Tag: ace

This morning I received and email detailing the merger of the ACE program with the Fusion Middleware Regional Director scheme. It’s a pity this mail didn’t come a couple of days earlier, then my “toys out of the pram” post yesterday wouldn’t have happened. I’m sure over the coming weeks the people I consider the stars of the Oracle world will be recognized as they should be.

Cheers

Tim…

Eddie wrote about the New Oracle ACE and Website, which was news to me, so I thought I’d take a look. The new category of “Oracle ACE Director” supposedly signifies “a higher level of expectation in terms of community activity”.

I must admit to feeling there were definite tiers in the ACE program. I personally consider certain individuals to be on a different level to the rest of us mortals, so the introduction of an ACE++ seemed like a good idea.

When I looked at the list of people who are ACE Directors the cynic in me came out in full force and here’s why:

1. Every ACE Director has expertise in “Oracle Fusion Middleware”. There is not a single person listed as an ACE Director from a Database Management or Development background. So knowledge of the database, the product that made Oracle great, is not worthy of any note.
2. The majority of ACE Directors are newly assigned ACEs, with a few notable exceptions. So all the people who were previously deemed worthy of ACE-dom are not actually as worthy as the new kids on the block.
3. In my opinion, some people stand head and shoulders above the other people in the list of ACEs. When I look through the list, none of the real stars of the Oracle community are listed as ACE Directors. It seems people like Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis and Steven Feuerstein (to mention just three) don’t currently qualify as having “a higher level of expectation in terms of community activity”. Are you sure?

I’m sure that some of these points will be rectified in the coming weeks, and I don’t want to put other people and their achievements down, but for the moment, this whole re-jig of the Oracle ACE program doesn’t look right to me.

Cheers

Tim…

UPDATE: I subsequently read the top “Oracle ACE News”story, which says,

“The Oracle ACE and Oracle Fusion Middleware Regional Director programs have merged, with the latter now being known as “Oracle ACE Directors.” Furthermore, Oracle Database experts (on management and app development) are now eligible to serve as Oracle ACE Directors as well.”

That explains a lot of my current gripes. Hopefully, the rest will be ironed out soon.