However I tried along side buddypress and it will not work. I’m trying to allow users to sign up to the site and set their own “profile/author slug” (based on an xProfile field). Brandon any ideas how I can do this?

This is possible. I’m looking into it now, but it’s not likely to be a visible option I add to the plugin. You’ll likely have to add some code to your functions.php file to get this functionality, because removing the author base completely could have some negative side effects. I’ll keep playing around with some ideas. If I come up with anything, I’ll shoot you an email with a beta version for you to test.

This looks like a perfect plugin for me but is it possible to have no slug?

e.g. http://www.mysite.com/mark

and that would go to the author archive page
Thanks
MArk