I'm composing this post from an atypical location (for me, at least) — 28 floors above the streets of New York City. I'm the first of a small group of active Subversion committers to arrive here in the Big Apple ahead of a two-and-a-half day conference aimed at answering a pair of important questions: "Where is Subversion going? And how is it going to get there?"

My colleagues and I will step backwards a bit from our typical day-to-day development of this ever-popular version control system and take fresh look at the project as a whole. We'll be examining feedback freshly solicited from users in some of Subversion's largest known corporate installations; merging that feedback with what we've learned over the years from other Subversion users; making an honest evaluation of Subversion as it sits in the overall version control and SCM landscape; and then charting a proposed course for future Subversion development. What features will it have? When will it have them? How do we balance the benefits of those features with the costs of development, ongoing maintenance, version compatibility promises, etc.? Is it time to break ground on Subversion 2.0? How can we continue to attract new development talent and creative energy to our development community? How can Subversion's corporate sponsors work in concert for the good of the larger Subversion ecosystem? These are all questions we'll be entertaining.

Our conference is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning (Wednesday, March 24). We'll meet all day Wednesday and Thursday, and then spend Friday crafting the proposal we'll place before the rest of the Subversion development community. But you needn't wait for the final drafts to roll out, as I'll be blogging daily with my take on the proceedings. So if you haven't subscribed to this blog's feed, do so now!

Update 3/24: Day 1 summary
Update 3/25: Day 2 summary
Update 3/26: Day 3 (final) summary