That's a good way of putting it, and I think he would actually agree with you on that. I was at his "Event driven architecture" talk at Goto Chicago where he talked about four patterns that can show up in something you might call event driven. He didn't presume to be inventing anything, just categorizing some patterns that have been recognized before, with the intent of clearing up some of the haziness/hype that occurs when someone says they have an event driven architecture.
