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Oracle Developer Community is breaking new ground...
Christina Brashear-Oracle
Unicorn Posts: 45 Employee
Hi all,
We've got some big news! The Oracle Developer Community group now has a brand new name: Oracle Groundbreakers. We’ve made this change because we want to recognize all of you in our developer community for your work, passion—and maybe most of all—for the cool stuff that you build!
You'll also notice in the next few days that we have a new banner to go along with the new name. It's a work in progress and we're committed to continuing to make changes that improve the site for our members. As always, we welcome your ideas and suggestions and look forward to hearing what you have to say .
Thanks for all the groundbreaking work you do, and for being a part of our community here!
-Christina
22
Answers
Too many marketing buzzwords - not digestible, even with chocolate.
Regards,
Zlatko
Oracle have several programs of recognition for contributions to the community. Oracle ACEs, Java Champions and Oracle Goundbreaker Ambassadors (formely knows as Oracle Developer Champion program).
Oracle Goundbreaker Ambassadors program is a form of recognition for modern developers for their contributions to the developer community. The Oracle ACE program recognizes Oracle technical product experts; the Java Champions program celebrates Java enthusiasts and their expertise.
Top contributors of the Oracle Community Portal make significant contributions to the Oracle community and they can be nominated to be part of one of this program that best fit with their expertise.
The nomination is not automatic, someone can do the nomination filling the nomination form.
Best regards.
Didn't we just rename this to "Oracle Developer Community" just a few months ago? This has all the hallmarks of someone in middle-management, with a background in marketing and too much time on their hands. Solutions in search of a problem. Is it too late to vote "NO"?
This reminds me of the on-going disruption at any major brand supermarket (aka "grocery store"). They spend big bucks studying the layout of the store and customer shopping patterns, then re-arranging the entire store layout to the 'ideal' plan to maximize sales. And no sooner is the re-arranging, remodeling finally completed and customers figure out where everything is again, than someone in corporate management decides this "ideal, optimized layout" is not really ideal or optimized after all. So the whole cycle (and expense) starts over again. And again. And again.
I wonder how much study, thought, expense went into renaming the site "Oracle Developer Community", now being thrown out in favor of "Oracle Groundbreakers Community"? What will it be next year? How about a real honest "Oracle Unpaid Support Community"?
To quote our English bard; "a name is just a name, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"; in other words you can call it what you want it is what we have hear that matters.
Can I humbly suggest that it would be better if you allowed your leaderboard members to have a single gold ticket suggestion to the developers of their respective products - i.e. to submit on an annual basis a mail that would go direct to the product development team with key suggestions for improvements.
May I also suggest that we again see parity between this group and MOS, the recognition of MOS seems to be considerably higher than this group as is reflected by points and recognition awards and the like.
Ewww! No offence but "Oracle Groundbreakers"? It sounds like we're a bunch of frackers. It doesn't lend itself to anything remotely connected to the field of software/database development/support.
I can see how it may be trying to make the community fit in with "TopLiners" in style, but to be honest, I never really understood what "TopLiners" was meant to represent as it also seemed to relate to certain products and have technical questions asked on it.
This is something that should have been put out to the community for voting on.
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it...
Seriously... white text on a yellow background.
Are people supposed to be able to read that easily.
When I did User Interface Design at Uni back in the days, picking your colour combinations was stressed as being a very important part of it all. White on Yellow ... I mean c'mon... wtf!
Poor branding, badly executed.
Branding
I am not normally very interested in branding and marketing, nor really qualified to comment on it, but as you are asking for opinions:
Technical Execution
The actual implementation of the banner image and navigation elements is amateurish at best, certainly not what would be expected from one of the biggest technology companies in existence.
The textual content of the banner ("Oracle Groundbreakers" and "Make, break, build") is rendered using images of the text. The result is poor quality, low resolution, and not accessible. This technique is very far from "groundbreaking", being a truly venerable (and obsolete) concept dating to 25 years ago. There has been no need to do this—even for reasons of backward compatibility—for about 10 years. The best option would be to include the branding information as HTML content within the page. If this is not possible (we are dealing with Jive after all) then CSS rules can be used to inject the text as anonymous replaced elements using the
contentproperty and styling it as required. If for some reason this cannot be achieved and a background image is the only option available, then all current browser have support for SVG backgrounds that render as scalable vector graphics and textAt a detailed level, text positioning within the banner is somewhat odd. The "Oracle", "Groundbreakers", and "Make, break, build" elements all sit at slightly different levels. This is only just perceptible, so it is unlikely to be intentional (particularly as there is no apparent reason for "Oracle" and "Groundbreakers" to be treated as separate elements). The "Oracle" text also appears to be slightly truncated or cropped at top and bottom, and could even be very slightly smaller than "Groundbreakers".
To preempt any criticism that these comments are not constructive, that is because I find nothing that is in any way positive in these changes. If Oracle is really serious about improving this site for its members, then start by listening to them. No one has ever asked to be called a groundbreaker. If you really want to engage developers and build a strong community, there is no need for bizarre branding. All you have to do is create a site that actually meets our needs by fixing fundamental issues when we report them, and implementing good ideas that attract significant community support.
Perhaps you can explain to me - as a non native speaker - what you mean with groundbreaker (my spellchecker doesn't recognize this word). I used my favourite translator but it doesn't know the word, only ground breaker or ground-breaker - a technical device (residual-current-operated circuit breaker). So this is now a site for electricians?
Even if I look up the adjective "groundbreaking" I wouldn't relate the translations with this community.
It isn't a good idea to break with conventions that work perfectly over the net like naming communities with boring names like forum or community.
A lot of words, of which I would like to echo; - "If Oracle is really serious about improving this site for its members, then start by listening to them."
As a customer I never felt like Oracle listened, until I wanted to buy something.
As a partner I never felt like Oracle listened.
As an employee I never felt like Oracle listened.
As a board leader I never felt like Oracle listened.
Even when deliberately joining feedback groups I am not convinced on the means used to gather opinion.
I genuinely worry that Oracle is losing market share to lesser technologies, because of its internal structures and its customer interface not actually serving the customers' needs.
The boards themselves have lost a lot of usage, and I really don't think it is down to "look and feel".
Hallo Marim
my favorite translator https://www.deepl.com/translate offers this:
Grundsteinlegung
Wegbereiter/in
Spatenstich
But the other way round wegbereiter show forerunners or pioneer.
still confused
Kay
My favourite from these is Spatenstich -> groundbreaking ceremony
So this means we are beginning from start each time?
Absolutely awful. Looks like something the intern has done in their last few days to fill a bit of time.
There's a lot of new paradigms in development, so groundbreaking refers to the start of a new development. In construction of major buildings or bridges, it is often accompanied by a ceremony.
From the database administrator point of view for enterprise apps, this is anathema. You do not want creative means of doing accounting, or any other well structured or regulated application. Beyond a certain amount of complexity, it takes time to evolve sensible and logical applications, especially with infrastructure evolution happening. So you wind up with people saying "you don't need DBA's any more" "creative destruction is good" "devops" "agile" and so on, which only can apply to a small proportion of actual implementations. As you add complexity, you exponentiate potential problems.
It's amazing anything works at all. As we see everyday, a lot of it doesn't. This may be acceptable in groundbreaking development, but not in actual implementation.
As others have noted, it makes for good marketing, which is not congruent with good practices. You do need to sell a story to get things done, but that should not be confused with what you actually need to do from a software engineering perspective.
All these new paradigms aren't new. They just demonstrate the inability to learn from the mistakes of the past.
So I understand that we (?) don't think "groundbreaking ceremony" is what is meant by the new nomenclature. This leaves this question unanswered.
Maybe the Zombie joke was more apt than we realise, the boards figures are dropping year by year (you might say the boards are dying?) and we continue coming, breaking ground with each morning and answering questions with the appearance of pseudo-life...
I have heard more than one OP express the opinion that he got better support here than through MOS and better advice than through his paid consultants, maybe that is something Oracle should be marketing?!
This. So much this. Support is becoming abysmal and there is zero control over what integrators do.
I get so much work picking up the pieces after major consultancies charging big ticket prices implement solutions I would be ashamed to put my name to.
MOS technicians with rare exception add very little value to just searching MOS.
The spaces except the Community Feedback are back to normal layout. Should we take this as a good sign?
That is what's hurting Oracle more in terms of market appreciation than any "missing feature" compared to competitors.
Amen.
'Gold' partners who implement OBIEE solutions that render reports in minutes when it should be seconds, thanks to poor understanding of basic rpd modelling.
Perhaps the partner statuses should be audited by Oracle?
The Java spaces are still in the new layout. However, it's this way long before the 'Groundbreaker' change.
Nobody complained when Oracle made the change. I usually not interested in the layout. I answer questions, regardless of the layout, as long as there are questions. The number of questions is dropping. IT might be connected to the changes here, but it may simply because there are not as many new 'customers' using the products we are working on here. I know this is one reason but not the only one, at least for some spaces.
I personally don't like the term 'Groundbreaker' as I don't connect any technical forum with it. Anyway much is already said about this change. I'm missing some official response here
At the moment I don't understand the concept of the 'spaces'. When Oracle switched to the 'new' Jive software and wanted to get all spaces under one umbrella we said 'OK, if it's for the greater good...' (please don't start this discussion all over again!). Now there are new forums under the name Oracle Cloud Customer Connect' (https://cloudcustomerconnect.oracle.com/resources/9553a4c68d/summary).
What are they for?
Why double some spaces (a couple of spaces here are moved over to the new site)?
There you start all over again!
The term 'Forum' is back.
New look and feel, still there is some sort of gamification. Is it still Jive?
So, now we have two umbrellas.
Timo
What we've seen from similar situations is the the big names get their best people in to win the tender and kick off the project, then it's all off-shored.
As for the name of this community - I would say anything with "Developer" etc is too narrow. Why not just cut the marketing BS and call it what it is - "Oracle Community Support Forums".
It's utterly confusing for people who aren't spending each day in these places.
Where to find what information?
Where to ask which question?
Is it all the same?
Is there a difference?
Is one more "official" than the other?
Which answer can I trust?
Who am I all of a sudden forced to double-post my question in many places, thus increasing effort and spreading out responses needlessly?
Don't get me started on the Cloud Connect forums! Clearly created to get the word "Cloud" into somewhere.
Stuff has been migrated over there that is still available on-premise, I tried logging in and couldn't because apparently "my account hadn't been migrated properly" - migrated?? Why should it be any different to the one I have here?? Then the admins wouldn't update it because I wasn't using my company email address on my main account. Eventually I got in, and it's another minefield of disparate resources.
Yes, so many who think you can make a good pie with cheap mince...
Oracle Openworld... they're all busy.
Poor branding, badly executed.
<snip>I was getting ready to post about this one myself, then saw your comment. My thought on seeing it was "well, Oracle met the first two: "make" and "break". "
+1 that image is so fuzzy and blurred it was probably made by running Photoshop CS2 at 1024x768 ;-)
Looks more like MS Paint to me.
Also Christina, I don't really build anything. I'm not a developer. My area of expertise is applications, hence I spend much of my time answering functional questions in spaces such as E-Business Suite. Thanks for de-recognizing me and the bunch of others in the same boat.
A particular sore point with me.
About every 9 to 21 months I get a call and/or email from someone introducing themselves as my new account rep (or whatever the current job title is) and asking for an on-site visit "just to introduce ourselves and get to know about your business and how you are using Oracle." I try to ignore the voice mails and emails, but eventually end up having to take an on-site meeting. Then when they get here it becomes blindingly obvious that all they really want to do is sell The Cloud. Every time, the interaction goes like this:
Oracle: "cloud, cloud, cloud"
Me: "I'm not interested in the Cloud."
Oracle: "cloud, cloud"
Me: "I have no interest in the cloud. There's no need to discuss that further. But I do have a question about an issue we are having with left-hand smoke shifters, and we're not getting anywhere with Support"
Oracle: "Sure. I'll check into that for you and get back".
<crickets>
The last time was especially notable. I told them there was no point in an on-site visit, but they insisted they were going to be in town anyway to see other customers, so I relented. The first thing I told them when we sat down in the conference room was that I had zero interest in The Cloud and there was no point in even discussing it. The Cloud is off the table. End of Discussion. Full Stop. There was a big long "pregnant pause" as the two reps looked at each other. You could almost see the cartoon "thought balloons", saying "what do we do now?" Eventually they tried to make small talk, asked a few questions about the nature of our business (did they not do any homework at all?), made some minor probes to try to lead to other sales. Finally I did bring up an open issue we were having with a license change, which they of course promised to check on. And of course we never heard from them again. Until a few months later when I got a voice mail asking if we had reconsidered about The Cloud.
The old proverb says: "The picture is worth a thousand words".
It seems that the marketing version (in the software industry) is like this: "Marketing slogan is worth a million lines of code".
Dear colleagues, software and hardware engineers, we are guilty, because we allow marketing "experts" to disparage our knowledge and our work.
Regards,
Zlatko
Substitute Exalytics for cloud and move the clock back a few years and my experience was exactly the same. They were really deflated when I had done my job so well with OBIEE that the kind of performance they were promising with Exalytics I had already achieved....
The salesmen must be told that empathy is achieved by pretending to listen to the problems, knowing all the while it is only a prelude to selling you 'X'. Rather like the kind of conversation you have with an evangelist who is just waiting to tell you 'god' is the answer...
Love your dog btw - what is he??
We respect all your opinions about our new name.
Our team is continuously working on bringing new programs .We’ve created programs to support people building database,cloud-native applications.
Talking about Recognition programs ,
Real World rewards has been stopped for a reason .We are working on bringing something which is valuable for our users contributions.But it does not mean we are not recognizing.We are doing it in other ways .
We have Ground breakers Ambassadors, Oracle ACE, Java Champions. Visit here for more information https://developer.oracle.com/ambassador
About Nothing new happening questions?
We are updating latest technology information in developer.oracle.com.We are conducting Oracle Code Online for the users who are not able to attend events in person .Code One events will have hands on lab,IOT workshops , latest database releases and much more.This evolution is powered by a diverse of population of developers,data engineers,system admins giving rise to a new name.
If you are talking about platform issues,
We appreciate your feedback about the navigation issues,Getting confused where to search issues.We have search bar where you can type the product type which shows the result for relevant issues thread/space.
Community gets updated on User’s feedback. We are taking forward your ideas and working on implementing it .We have implemented many ideas in past which shows we do LISTEN to users feedback.
Banner image issue,
We have given the feedback to development team to provide us a better banner which is crisp and clear .
Please be informed we are working on making the platform easily accessible for our users. We will update you soon.
Appreciate your patience and understanding.
Kris was an English Setter / Pointer mix. Very sweet nature. Lost him a couple of years ago and I still miss him.
Thats what I said "we are working on something which adds value to our users contribution"
With all other factors Community participation is also considered while nominations.It's a important fact for recognition.
I do understand the motive .I would love to know what you (our users) consider as a worthwhile recognition.
Personally, the only recognition I care about is when some other participant that I've grown to respect makes a positive comment about something I've written.
I very rarely look at my "ranking', and then only out of curiosity.
I ignore the emails about "earning a badge, claim your reward", etc.
Wow, sincerely very sorry if I rubbed lemon juice in that wound, I know people who miss their ex-dog more than their ex-spouse...
I would have guessed great dane from the head shape.
Sorry for your loss, as someone said on a tribute site to Charles M Schulz - thank you for sharing your dog with the world.
Hi,
on recognition we are providing free support to the wider Oracle community, how about you provide free training in leaderboard subjects (if you are on the leaderboard you get one online course in that subject to use at your discretion per year) so we always do it well, if it was online this would have minimal incremental cost to Oracle. Also, how about allowing us access, via a controlled interface, to the developers to feed in our ideas for the product in question, so we are also good ambassadors who are fully bought in to the development process.
Also, merge MOS and OTN (Call it what you will) and stop this two tier nonsense.
Customers still have the option to waste their time logging an SR via MOS....
No apology needed. I've had many dogs in my life and losing them is part of having them. Kris was my favorite.
But we digress .... if you'd like to discuss dogs, send me a friend request so we can take it off-line. I don't normally accept requests, but I'll make an exception.