Tips wanted on avoiding a “TS Elliot” style SOA presentation experience.

Breaking with tradition, I will ask my question first then ramble on about comparatively nothing. Help requested for the former, tolerance for the unavoidable latter.

Anybody sweated through an SOA presentation to a policy-over-productivity government IT Governance body (or similar) and lived to tell about it? Tricks? Strategy?  

Would that I could simply talk them into submission, eh?

"If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive,
if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you."

Most people are unaware that The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is, in fact considered, by those in the know, to be the journal entry by the presenter of the first ever proposal for a Service Oriented Architecture to an I.T. governance body.

The fact that it is now considered "just a poem" and no one heard about SOA for another seventy years, is but a postscript-ive tribute to what the presenter clearly knew from the beginning—It's an uphill battle, destined to fail, and no one will care one way or another.

Still I, now faced with a similar such task, have discovered the brilliance it describes, of SOA and the struggle to both communicate the intent and meaning of same and the value of it to a municipality.

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo" 

And indeed there will be time to wonder. But yes, I dare. I dare to eat a peach. Had I hair behind to part, I would. I would. And politic, cautious, and meticulous, and always ridiculously obtuse. And I used to wear my trousers rolled until the girls on UK's What Not To Wear clued me in to the faux pax it could be (and was).

The trick, as I see it, is to clean the damn window-panes. And well before October, construct a clever analogy or three to try. Analogy the women-in-the-room are sure to understand. And while they'll comment on my thinning hair and how, in comparison to my torso, my arms and legs are thin, I think I have a better chance than others to disturb the universe.

So linger I shall,
and sip my tea and marmalade
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. 

But seriously. I shall not be Prince Hamlet either (nor was meant to be). Simple and practical, highest of all high levels. The lower I go, the less they will know. And as for my magic lantern, I shall not be using PowerPoint 2003 as the very policies I combat decree.

No, I shall completely let my greatness flicker in the L-C-D of my laptop running Keynote (custom template). Footman hold my coat. I shall not be afraid. And my journal entry? Maybe in the words of KMFDM,

Use the power, taste the bliss, harvest salvation.
Now is the time. Get on the right side, and you'll be Godlike.
Escape your old life of bondage and sin.
Raise your head from the ashes from the fire… 

And if I fail I will surely drown. Raging in the background, over and over, they will hear the cries—

They know what is what
But they don't know what is what
They just strut.

What the f*ck, indeed.

So. Anybody sweated through an SOA presentation to a policy-over-productivity government IT Governance body and lived to tell about it? Tricks? Strategy?