… and already setup for Apple’s announcement today.

So like SXSW, the GDC main conference is important, but parties help with networking and promotion of companies and products.

Here are a few of my photos from WB’s Lollipop Chainsaw Event which is launching this summer

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and an event sponsored by Verizon to bring on mobile developers to their platform also showcasing a ton of innovative companies to help with mobile services

A party sponsored by Tapjoy and Papaya to show off their platforms and feed us tasty Kung Fu Tacos

And a small party by Zynga

Lots of friends have asked me whether I regret choosing GDC over SXSW this year, but I’ll say that so-far GDC has provided some great networking opportunities that reminds me of the old days of SXSW.  I’m not quite sure if this sentiment will match how I feel when the wall-to-wall crowds come today, but then again, SXSW interactive looks like it’s going to be massive this year.  It’s possible that at SXSWi, people won’t be just squished together but double stacked on top of one another.

GDC is definitely relevant to my professional interest and not every conference gives you the opportunity to be eaten by zombies.  

SXSW 2010 Panel Picker for our Social Gaming and Monetization Panel

We put together a panel for SXSW 2010 and were fortunate enough to have made it to the first level of voting. Through your help, we are looking to improve our chances by having you give our panel a thumb’s up!

The biggest news at the time when we were putting this together was the publication of revenue numbers for Zynga! which were said to be trending to $100MM this year.  We’ve also seen SuperRewards! announce that they were going to surpass $100MM, and then they were bought-out.  It’s a very exciting time for Social Games and alternative monetization strategies.  Thus, we hope you will support our panel.

Additional Participants are pending, but so far we have Austin Chang, VP of Strategy and Development for MTV Digital, Malcolm Ong, Senior Developer at Razorfish NYC, Karina Paje, Business Development at RockYou!, and me from Challenge Games.  I hope that you will find our topic to be of great interest to you and worthy of support.

Due to limitations on characters and words, I decided to be a bit more creative in the naming and description of the panel. This means that we are the only SXSWi panel where you can find us by searching by typing in “bunnies” or “Mobster.”