he said, "of the changes in the organization." He pointed out that every refinery was its own entity, with little or no coordination on an enterprise level. This, he said, is changing. --More later--