You don’t go to an analyst to learn about Zen, because Zen isn’t about theoretical learning. You go to someone who’s made Zen a way of life, because Zen is about everyday, personal practice.

And that is precisely what’s been missing from the service-oriented architecture discussion, according to Ron Schmelzer, managing partner at ZapThink: The voices of those who have learned by doing. The Zen, if you will, of SOA.

That’s why last year, ZapThink started its Practical SOA conference series. The series is simply a collection of ordinary IT people whose companies have or are building SOAs. This, in and of itself, makes it unusual in a conference world filled with vendor-specific events or programs where analysts talk mostly about best practices and theory.

While vendors do speak at some of the conferences, they’re restricted to discussing implementation — not giving a sales pitch, said Schmelzer.

In a recent interview with IT Business Edge, Schmelzer shared why he thought this is such a valuable approach:

“It’s mastering that weird Zen, the yin and yang of enterprise architecture; that is the secret that companies haven’t quite yet figured out. Our perspective is that you have to learn it from other enterprise architects. You can’t really read about it, or you can, but you can’t really understand enterprise architecture without doing it, because enterprise architecture is a way of being.”

This year’s conference series begins March 13, with a Practical SOA evening in Australia, followed by a Practical SOA conference in Newark, N.J., where the focus will be on finance, pharmaceutical firms, media, governance, quality and management. Practical SOA events are also planned for London in the UK and Las Vegas in the United States. You can find a complete listing online.

Read more at: IT Business Edge