As per tradition, the Drupal community is inviting everyone to make their predictions for the Drupal year ahead, while simultaneously taking a look back at last year's predictions.  It seems that often these predictions are more a reflection of what the author really thinks should happen more than what will, and this is probably true for me here.  Here are a few of my own candid hopes:

1. The Drupal Association actually launches, and there is much interest from larger corporations in joining a steering committee to ensure that Drupal's direction is worth their investment and in line with industry goals and needs.  At least one large company will devote human resources to actually contributing to Drupal core.  There will be much objection to a perceived bureaucracy, but the year will end with Drupal in no danger of losing its bottom up tact and a community with an evolved strategic sense.
   
   
2. As social networking matures and becomes more collaborative in nature, a group of people will become vocal in pushing for the inclusion of core features that really enable Drupal as the premier distributed collaboration platform .  Things like a messaging system, calendaring, and (finally) good collaborative authoring will become prevalent demands from a community more aware of where the industry is ultimately going.  Even though Drupal has no roadmap, this will become the unspoken direction and mantra for a majority of key players.
   
   
3. With the inclusion of jQuery in 5.0, Drupal will see a theme and/or install profile that really takes advantage of Ajax towards a streamlined user experience, very similar to the Gmail experience.  Drupal will play catch up with some other fundamental Ajax uses such as drag and drop blocks and auto-saving of nodes in core.  I think we'll see some real progress with presence awareness in Drupal, with a better instant messaging solution and possible inclusion of standards like Jabber.
   
   
4. As the adoption of online video continues to accelerate, Drupal will see a push for better handling of uploads and the management of more intensive content types.  Just as an image manipulation library is referred to in Drupal currently, we'll see talk and possible inclusion of video manipulation (e.g. convert to FLV).  We'll see improvements in audio handling and CCK and Views will evolve to handle the creation and display of these special content types.
   
   
5. A new, major, highly publicized product in the social networking space will be launched, built on our beloved Drupal.  It will utilize pro development techniques and really demonstrate the awesome power of Drupal which few seldom utilize.
   

Overall, with all signs pointing to a technology industry that will continue to boom throughout 2007, and a greater industry awareness of where we should take all this, Drupal will receive far greater attention and contributions.

With best wishes to Drupal and its community for a successful 2007.