At the back-end of 2022, I found out the news that my nomination to the Oracle ACE programme was accepted. As things were pretty busy, I didn’t get around to making a fan-fare about it on my blog here, but of course, you may have seen the posts on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Receiving my Oracle ACE Associate award was actually a big surprise. I had arranged to meet Abi Giles-Haigh for dinner the night before UKOUG’s flagship conference (Breakthrough22) in Birmingham. Despite only making the train at London Euston with 30 seconds to spare, I somehow made it (… kinda …) on time to dinner. I’m really glad I did as I was actually a surprise guest at the Oracle ACE dinner, where I was presented with the award along with Ambili & Rishin.

What is the Oracle ACE Programme?

The Oracle ACE programme is recognizes individuals who are experts in their field for contributing to the Oracle community. The idea is that Oracle ACEs consistently share their knowledge with the community through many platforms, such as:

• Attending and presenting at conferences
• Writing blog posts
• Writing Articles
• Writing Books
• Sharing knowledge on social media
• Answering questions in community forums
• Volunteering for user groups or organizing conferences and meetups
• … and many more

The Oracle ACE programme is not a “certification” per say, it is more about recognizing and promoting individuals who invest their time to support the community. There are 3 levels of Oracle ACE, all with varying eligibility requirements:

• Oracle ACE Associate: The entry level into the program for those who are either just getting started with their community contributions and aspire to contribute at higher levels or have been contributing periodically for a few years.
• Oracle ACE Pro: Established community contributors who have built a reputation in their area of expertise for at least three years and in greater depth than the Associate level.
• Oracle ACE Director: Community enthusiasts who not only share their knowledge (usually in extraordinary ways), but also want to increase their community advocacy and work more proactively with Oracle product development.

The programme works on a “points systems” to retain Oracle ACE status on a rolling year basis. Different categories of “community contribution” (e.g a presentation or a blog, etc) will provide varying weightings of points earned throughout the year and the weightings are aligned with the effort required to make the contribution. For example, if you are going to sit and write a technical book, you can expect to get significantly more points than if you write a technical blog post.

Generally, I would say that if you are already interested and actively involved in community contribution, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to reach the required points each year… and this really is the key point. This is a community for individuals that enjoy doing these things already.

The bottom line is that, it’s not for everyone, but it’s very rewarding if it’s your thing. If you want to hear more, why not watch this brand new video released by the awesome ACE Programme team where you will learn a bit more about the programme and the benefits of being an Oracle ACE:

To see the FAQs about the programme, go here: Oracle ACE Programme FAQs

How to become part of the Oracle ACE Programme?

If you feel like you are already ready to become an Oracle ACE, you can either nominate yourself or have an existing Oracle ACE nominate you to the programme. When you do this, you should expect to provide information about your contributions from the last 12 months.

Click here to go to the nomination page! – note that it will take 30-90 days for your nomination to be reviewed.

If becoming and Oracle ACE is something you aspire to do, but you don’t feel that you a quite there yet, why not contact and Oracle ACE and ask for them to mentor you – I too am open to mentoring prospective ACEs. You can find the Oracle ACE directory here:

Oracle ACE Directory

What do I need to provide on my nomination form?

Here are some screenshots of the information you should put into a nomination form

Any Caveats?

When is there ever not a caveat? 🙂

If you are an Oracle employee, a public sector employee or a government employee, unfortunately you are not eligible for nomination. In addition, only current ACE members in good standing who are employed by a different company than the candidate and Oracle employees can nominate for the ACE Director level.

6 Months in the Community

Since I have now been an Oracle ACE Associate for the past 6 months, I can truly say that it is such an enjoyable community to be part of full of knowledge and interesting discussion. All of the ACEs have access to a slack channel where we have direct access to some of the best Oracle brains around – what more could you want? 🙂

In the past 6 months we have had many product overview sessions covering a wide range of subjects including but not limited too:

• Oracle Fusion Analytics strategy & roadmap
• Multi-Cloud solutions
• Redwood User Experience
• Oracle Database 23c
• Insights with Oracle Graph
• Autonomous Database for Data Science & ML
• APEX
• … more

We have also had sessions from Tim Hall (Oracle Base) on writing articles/blogs/posts, Connor McDonald on creating video content and other very useful sessions including becoming and author of technical books.

What Next?

Personally, I look forward to a future “promotion” to Oracle ACE Pro and continuing to support and contribute to the community!