There is an official page on civicrm's wiki site to document many of the possible changes for civicrm v3.0. As a result, this page is simple a brainstorm I'm working on and not an indication of any comfirmed features for civicrm.

Disclaimer out of the way, time for some ideas. I have been working closest with the events system which will probably skew the focus of this page. I'll start with the list I've slowly been adding to.

Design based on use cases.

A lot of my changes have been direct functionality requests from my clients. This is a key indicator of the needs of the crm

Events statuses snaphots.

So it is possible to look back at event state before it began.

Modular framework - easily extendable.

By having modules, the system can be as small or as large as needed in terms of functions

Only load what is needed for any page request.

I think this is more or less the case but adding requires all over the place is getting a pain

Modules that have prerequisites to 'borrow' functionality from other code

Simply the same way that drupal modules work

Menus exposed to the host cms (Drupal/Joomla)

I'd love to be able to edit menu item names etc from within the cms

Directly expand on a cms user.

This is basically profiles with extra refining.

Ability to create a cms user if one doesn't exist for a contact.

Batch mode for the above too

Price sets for memberships

I had to add this but I borrowed a fair amount of code from events, surely we can do it for memberships as standard

Ability to moderate memberships

Simply put, not all people who sign up will qualify for membership.

Image uploads

Built in support for uploads using fckeditor + image_assist etc.

Combine the editors in cms with that of civicrm's.

I combined fckeditor with reasonable success but for drupal but in future there is wysiwyg api to do this job. This should mean easier maintenance of the editor, it only requires a config file then.

Events sub pages

e.g. testimonials and associated media etc. Use the host cms to provide these? It should extend the life of an event page's usefulness and keep things together.

RSS of events.

Maybe using views but would be nice out-of-the-box This already exists and has done for a while. Silly me

Full calendar system to locate/browse events.

I think this may already exist but who knows how much the system will change for v3.0

Integrate with social networking systems.

Twitter, Facebook and Flickr etc. Build an output conduit system, modules provide the links to the actual destination system.

Usability is KEY to front and back end.

We know this already and steps are being taken

Memberships/Relationships are ACLs too.

I think this is a critical feature. One which will bring civicrm on a par with role purchasing in ubercart etc. Memberships have a lot more granularity than just a role. Grace periods etc.

Free places based on membership/relationship

Basically, what do you get as a perk for being a member? How about free entrance to events. Simple, or rather not quite. I've added a membership for organisations that cascades to individuals and on top of that, the admin gets to choose how many places they get.

I will add to this list as and when I can and please add your 2 pence in the comments.