What will come of the web and particularly Joomla! in 2010? I'm not going to make predictions, because others already have.  I hope that a lot of things will happen in the coming year, but here are a few that I believe need to happen.

Joomla! 1.6 needs to be released

This is a pretty certain event in the near future. At the moment, no date is set for a release. We saw two alpha releases for testing purposes, but its been about three months since then. Its no small task to get it out, but seems that the process was filled with feature creep (meaning people kept adding features after the deadline). 1.6 will push us forward, but the sooner its out and stable, the better for the project.

Joomla! release cycles need to shorten

This is a planned event according to the Joomla! mailing list, but its such a necessary thing I really hope is carried through. Moving forward regularly with smaller feature upgrades at a faster rate has several effects, but not all of them are positive. It forces developers to regularly update their extensions rather than every few years. It might also turn some developers away if they aren't able to keep up with a faster development cycle, but I would bet that its a good thing since regularly updated extensions tend to be better designed. It may cause more doubt for users as to which version is best, for example if they create a website on 1.6 and 1.7 comes out 6 months later is it necessary to upgrade? There are many more issues that can arise, but the project would be better off moving forward regularly.

Joomla! needs more developer resources

The first ever developer conference took place in early December 2009. Joomla! has a large community of developers from across the world. Having more conferences or simply just more frequent communication using a blog or webcast will become vital to keeping up with more frequent releases. The Joomla! docs have grown and are better, but if 1.6 is coming out soon there is a lot to do for that. A planned effort needs to be arranged to get as much out there before 1.6 arrives. A positive step may be the planned community section of the www.joomla.org, but until its done I can't comment much.

Joomla! Leadership, and the community need to pull together

This is the most vital in my opinion, and I'd rather not delve into specifics because there are so many angles to this. However, you just need to be around the Joomla! community for a while to know that not everyone is happy with the way things are going (in community or leadership). While I don't want to dig into the dynamics, I think its obvious to both sides that there is more hostility than we want. There needs to be some kind of open dialogue that gets these issues out, and then practical solutions arise from them. There have already been attempts to do this, and yet its still an issue. Basically my thoughts are this: if Joomla! is your project, then you should care 100% about anyone else who calls it their project.

Looking forward to 2010

I hope that 2010 brings as much excitement and energy to the Joomla! project as any year since its inception. However there are some major tasks here, and others that I haven't mentioned. If you do anything with Joomla!, seriously consider how you can give back to the community.

Do you have any other thoughts on what needs to happen for Joomla! in 2010?