Development for WordPress 3.5 is underway as the core development team engage in their first scope session today. With that, they also have a few exciting announcements. After almost three years of service and a few thousand contributions, Andrew Nacin is being promoted to Lead Developer! Some of you may remember when Andrew Nacin got his start with an insignificant twelve-character patch, and with just as much determination, you too could be a Lead Developer some day. After some amazing work through the past few releases, including the new theme customizer and distraction-free writing, Daryl Koopersmith is being granted ongoing commit status. And, thanks to his keen eye on WordPress security, Jon Cave is having his temporary commit status extended through the release of WordPress 3.5. If these sort of promotions get you excited about your future in WordPress, now is the perfect time to get involved.

WordPress 3.4 is finally here! All users can now safely update from Dashboard -> Updates or download and update manually, though you should probably backup first, just in case. Right out of the box, users will notice some great new features, like a new theme customizer, Tweet embeds, HTML support in image captions, and dozens of performance improvements. If you run into trouble with WordPress 3.4, stop by the master list of known issues and post to the support forums if your problem isn’t covered there.

WordPress 3.4 RC 3 has been released with just a few lingering issues fixed since the second release candidate. The core developer team is still planning for the final release of WordPress 3.4 to debut some time this week, so it’s time to give this a good solid test, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. As you test out the WordPress 3.4 RCs, please review this guide to see what you should keep your eyes on. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help.

As WordPress 3.4 draws nearer to its inevitable released, Aaron Campbell and Helen Hou-Sandi have joined the ranks of the Contributing Developers! Their improvements to custom headers and the overall Themes interface will really make WordPress 3.4 stand out. If you’re on this release’s credits list, now’s the time to make sure that your profile actually has a name. Here’s hoping that WordPress 3.4 will be the best release yet!