There are two reasons why I have stopped trying to defend MEST after this week's many excellent discussions and great comments in the blogosphere (many thanks to all):

1. Until we have something on paper, as Chris suggested (thanks for the offer btw to give feedback; we'll take up on it soon :-), the discussion will always focus on ProcessMessage and whether MEST is or is not saying anything new. I think that there is no comparison between MEST and pub/sub because they are not dealing with the same thing. I understand that the difference is only in my head at the moment and until the ideas get articulated in a paper and peer-reviewed, MEST will not have a chance of being defended for what it is, no matter how many blog entries we write. I am going to focus on re-writing/expanding the rejected paper which will hopefully explain our ideas on how SOAs can be described in terms of architectural elements (data, connectors, components) and views. Hopefully in the process we'll be able to answer these excellent questions from Ted Neward as well since those are very similar to what we've been asking ourselves (with some more).
2. Lots of different things are happening in parallel and there is not a lot of time to blog about stuff. Apart from our work in the Web Services description area (really really soon now :-), I am busy writing an architecture paper on Internet-scale computing, leading a fantastic team of people responsible with deploying one of the largest Condor-based campus infrastructures (we hope to go up to 10,000 workstations), working with another great team on a service-oriented approach to dynamic service deployment and provisioning, keeping an eye on the architecture of GOLD, reviews for a journal and a workshop, and many many more. On top of all of that, after two excellent years in Newcastle, working with a great boss, an excellent team of people, and in a great environment, I've decided to move on and look for my next big career challenge so I am busy putting the necessary documents together and looking around for interesting and exciting positions. I will post about this again when/if I have more specific information (I so like it here that I may still decide to stay 🙂