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This post is the second in the three part series of Live Blogging the Community Server Developers Conference. Part 1 covered the morning sessions and lunch on Saturday October 20, 2007. This post (part 2) covers the afternoon sessions on Saturday, and Part 3 covers Sunday Oct 21.

12:35 PM - Wyatt Preul is now on stage presenting more info about customizing Community Server 2007. He talks about the very powerful dynamic configuration feature that was added in CS 2007 to dynamically render UI to customize theme properties.

12:50 PM - Ben Tiedt is back by popular demand. Ben is talking about the upcoming Chameleon/Theme changes in CS 2008. Thankfully there are very little changes to the existing logic so what developers have already learned will still apply. But there are some cool new features coming.

• QueryOverrides Extensions. Ben is talking about plugable query extensions and how you will be able to load data from xml.
• LinkTo Logic improvements. There will now be a IgnoreLinkPermission option.
• WIDGETS!  The long-requested feature is being added to CS 2008 right now. Widgets are a mechanism for end-user theming based on dynamic configuration.

1:00 PM - Ben is giving a demo of using Widgets in CS 2008. The first "crash" of the day occurs when he unexpectedly gets a server error while working with some of the widget code that is still in active development. =)

1:05 PM - Now we are seeing how to implement your own widgets for CS 2008. Ben is showing the simple code needed and how to add them to various places throughout CS by using a new Control Panel screen.

1:25 PM - Ben has finished his demos on how to create widgets and is now taking questions from the audience.

1:33 PM - After answering numerous questions about dynamic theming and widgets, Ben and Wyatt are exiting the stage. There will now be a 10 minute break before the next session.

1:37 PM - Jason Alexander and Kevin Harder (me) will be presenting a session on the new Telligent Enterprise Reporting product for the next hour (after the 10 min break). So there will not be any updates to this post until that is finished. But hopefully someone will take a few pics of our session that I'll post below after our presentation.

1:40 PM - The Telliterns Rock-Off Tellicast is being played while Jason and Kevin get ready for the Reporting session.

1:50 - 2:40 PM - The Enterprise Reporting presentation rocks (I may be a bit biased). We gave a brief overview of the platform and the Community Server reports, and spent most of the time showing how developers can use the reporting framework to build their own reports. Afterwards we answered quite a few questions and the audience seemed pretty excited about the new reporting product. Below are some photos taken during our session. Note: that is Jason's Mac - it's the first time I've used one in years :P.

We announced that the first public demo will probably be released in the next week. However everyone is encouraged to try out the public Enterprise Reporting Demo site whenever possible:  http://reports.communityserver.org/demo.

2:49 PM - We're back! The Enterprise Reporting demo is over and we are now watching the infamous Steve Balmer "Developers, Developers, Developers!" video as a prelude to the REST Web Services presentation. Everyone gets pumped up while simultaneously knowing this song will be in their heads for rest of the day.

2:54 PM - Scott Watermasysk and Dan Bartels are now on stage presenting what is probably one of the most eagerly anticipated features of Community Server 2008: the robust web services stack.  Scott explains why REST was chosen over SOAP (playing nicely with other platforms/technologies).

3:00 PM - There will be a single .NET assembly that wraps all the HTTP goo which you can use when calling the CS web services. If you are using .NET for your client app, all you'll need to do is reference that one assembly and it contains all the methods needed to read/write data with the web services. Very cool!

3:05 PM - After a few slides the power point is banished away for the rest of this session and Visual Studio is opened. The developers rejoice.  Scott and Dan are showing the XML that is returned by the new CS web services and the various end-points you can use.

3:10 PM - Dan is giving a demo of how to create a simple WinForms application that uses the CS web services to read and display post data. He then shows a demo of another windows app that he has previously built which allows you to interact and make changes to posts. And only a few lines of code were needed thanks to the Web Services API assembly previously mentioned.

3:22 PM - More demos of using the web services, showing increasing sophistication and using various types of data (posts, sections, users).

3:30 PM - Scott and Dan are taking some questions from the floor. They confirm this will be included in the initial CS 2008 release. It's asked whether these demos will be released publicly. Scott answers that yes demos will be released but he'd like to improve the ones we showed at the CSDC a little to make them better examples. Dan notes that Jose Lema hasn't really done much work in the web services project too much laughter. Scott clarifies that he is capable, just hasn't had a chance yet.

3:35 PM - More questions. Scott talks about how the web services stack uses user tokens and the type of data returned is dependent on the permissions of the user account that is provided when calling the services. He explains about how security is handled in response to audience questions.

3:40 PM - Q&A continues. Scott is now talking about how managing data via web services should be much faster than using the Control Panel, as you won't have to download the stylesheet, scripts, etc.  He confirms that the services uses the same internal API as the web pages and so uses the same caching, events, and other built-in CS features.

3:44 PM - Nick asks whether it would be possible to use the services stack for displaying CS data in WPF or Silverlight. Scott replies that it is certainly possible, and humorously mentions that the WinForm demos shows we aren't exactly skilled in creating good-looking windows client applications. Dan continues to show off additional demos in the background as Scott answers more questions. This session has definitely drawn the most questions today by far!

3:47 PM - One more demo is shown, this time using Graffiti. They created a Graffiti widget that uses the Community Server web services to retrieve forum data from CS and display it within Graffiti.

3:53 PM - The web services presentation ends. Music is playing as Jose Lema sets up for the next presentation. He'll be giving an overview of the Community Server 2008 features.

3:58 PM - Jose is on stage giving a quick overview of the upcoming version of Community Server. First up is the new and improved social networking features: friends, groups (also known as hubs), messages, media gallery, and user files/photos. CS 2008 will have no more "stalkers" (on-way friends) - two people can add each other to become true friends.  Private message being vastly improved and pulled outside of forums - you'll be able to have private conversations with any other member and forward existing posts. Activity log lists (i.e. Wyatt made a new post, Ben joined today) will be a built-in feature.

4:08 PM - File Galleries and Photo Galleries will be merged into a super "Media Gallery" application that will let you upload and share all types of media files: photos, files, videos, etc. There will also be a centralized file system where all types of files (media gallery files, blog files, user files,etc) will be stored in the same place. Amazon's storage web service is mentioned again as one of the future options. The web services will also be able access the file store.

4:12 PM - The user interface is being improved with customizable widgets, plugable viewers for various file types, and big changes to the Control Panel UI.

4:15 PM - Jose announces that custom themes will require no rework! CS will support OpenID. Permissions are being both enhanced and simplified where needed. The little-used virtualization and user-selectable themes are being removed to simplify the API and UI. The Feed Reader application will not be included in CS 2008 and will instead be made available in the future as a separate "funkified" application.

4:17 PM - We are now seeing some demos of the current development build of CS 2008. Jose show's off the greatly improved Control Panel screens for managing forums and permissions.

4:24 PM - Groups (formerly known as "Hubs") make their debut in the demo. Jose describes how you can create many groups within your community site and each group has it's own blog/forum/files/etc.  For example you could create a community site about baseball and in addition to general league-wide forums or other apps, there could be a group for each team with team-specific content. User Invitations, which were added back in CS 2.1, can now be leveraged with groups to invite people to a group.

Another new UI concept is that you can manage a group and add content all from within the public site pages. You do not need to go inside of the control panel! Also you can use widgets, RSS, tags, dynamic theming, and all the other cool CS features inside of hubs. Groups can be open, invite only, or completely private.

4:30 PM - Jose wraps up his talk by announcing "we're done!".  But then adds that we are shooting for a beta in January with a final public release during the first quarter.

4:32 PM - Ado announces there is a wedding starting in this room very soon and we need to get out of here. =)  Time to head to Dave & Busters for a night of fun.

NOTE:  You can continue reading the CSDC live blogging series in Live Blogging the CSDC - Part 3.