From the talk page on the WordCamp Cape Town site:
In this session, Drew will be sharing insight into how a WordPress release happens, including an overview of all the moving parts, teams, organization, and execution. A lot of people have this idea that the core team is solely responsible for new versions of WordPress getting released, which couldn’t be further from the truth – it’s an intricate ballet of multiple contributor teams coming together and executing a broad vision.
He will talk about how a release cycle is structured, how and where the decision-making happens, as well as all of the various contributors and teams that play their own part in a successful release. It’s very much opening the black box of how a release works.