Are you one of the more than 120 people on the who's coming list of people attending this Fall's Mashup Camp? If not, then why not? The mashup approach to software development -- the one whereby applications are built in hours instead of weeks, months or years by melding together functionality and data that's scattered across the Web, a network or both -- will likely make mashups the most important of all software ecosystems for everything from launching new Web-based startups to the development of custom enterprise applications.Earlier this year, Forrester's analysts summarized their Global Enterprise 2.0 Market Forecast for 2007-2013 with the following abstract:

Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share. In all, the market for enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditization, eroding prices, and subsumption into other enterprise collaboration software over the next five years; it will eventually disappear into the fabric of the enterprise, despite the major impacts the technology will have on how businesses market their products and optimize their workforces.

I have more to say about the lopping of social networks, mashups and RSS into one category (I actually agree with this grouping). Stay tuned for a blog about that. In the meantime, last year, Gartner identified mashups and composite applications as one of the Top 10 strategic technologies for 2008 saying:

By 2010, Web mashups will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of composite enterprise applications. Mashup technologies will evolve significantly over the next five years, and application leaders must take this evolution into account when evaluating the impact of mashups and in formulating an enterprise mashup strategy.

2010? That's right around the corner! So, how will mashups figure into your future? Are you savvy enough to know? Even if you think you are, a lot is changing in the mashup space.

Mashup Camp, now in its third year is the original and still pretty much the only recurring neutral-turf event where all stakeholders in the mashup ecosystem can get together for a few days of learning, hacking, competing (so, far, the prize list about to cross the $5,000-in-value mark and growing), and unconference time where the the session content is attendee driven.

In response to feedback from the Mashup Camp community, we've also tweaked Mashup Camp's format for the better. Previously, it was two full days of learning with Mashup University and then two days of camp. After a lot of feedback about how four days was a wee bit too long, we've compressed everything into a three-day format. How do you take four days worth of content and compress it into three? The key was in not requiring everyone attending Mashup University to sit through every presentation in order to see just the ones they were after.

Instead, the first day (Day 1, the "learn" day) consists of lightning awareness rounds called speedgeeking followed by a series of deep-dive instructional sessions called chalk talks. During the speedgeeking, all of the attendees will rotate amongst the various solution providers in 6-10 speed-dating like rounds where they'll be able to snack on the basics for each of the solutions. I use the term "solutions" because it's the best way to cover the range of technologies that mashup developers use: everything from the application programming interfaces (APIs) used to tap the functionality from service providers to the development tools that take all the fun (ok, in reality the pain and difficulty) out of developing mashups (in some cases, collaboratively so). By the way, on day 3, the tables turn, and it's the developers' turn to speedgeek.

Once you've snacked on the latest greatest information from a bunch of mashup solution providers, then you pick the ones that you want more instructional content on and go to the corresponding chalktalks. The chalktalks will be rerun a few times in a row so that if you're in one chalktalk, you don't have to worry about missing another.

Whereas Day 1 is "the learn day," the first evening will feature an OpenAJAX pavilion, day 2 (the "hack" day) will consist of instructor-led open hack periods and unconference sessions, and day 3 will be more speedgeeking but with the tables turned and with mashup developers competing for many "best of" prizes with a total value that's soon to surpass $5,000 in value.

Stay tuned for more blogs from me about days 2 and 3 as well as other mashup related stuff as Mashup Camp draws closer.

In the meantime, if you're not signed up, then be sure to register.