Jakob Perry (@japerry), was recently added as a new co-maintainer to both CTools and Panels. He's been working really hard to get all the RTBC patches that have been sitting in the issue queues finally reviewed and committed!
This is really exciting news for Panopoly, because sooo much of Panopoly's functionality is built with Panels. If development on Panels accelerates, that means we'll get to enjoy cool new features and bug fixes! :-)
The first new releases will be comming out in only 4 days, on February 5th soon (probably Feb 12th)! Together they include over 50 commits since their previous releases!
Let's help Jakob make sure that these new versions are as stable as they can be before release, by testing them out with Panopoly!
The latest development versions are already included in the 1.x-dev release (from February 1st or later), so just download the .zip file or .tar.gz file and give it a try!
Please report any bugs you find to the Panopoly issue queue or to the individual issue queues for CTools or Panels (if you've got the skills to track down where the problem came from - otherwise just post in Panopoly and we'll try to help with that).
Thanks in advance for any time you can spare!

Comments
Panels/CTool release extended by at least a week!
Some changes needed more work, so the Panels/CTools release didn't happen today. :-/ However, that means we've got at least another week to do testing! If you haven't yet, please download the Panopoly -dev and give it try. Thanks!