I was very happy to attend the Content Authoring BOF and get some insight into the work and thought that has already happened with regard to this issue. I think it was remarkable how close our respective visions were and how much agreement there was. I was encouraged with how quickly people were willing to discard or admit the limitations of the current tool-focused paradigm.
I was happy that we could articulate (at least partially) the tension between content creation that is structured (and probably based on templates) and content that can be organized any which way ("wild wild west" content authoring). These approaches to content authoring are really more of a spectrum and a potential feature would have to be able to satisfy needs all along that that spectrum.
I liked the idea that we could both accommodate the ability for system-provided templates and also allow users to promote their created pages to templates.
I was also happy that while sequencing and tracking were articulated as important, everyone seemed to agree that neither were crucial for a first implementation.
I was also ecstatic to learn that the groundwork is being laid for Sakai to be aware of content/items/entities inside of tools (like discussion thread, assignments, etc.) in order to accomodate the need to place them on a page and treat them like any other piece of content in Sakai.