As I wrap up my technology-advocacy-related travels for 2022 and plan out my (hopeful!) schedule for 2023, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the successful rebirth of the Oracle ACE Program this past summer. The new team that Jennifer Nicholson, our program’s key liaison, has put together in just a a few months has been astounding, and that achievement calls for some well-deserved acknowledgment.
First, A Bit of [Personal] History
I’ve been part of the ACE Program since early 2014. I believe I’m one of the very last ACE Directors to have been awarded that status without progression through the ranks of ACE Associate and ACE Pro (as we call those contribution levels today). In retrospect, that change was certainly warranted.
I still remember how excited I was at my first-ever ACE dinner at the Venetian that year, and how another ACE Director almost immediately asked to participate in the first-ever OTN Middle East tour that summer.
Wow, I remember thinking, I’m going to places I’ve never been before – Tunisia! Saudi Arabia! Dubai! – and best of all, I get a chance to speak to a diverse crowd of people from a completely different culture. I was hooked.
6 Continents. Still Counting.
Over the last few years I got a chance to visit Tokyo, Japan during an APAC Tour and most of South America – Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil – during LAOUC tours.
Of course, there were shorter trips “across the pond” to EMEA: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark (Nordic OTN) as well as UKOUG (Liverpool, UK), DOAG (Nuremburg, DE), POUG (Poland), and ILOUG (Israel).
And I kept up my speaking schedule within North America too, at a plethora of regional conferences: UTOUG, COUG/MOUG, RMOUG, BCOUG, NYOUG, NEOOUG, COLLABORATE, and Kscope.
Challenging? Heck, yeah!
I had to develop new presentations every year, learn Oracle Cloud and Autonomous Database, and even delve back into application development – APEX, Machine Learning & Analytics, JSON, even edge computing.
The key thing here: I couldn’t have done any of this without the constant support from the ACE Program and the community of other ACEs. They uplifted me, encouraged me, helped me understand how important it was to connect with Product Managers at Oracle.
Most of all, gave me the opportunity to provide learning opportunities for folks coming to sessions to learn, connect, kibbutz, and maybe even be entertained though my lame attempts at humor.
And then, suddenly without warning, everything changed.
Hey, Who Turned the Lights Off?
In the spring of 2021, the ACE Program suddenly … changed. I’m not sure what the ultimate cause was, but I suspect a major shift in how the program was viewed within Oracle. And this isn’t that uncommon in huge organizations: A new player comes to the fore, different ideas are proposed, budget constraints shift suddenly, those in favor are no longer favored.
But suddenly, as if someone had reached into the breaker box and pulled the main switch down to OFF, the direction and future of the program was in a constant state of flux, and its very reason for existence seemed to be called into question.
Needless to say, this was extremely disturbing to our community of ACEs. We’re egotistical, opinionated, driven, and as easy to herd towards a goal as a cargo container full of angry wet cats.
That’s what makes us great advocates for Oracle tech, by the way: We’re not afraid to tell a PM that their product absolutely sucks, or that their use case documentation is non-sensible, or that they’re not understanding what their customers out in the field really want – right now! – and why that demand is actually important and reasonable.
We’re sort of like secret shoppers: We’re completely happy to tell you what your customer is really nervous to say to your face. Acknowledge us!
Wait … What Just Happened?
For whatever reason, that acknowledgment suddenly disappeared, replaced by an aggressive marketing orientation towards capturing the hearts and minds of thousands of younger developers – the kind of folks I hung with at Java One at OCW2022 while demonstrating and explaining the Raspberry Pi Supercluster.
To be clear, I’m not pointing fingers here: We desperately need to attract the younger folks to the fact that Oracle’s converged database philosophy makes sense in today’s world, and you don’t necessarily need to download and install yet another open source database to do what you can already do within Oracle 19c.
What frustrated us? We ACEs already knew this – in fact, many of us were already telling that story as part of our messaging.
ACE Program: Reborn!
Thankfully in mid-2022, the ACE Program was moved under the aegis of the Oracle Database team. This couldn’t have happened without Jenny Tsai-Smith, Gerald Venzl, and other key PMs at Oracle realizing there was still huge potential bottled up with our ACE community.
With the reopening of the economy post-COVID, we could again bring significant value to the new messaging around Oracle 23c. Jen Nicholson’s new team includes two deeply motivated, special people – Oana-Aurelia Bonu and Sapna Banga – whom I’ve gotten a chance to know better through recent OUG events.
Developer-Forward Orientation
I’m absolutely in favor of the new developer-forward orientation we’ve all seen as of OCW 2022. We’re focusing on making it even easier for DevOps folks to use the power of the database and features already included within it – spatial, graph, machine learning, analytics, and non-standard data formats like JSON and HIVE, no matter where the data lives.
Developers can build out new applications with tools like APEX and Visual Builder at light speed, and take advantage of microservice architectures within OCI.
Our ACE dinner at OCW 2022 celebrated the return of our program. It was serendipitous to gather in the very same restaurant I met many of my now-venerable colleagues back in 2014, and even more exciting to have EVPs Juan Loiza make a brief speech and share dinner with us, along with so many key Oracle PMs I’d not seen since before COVID times.
But that’s not where this story ends.
This Baby Still Needs Feeding
Even though our program has been reborn, it’s still an infant in some ways: We have a new team of players within Oracle helping us maintain it, but without us ACEs letting Oracle know how much we appreciate that support, there’s always the chance it could become malnourished again, suffer sickness, and slowly fade away.
So, my fellow Oracle ACEs, as you sit down for family get-togethers during this season of light and joy, please take the time to send a message back to the ACE Program’s leadership (and even better, to the PMs and powers that be at EVP level and above, if you have that reach!) to let them know just how much we appreciate the effort and funding that went into restoring our beloved tech advocacy program.
Remember: It takes a lot of energy and devotion to herd us angry wet cats!
