I’ve Been Made an Oracle Ace.

I tried to come up with a witty title but after only first day at the UKOUG conference, OakTable Sunday, my brain is already a little fried…

So yes, last Friday evening I received an email from Oracle Corp informing me I had been nominated for and been accepted as an Oracle Ace. I’d just accidentally blown away some of my slides for a presentation I’m giving this week and I was a bit weary of the whole community thing, so it gave me a real lift. It would have given me a lift anyway, but the timing seemed very nice – it re-invigorated me and it also meant that I could now mention my Ace-dom at conference. Endlessly. I never won prizes at school so this sort of thing goes to my head. Sorry.

Of course, my wife keeps my feet on the ground. I wandered over to the kitchen to tell her…
“Hey, Sue, I’ve just been made an Oracle Ace!”
“That’s nice dear – empty the cat’s litter tray while you are there, it stinks”.
*sigh*

It means a lot to me to be an Oracle Ace. I’m not going to pretend to be all unconcerned over it or say “oh no, not me, I am not worthy of that” like I did {and still do} over being a member of the OakTable. In the last 10 or 12 years I’ve done a lot for Oracle Corp (some of which is public, some of which was working with Oracle on testing things and talking to other Oracle customers about getting the most out of the technology) and also with the UK oracle community so I kind of feel the Acedom is an earned reward for that. But I am also very grateful for it, it is still a relatively rare accolade and Oracle have to feel that you are benefiting the wider community to bestow the award on you.

Being an Ace has already had some impact on me. I met my friend Neil Chandler at the conference, he is the person who nominated me (Oracle tell you who nominated you). “Hey, Neil, due to you I’ve been made an Oracle Ace! Thank you very much!”. “Great Martin, well deserved – so let’s have beers tonight and you can thank me properly”. “Errrr, I’ve been invited to an Ace meal this evening….”. “Well get you! Only just an Ace and too good for us commoners huh? You’ve changed, You’ve really changed….”

The Ace meal was good and much appreciated but I ate too much spicy stuff and boy I’ve got bad indigestion {and more unpleasant symptoms} now.

So it seems, based on evidence so far, Being an Ace loses you friends and makes you feel unwell. This is not what I was expecting….

🙂

{It’s OK, Neil and I had beers before the meal and he forgave me in the end – on the condition I provide him with more beer soon}