Last year around New Year we had an interesting thread where I asked people to look back at 2003 and to share some predictions for 2004. Let's take a moment to look at these predictions, to reflect on 2004 and to make some predictions for 2005. What are the Drupal highlights of 2004 and what lies ahead for Druplicon in 2005?

Some of last year's predictions:

• When I asked what would happen with Deanspace in 2004 after the US presidential elections, Neil Drumm said that he didn't know: After DeanSpace I will probably keep using and working on Drupal in my spare time and continue college. A year later, Deanspace lives on as CivicSpace and Neil is a full-time employee and Drupal developer.
• Dries: At least one open source weblog package will try to profile itself on the 'hosted weblog services' market. By the end of 2004, hosting companies will be a key target audience for some projects. Well, Bryght is a Drupal hosted service.
• Kjartan: More and better themes of Drupal. With every release Drupal provides more control of the layout. Hopefully 2004 will be the year when we get more themes.
• Dries: I predict that by the end of 2004 we will see relatively more women using Drupal. At the end of 2003, 9.8% of the users on drupal.org were female. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, that number dropped to 8.9%. The total number of registered users on drupal.org almost trippled as it went from 5888 at the end of 2003 to 15550 at the end of 2004.
• Moshe: I think political campaigns will setup weblog communities as automatrically as they setup web sites today. [snip] Most campaigns will probably "just do what Dean did" which points to Deanspace and Drupal.
• Joe: The biggest differentiator between a standard content management system and a Community Publishing System is the organization. Content Management Systems typically cater to a structured, hierarchical organization, and a Community Publishing System supports both centralized, hierarchical organizations as well as decentralized, loosely managed organizations. I believe this is an important and valuable differentiator, and hope that it remains part of the vision in 2004.
• Mathias: An ecommerce module will be developed allowing users to sell products, services or receive donations via their web sites.
• Kjartan: Dries finally starts using Drupal for his own website. Not yet.
• Steven: Drupal's permissions will be improved in the way that most people have been asking. The result will be an elegant, powerful but simple solution that solves 90% of the demands. The other 10% will enjoy the solid foundation and expand on it for their own needs.
• Steven: To improve Drupal's search procedure, a magic gnome will pop-up who is an expert in this area and has fallen in love with Drupal. After a patch being rejected time after time due to imperfections (while still keeping on returning due to some weird sense of masochism), Drupal's search enters a new plane of existance which integrates seamlessly with all aspects (taxonomy, nodes, context, ...). Turns out that magic gnome would be Steven himself.
• Ber: Druplicon will grow legs and arms, and conquer the world.
• More predictions at http://drupal.org/node/4877 ...

So, what are your Drupal highlights of 2004 and what lies ahead in 2005? Stay on topic, or your comments risk being removed.