Robert Cain recently blogged about a new SOA user group that is getting starting in the Birmingham, AL area: The SOA Society.  This should be an excellent user group, and I consider it to be a testament to the fact that Birmingham has become quite a technological hotspot.  Although meetings will not begin until October, I would encourage you to send Robert an email to let him know that you are interested.  The task of organizing and managing a user group is quite an ordeal.  It can be quite helpful to get ideas from others that are passionate about the related subject area early in the process.

I look forward to getting involved with this new group.  SOA is not just an industry buzzword.  It continues to gain traction as a valid approach to building loosely coupled systems, and I think it offers some tremendous benefit.  However, it is not a silver bullet either.  There is a lot to consider when it comes to SOA, and it can be a bit overwhelming for those that are new to it.  In part, the confusion is due to such a wide range of opinions on exactly what is SOA.  Furthermore, SOA covers quite a range of topics within itself.  For example, there is governance, registration, top down approach, middle out approach, bottom up approach, etc.  There are also a number of related subjects that often come up when discussing SOA: business process management (BPM), Software As A Service (SaaS), enterprise application integration (EAI), enterprise service bus (ESB), etc.  As you can see, it can quickly span an extremely wide range of topics.

This is where I think the user group has the opportunity to tremendously benefit the community by providing a forum to discuss these areas.  I eagerly await for the meetings to get started.