I'm not saying it can't, but the primary focus (and current release) is the server-side version. I didn't realize (before that meetup) that server-side Blazor was even a thing, everything I heard about it before this was that the client-side version _was_ Blazor.

I don't know if thats a disconnect in marketing, or me not paying attention, but like I said I was really confused.

Yeah, a confusing spate of offerings and terminology is just part of working with the Microsoft stack. It took me like 3 years of professional C# development to finally sort it all out.

But the reason they're pushing server-side Blazor is because loading client-side Blazor just takes too long in production deployments. Right now, you have to wait several seconds before the page loads, which is unacceptable for most users. I feel like server-side has to be the future, though, and they'll address the speed issue soon enough.

what's the difference between server side and just serving everything on the server and jQuery? sounds very similar

Blazor server-side maintains a websocket to a running client and does some Magic to communicate DOM updates to the client.