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NOTE:  This post is the first in the three part series of Live Blogging the Community Server Developers Conference. This part covers the morning sessions and lunch on Saturday October 20, 2007. Part 2 covers the afternoon sessions on Saturday, and Part 3 covers Sunday Oct 21.

I will be "live blogging" the 2007 Community Server Developers Conference today similar to how sites like Engadget live blog Steve Jobs keynote speeches.

This post will get continually updated throughout this morning with the latest news, announcements, witty observations, and hopefully a few pictures. After the lunch I will probably start a new post to live blog the afternoon sessions, and then new ones for tomorrow as well. Enjoy!

9:02 AM - The room is filling up as people arrive at the Stonebriar Country Club, grab their goody bags and some breakfast, and stake out a spot. The outer edges of the rows close to the power plugs were the first to get claimed. Luckily we have a good WiFi connection available here.

9:10 AM - It's On!  The conference has started with the Sneaking a Glimpse of Graffiti tellicast being played in front of everyone on the big screen.

9:12 AM - Ado Bitar is the technical brains behind the CSDC.  He is both recording all of the sessions and managing the A/V side of things such as playing tellicasts between sessions.

9:18 AM - The tellicast ends and Rob Howard takes the stage for the keynote speech.

9:24 AM - Rob is going over at a high level some of the new features in CS 2008 such as social networking myspace/facebook style, REST web services, improved user profiles and user-centric content, and improving the file storage story including using Amazon's S3 storage service.

He is also talking about the two new Telligent products under development: Enterprise Reporting and Graffiti.  There will be in-depth sessions covering these later in the day. He also has a mysterious "...and a few more surprises in 2008" on his slide!  =)

Here are some shots of Rob demoing the Enterprise Reporting product:

And a Graffiti demo:

9:42 AM - Rob announces that Graffiti will be released before Community Server 2008, and later in 2008 there will be a good story of Graffiti and Community Server working together.

9:43 AM - Rob mentions there will be prizes given away at the conference such as Zunes and CS books by partners Applied Innovations and Wrox.

9:45 AM - The keynote ends. We are taking a quick break before the next session - Theming Community Server by Ben Tiedt and Wyatt Preul - starts.

9:54 AM - The Tom-foolery tellicast is now playing on the screen as people file back into the room.

10:00 AM - Everyone laughs as the Rob Howard cardboard clone and bobbleheads are shown.

10:04 AM - The tellicast ends and Ben Tiedt is on stage.  He is starting the Theming Community Server presentation. Below are some screen shots from the beginning of his presentation. I won't go over all the details that he is covering as his session is being recorded and will be released on communityserver.org after the CSDC.

10:45 AM - Ben ends his detailed overview of the CS 2007 Chameleon system and hands the mic over to Wyatt Preul.  Wyatt is now speaking about tips and tricks for theming CS.

10:55 AM - Wyatt is finished with his slides. Ben and him go over where to find help and docs for CS theming. The new Professional Community Server Themes book the two of them co-wrote that is being published by Wrox should be available any day now. They open the floor for questions.

10:59 AM - After several questions Wyatt and Ben turn the podium over to Scott Watermasysk for a reminder about dinner tonight at Dave & Busters. He introduces Telligent partner Four Roads who will be giving a brief overview about their Community Server based products and services before lunch.

11:05 AM - Four Roads is now speaking. They announce that they have created an e-commerce add-on for Community Server and will give a demo of it. Their app builds on top of CS 2007 and uses CS-style UI and conventions but does not touch core code.

11:10 AM - The demo is now in full swing. Four Roads is showing the detailed Control Panel interface and shopping pages they have built.

11:13 AM - The demo ends. It's time for lunch!  Scott W. tells everyone food is being served in the room next door, and to find their way over there. By the way the rooms here at Stonebriar are very nice! The conference room empties out quickly.

11:30 AM - The food is delicious! Here are a few pictures from lunch:

Check out Part 2 of the Live Blogging the CSDC series to find out what happened after lunch.