MercuryNewt

A recent post to the Enterprise Architecture forum posed this question:

Originally Posted by laura

How to become an enterprise architect? – Some observations.
What does a technical architect do next? And what does a chief architect do next?

To which I responded:

Originally Posted by MercuryNewt

This answer may not be popular among some folks around here, but I'll put this out there as an opportunity for debate. To me you become an EA through exposure to a multitude of technologies, techniques, frameworks, patterns, etc. and through experience. How much experience or how many technologies is really quite open. Some have said that EA, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and it really depends upon the individual organization's definition of an EA. Some look for people with a technical background with a specific technology platform, such as Microsoft technologies. Others look for technical folks with experience in a particular industry such as health care. Still others look to the "jack of all trades" tech guy who knows enough about a lot of different technologies and knows where to find the answers to the questions he doesn't know. And then there are the tech savvy business analysts who fit the bill because they understand the different aspects of the business and can translate that to the technology. If you're looking for a particular direction, get to know as much as you can about system integration and enough about a multitude of popular business systems. With such knowledge you can get your foot in the door, learn new things, share your own ideas, and build your reputation into the role. But that's just my 2 cents...

But I'm curious to know what others think. What do you call an Enterprise Architect and what does one do to become one? Are they more technical than business? Are they more specialized or general? Do they have to possess a certain number of gray hairs or years on their resume? I welcome your thoughts and appreciate your opinion.