We think of an event as denoting the occurrence or happening of a particular fact. For example, The President arrived in Australia, or The stock market closed 100 points up today, or The truck arrived at the distribution center are all examples of events. The fundamental idea seems quite simple—an event is a point in time when something significant happens. An event represents some kind of transition—moving the world from one state to a quite different state. This is the nature of events—history is transformed from a smooth line to a set of joined-up dots—where each dot represents a significant event.
In the domain of business networks, we can see events everywhere. Participants initiating transactions are events. Assets undergoing a series of transformations are events. Likewise, assets being exchanged between participants are events. An asset's life cycle is nothing but a series of events! We now see participants joining and leaving the business network as events. Think about transaction history, we see it as a set of events about participants and assets. Goodness, once we open our eyes, events really are everywhere! If we're not careful, were going to get overwhelmed by these little space invaders!