I was inducted into the Oracle ACE Program back in 2021, and honestly, it has been one of the most rewarding chapters of my career. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to connect directly with Oracle teams, work with passionate community members, and be part of projects that pushed me to learn, share, and grow.

Last year at Vegas, Oracle CloudWorld 2024, I met so many of these like-minded Oracle professionals in person. It was incredible. The hallway conversations, the deep-dive technical sessions, the after-hours chats over coffee — those are moments you simply can’t replicate online. The energy of being surrounded by people who live and breathe Oracle technology was something else entirely.

Sadly, I’ll be missing Oracle CloudWorld this year because of other travel commitments 😦 It’s a bit of a heartbreaker, but it also makes me appreciate just how special these opportunities are when you do get them.

That said, my journey as an Oracle ACE has been about far more than conferences. From early access to technology, to direct collaboration with Oracle’s product teams, to the friendships formed with other ACEs — the benefits go well beyond the badge on my LinkedIn profile … I also have to give a huge shout-out to the Oracle ACE Program team – Jen Nicholson, Oana Bonu, and Cassandra Call — for the constant encouragement, guidance, and for keeping the ACE community so well-connected and engaged. Their support plays a massive role in making the program such a great experience.

So, you have probably seen someone proudly showing off that little red Oracle ACE badge on their LinkedIn profile.
It looks cool, but what does it actually mean? Is it just a bragging sticker or is there something real behind it?

It turns out it is a whole lot more than a badge.
It feels like joining an invite-only club where the currency is knowledge, the meetings happen in Slack channels, and the secret handshake is swapping tuning tips over coffee at a conference.

One of my favorite perks is the Beta Program eligibility. This is where you get to play with Oracle’s new features before the rest of the world even knows they exist. Imagine Oracle telling you, “Here is a new 23ai feature, go ahead and test it, break it, tell us what you think.” You run your tests, push it to the limit, maybe even crash it completely in your lab and then send feedback straight to the people building it. It is like being a database taste tester. Sometimes it is exciting, sometimes it is messy, and sometimes you discover something so odd you are half-expecting them to name the bug after you.

Then there are the five thousand dollars in Oracle Cloud credits. This is one of the most underrated perks. You basically get your own sandbox to build whatever you want. It could be Autonomous Databases, test clusters, proof-of-concepts, machine learning experiments, or even a fully populated database of every coffee type known to humankind just to test JSON search performance. You can go wild without worrying about the cost or your manager asking why the cloud bill suddenly tripled.

And of course, Oracle CloudWorld. As an ACE, you can get passes to attend. This is where it feels like Disneyland for Oracle professionals. You get hands-on labs, deep dives into technology you have never even heard of, and those hallway conversations that somehow end up teaching you more than any formal session. You meet engineers who wrote the features you use every day, swap ideas with other ACEs, and sometimes find yourself in late-night debates about why people still write SELECT * in production code.

Another important benefit is the direct connection to Oracle Product Management. It does not mean they will fix your SR in two minutes, but it does mean you can talk directly to the people who design and own the products. Got a question about hybrid partitioned tables or JSON indexing or Vector Search/Indexing or …. ? You can skip the long escalation chain and ask the folks who built it. It is like having a hotline for database issues, except your contact is probably in a polo shirt and speaks PL/SQL.

There is also the social media boost. If you are blogging, making YouTube tutorials, or speaking at events, Oracle helps amplify your work. They will share your content, feature it in newsletters, and suddenly your small weekend blog post is getting attention from DBAs all over the world. You wake up to dozens of comments and connection requests from people who just read your take on optimizer statistics.

Now, I would be lying if I did not mention the swag. Hoodies, jackets, mugs, backpacks. And not the cheap conference giveaway kind. This is the sort of gear that makes colleagues raise an eyebrow and ask, “Where did you get that?” The ACE hoodie is an instant conversation starter at events. I have met people simply because they spotted it from across the room and came over to talk.

If you speak at conferences, there is also travel support. This can be a game changer, especially for events far from home. If you have ever wanted to present to a large audience but travel costs made you think twice, this can tip the balance and make it possible.

The biggest thing for me though is the community. You are surrounded by people who love this stuff as much as you do. People who understand why you are excited about a new optimizer hint. People who send you screenshots of strange execution plans just for fun. People who will happily spend part of their evening helping you troubleshoot a tricky replication setup because they have been there before. It is not just networking. It is friendship, mentorship, and constant learning all rolled into one.

Being an Oracle ACE comes with many perks such as early access to features, cloud credits, event passes, direct connections to product management, social media amplification, great swag, and travel support. The real magic is in the access, the learning, and the people you meet along the way.

If you enjoy sharing your knowledge, writing, presenting, or helping other Oracle users, keep doing it. One day that email saying “Congratulations, you are an Oracle ACE” might land in your inbox. That is when the real adventure starts.

Hope It Helped!
Prashant Dixit
Database Architect @RENAPS
Reach us at : https://renaps.com/