It's been a long strange trip for JavaOne. Last year, I wrote the conference's obituary, and after spending the week at the show, I can safely say that obituary was not written in haste. This year's JavaOne was a strange affair, laid out across three hotels and a blocked-off city street. The event's myriad talks and demonstrations were stretched out across a labyrinthine series of hallways and ballrooms, and many of the attendees were completely lost.

There were plenty of great talks at JavaOne, as always. And Oracle cleared the air about the future of the platform, a great step forward in their efforts to reassure the community about their intentions. But when you get right down to it, they did JavaOne a great injustice, overall. The conference was somewhat shwankier, with better chow and a more lush venue. But that didn't make up for the ridiculous lines for some talks, and difficulty of navigation, overall. Between riding buses all over town, finding hidden meeting rooms in the dozen hotels in which events occurred and the endless overcrowding at parties and off-conference venues, this year's JavaOne was a fairly tangled mess.

This was obviously not intentional on Oracle's part. I think they just bit off more than they could chew this time: integrating JavaOne with Oracle OpenWorld pushed San Francisco's conference infrastructure beyond its limits. This became evident to me when I saw one session line stretch across three floors of the Union Square Hilton, blocking every entrance to the other parts of the show.

JavaOne will live on, however. It will be taking place overseas, with China and Brazil coming up next, in December. That's where the action will really be taking place. Brazil, specifically, always sends a rather rowdy and patriotic contingent to JavaOne, one member of which hoots during keynotes in which Brazil is mentioned. This year, he hooted during Thomas Kurian's JavaOne keynote. It was an interesting moment.