Oracle ACE Director Award 2022 March 8, 2023
Posted by Richard Foote in Oracle ACE Director, Richard's Musings.add a comment
I received a very nice surprise in the mail today, my Oracle ACE Director Award for 2022.
A big thank you to Jen and the whole team at Oracle who support all the Oracle ACE folks so well.
Hopefully, I’ll have the opportunity to present at an Oracle conference or two sometime in the near future… 🙂
Monterey and ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 Review June 30, 2009
Posted by Richard Foote in Kaleidoscope, Oracle ACE Director, Richard's Musings, Travel.9 comments
I’ve just recently returned from a really enjoyable trip to the USA to attend an Oracle ACE Director briefing at Redwood Shores and the ODTUG Kaleidoscope Conference in Monterey, CA.
During the week, I had the opportunity to finally meet some of the other Oracle ACE Directors such as Tim Hall, Mark Rittman, Lucus Jellema, Lonneke Dikmans, Mike van Alst, Husnu Sensoy, Debra Lilley and Harshad Oak to name but a few. I also had a great time hanging out with fellow Aussies Chris Muir and Marcel Kratochvil, sharing many a beer and bottle of red wine. A highlight was sitting outside one balmy evening, drinking one of Marcel’s expensive reds with Chris and Tim Hall, whist discussing the bizzare topic of body hair !! During the week, it was announced Chris had been awarded the Oracle ACE Director of the Year, a much deserved honour and Marcel got the opportunity to spread his dislike of having Foreign Keys in the database to anyone who would (and would not) listen.
I also got to meet the infamous Stanley as well. Life can be strange at times …
The ACE Director briefing was a very long day. I can’t say too much until tomorrow’s big Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Global Launch …
How many Oracle ACE Directors do you recognise (and can you spot me) 😉
The ODTUG Kaleidoscope Conference was excellent, a really well run event, held in the lovely surroundings of the Hyatt Hotel complex in beautiful Monterey, California. As usual with these types of events, the quality of the presentations varied considerably. Some of the highlights included an excellent presentation by Bryn Llewellyn on “Doing SQL from PL/SQL: Best and Worst Practices” and some really interesting presentations by Toons Koppelaars on the importance of “Fat Databases: A layered Approach” and on “Semantic Query Optimization”. Lowlights included a truly awful, error riddled presentation by Burleson on so-called Oracle 11g SQL Tuning Secrets. I was warned beforehand, I should have known better and listened …
Also had time to explore Monterey and check out some of its attractions. It’s a really scenic part of the world and it was great to escape the Canberra winter for a couple of weeks. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a must visit, one of the most impressive I’ve ever visited and I’ve seen quite a few around the world. The Kelp Forest display with its school of Sardines was just superb as were the jelly fish tanks.
Fisherman’s Wharf was worth checking out with it’s old wooden buildings as was Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck. However, probably the highlight for me was the Whale watching cruise where I along with Chris, Marcel and Debra Lilley were all lucky enough to see two Humpback Whales. What an incredible experience, although I almost (but not quite) nearly saw my breakfast again in the choppy conditions. The smell of the Humpback whale’s plume (something akin to a mixture of rotting broccoli and rotting fish) had me gagging again but I managed to just hang on. If you ever get the chance, do it, but pick a mild calm day if possible.
Finally, I also had the very great pleasure in meeting members of the hard working OTN team responsible for administrating the Oracle ACE program (Justin Kestelyn : follow link for photos, Todd Trichler, Vikki Lira and Lillian Buziak). Thanks guys for all your wonderful work and support in organising such a wonderful event for all the Oracle ACEes.
Back to the CBO and indexes in the next few days.
Introducing The Latest Oracle ACE Director (Aces High) October 10, 2008
Posted by Richard Foote in Oracle ACE Director.15 comments
I’ve just found out over the past couple days that a nomination for me to be made an Oracle ACE Director has been accepted by Oracle Corporation. It’s always pleasing to have your efforts acknowledged and appreciated by the Oracle community and so it’s really nice to be recognised in this manner by Oracle.
The Oracle ACE Program was setup a couple of years ago to publicly recognise and I guess reward and encourage people to share their technical knowledge and skills with the wider Oracle community. Anyone can be nominated to be an Oracle ACE and a committee review and accept nominations based on the candidate’s credentials. An Oracle ACE Director is someone who is not only recognised for past efforts and achievements but is also willing to commit themselves to ongoing participation and involvement in assisting the Oracle community.
For me the most exciting aspect of being an Oracle ACE Director is that it will hopefully open up opportunities to attend and participate in more events and conferences both at home and overseas. Australia is a difficult place from and to which to travel and this will hopefully enable me to “spread my wisdom” to more unsuspecting souls and to both meet and learn from more people. For example, Oracle Open World next year is now a distinct probability.
I would like to thank Daniel Morgan who nominated me and also my fellow Australian Oracle ACE Directors Marcel Kratochvil and Chris Muir who have both been really supportive in my appointment. Thanks guys.
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