Matt Mullenweg was just on stage at WordCamp Dallas delivering his coveted state of the Word. This presentation is what provides insight into what the WordPress project is doing and what we can look forward to in the future. Here are my cliff notes from watching his presentation via the live stream.

Another mention of merging the codebases of WordPress.org software with WordPress MU. 99.9% code overlap between the two projects. If you’re using WordPress MU now, it won’t be much different same goes for WordPress.org. Still predicting the merging to take place around WordPress 3.0.

Matt gave a primer on BuddyPress and how cool activity streams are. He also mentioned how well the code has been written for BuddyPress so WordPress developers should dive in and take a look at how BuddyPress is doing things.

Matt mentioned advertising and how he doesn’t think blogs should have advertising. After a period of time, he believes that blogging should be about meeting people and having great conversations. If you’re going to show ads, don’t show them to the people who comment and take part in your community.

Why has WordPress gone through so many backend redesigns? WordPress 2.5 redesign broke many of the molds the WordPress backend was stuck in. However, lots of feedback and criticism related to WordPress 2.5 urged another redesign for WordPress 2.7. Matt stated that they will never do a redesign again while the audience laughed. He believes that with the new design, WordPress has a heck of foundation now to build on.

WordPress is just a blank canvass. Its what you do with it that makes it special.

TalkPress was mentioned during the Q&A. Matt mentioned they that have named a jazz musician for bbPress 1.0 meaning a release is imminent. Matt says no plans to open up the TalkPress area to the public but, it could happen in the future. If it would happen, there would be great integration between TalkPress and WordPress.com.