Florin Patan has posted about what he calls the next big thing in PHP - his observations of the current state of the language/community and what could be coming down the road.

What's the next big thing in PHP? Or more accurately, how do you get to wish/want for a next big thing in PHP? PHP currently is seen as a jack of all trades, master none by most of people outside of PHP world and it's starting to look the same way for people who are using it as well. How did we got there?

He spends a lot of the post talking about the future of PHP, though - what could be coming along with a PHP 6 release. He suggests that, with the way things are going, PHP could not be around too much longer if something dosen't change. He also makes several suggestions to the core PHP developers about what they could do to help the situation including strong typed variables, a "smarter parser" and a poll for PHP.net asking the users what they want in the language.

This should be the next big thing in PHP. Collaboration and better community interface for both worlds, users and devs. Help us help you on PHP6, help us making a better world for everyone using PHP.