This paper advocates an approach to web service design and interaction that is based on web services simultaneously participating in shared business events. In contrast to one-to-one method invocations, such events are broadcast in parallel to all web services that participate in it. Moreover, the transactional business events are distinguished from non-transactional attribute inspections. The paper first discusses the role of the business event concept as the cornerstone for a methodical analysis and design phase. Then, it is shown how the event broadcasting paradigm can be implemented by means of SOAP messaging.