1.	No one is excited about SOAP because it gets them connectivity to my products. I wish it were otherwise, I think my products deserve that kind of recognition, but I'm a realist, I know that it's Microsoft that's the draw to SOAP.
2.	Because of that, I am wholly impotent to influence the direction of SOAP. Until a few weeks ago, when the number of implementations started exploding, that was my theory. But then something happened, I got inspired and put up a validator app, and then people started asking me questions about interop, and people asked me to organize an interop event for May, and I got confused, and thought this meant somehow that I had some say in the future of SOAP.
3.	Now I think that I've been asked to be Bert Parks at the Miss America pageant. A contest, rigged perhaps, with blushing runner-ups and here she is, Miss America, I would sing, as a beautiful young woman accepted a crown and a bouquet of roses, with the orchestra playing along and everyone in the audience beaming in delight.
4.	This is what I promised I would never do. If I ever get on a stage with Microsoft, it would mean something. I wouldn't stand up and say this is an Internet standard when it's nothing of the sort.