What does the Conference have to do with 6.1 development priorities?

Well, although we have been (and will continue) tinkering with various new features in the 6.1 development track, given that most of these have somehow managed to worm their way into the 6.0 release, it is likely that the really big decisions will be discussed and decided on at the Conference this October 3-7 in San Diego.

A-Shell is at a kind of crossroads. The two really big, must-have features of the last decade (based on the feedback we received at prior conferences) - GUI and SQL - have essentially been accomplished in 6.0. Obviously, enhancements can (and probably will) go on endlessly, but those enhancements are not likely to have a major impact on the trajectory of anyone's business plan. What we're looking for now are some developments that will have that kind of impact.

For better or worse, the rapid pace of change in the techno-sphere presents us with a lot more than just a couple of potential projects to choose between. And the increasing pressures of the business world have increased the stakes, making it that much more difficult and critical to make optimum choices now. Many of the developers I talk to don't feel like they can just keep cruising along on the same path and business model with the same tools for many more years, but they aren't sure just what they need or should do.

History had consistently shown that most innovations arise in situations where there are a lot of interactions (from big cities to the watering hole), so let's:

a) make our plans to interact in San Diego this October, and

b) in the meantime, use this forum to put out some ideas, brainstorm, etc.

There isn't time between now and October for any major developments to be completed, and as you all know, we don't use the Conference as a venue to unveil shiny new products we've been secretly working on. But what we do have time to do is preliminary investigation and development of some of the more promising ideas, so that at the Conference we have more than just vague hypotheticals to discuss.

Here's a short list of features / topics / issues / technologies to get you started thinking...

- Mobile devices (tablets, phones)

- Cloud computing

- Web enabling your app. (From the client side with a specialized browser control, e.g. WebKit? Or the server side - Apache/RUN handler?)

- Accessing Web Services

- Making your app available as a Web Service

- XML

- Windows 8/Metro

- Improved/portable GUI framework. Qt?

- Improved interoperability

- Language improvements. Associative Arrays?

- Development environment improvements - editor, generator, layout tool, version tracking, etc.

(Hopefully some food for thought there. I'm off now in search of food for the stomach.)

a lovely list, what choices... Now to decide what's most practical and and useful for the future. crystal ball anyone? :rolleyes:

Ditto to great ideas, most of which are items we have interest in.

Perhaps an idea would be leaving 6.0 for deployment and 6.x for improvements to the base 6.0 version and move go all the way to Ashell 7.0 major r&d and 8.0 release

This would give Jack some room for "radical" changes and improvements. But of course with the current lame duck session perhaps Jack should go on sabbatical and start contemplating the next major release and brand new widget