SOA on display

It’s not an official holiday, but around these parts, we like to think of this stretch of November as “Eric Knorr Week.” As InfoWorld’s Executive Editor at Large, Knorr spearheads our editorial coverage of SOA (service-oriented architecture). For the next several days, that makes him one overextended guy.

The Knorr-a-palooza kicks off with “SOA: Under Construction,” an article he wrote with Galen Gruman. And it rages on to New York on Nov. 7-8, with our two-day SOA Executive Forum, for which Knorr is the content chair.

In many ways, the article is a perfect opening act for the conference, highlighting a veritable bestiary of SOA technology choices.

“We started out with the idea that we would create a typology of SOA implementations based on technology and architecture,” Knorr says. “In hindsight, that idea was doomed from the start. No matter what set of technologies a company rolls out for an SOA initiative, it encounters other technologies that need to be folded into the SOA mix.” In the end, Gruman and Knorr cooked up a useful array of snapshots outlining how various organizations are tackling their toughest technology decisions.

On the conference front, Knorr has been even busier. That’s because he’s personally responsible for devising the conference agenda, nailing down the schedule, and most important, lining up the keynoters, speakers, and panelists. Given that the key to a strong event is people — real-live practitioners willing to discuss their experiences and bare their scars — Knorr’s days have morphed into an ongoing ping-pong game of e-mail interrupted by endless sessions of phone tag.

The trick, according to Knorr, is finding technologists willing to run the gauntlet of their own corporate communications departments in order to share the ins and outs of what they’ve done. “Vendors are easy,” Knorr notes. “They want to speak to our audience for obvious reasons. And, don’t get me wrong, they frequently offer great insights, as long as they leave their marketing pitches at the door.” But Knorr prefers to spend his time “searching for customers who have interesting, instructive stories to tell,” which takes persistence.

“This is InfoWorld’s seventh SOA Executive Forum, so I’ve had a few years’ worth of digging,” Knorr says. “There are speakers slated for this week’s event that I originally contacted for the May 2006 Forum, and one who I have been working on since the November 2005 event.”

Still, Knorr isn’t resting on his laurels. Right up until conference day, he’ll be squeezing in new case studies and adjusting the mix of panels to ensure a solid event packed with applicable advice on all the hottest SOA topics.

Besides, he’s got a few phone calls to make for our May 2007 SOA show.