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2010 GDC Online organizers have announced that the call for submissions is open for the leading online game-focused conference, which takes place this October 5-8 in Austin, Texas.

The organizers of next month's GDC Canada event in Vancouver are offering free Main Conference passes to Canadian game developers laid off in the last twelve months to help them return to the game industry.
Continuing a similar program conducted during GDC Canada 2009, and recognizing the toll the recession has taken on elements of the mainstream video game industry, a special page on the GDC Canada website details the offer's specifics.
To qualify, prospective attendees must have been laid off from a Canadian video game or creative/digital arts company within the past 12 months, not be currently full-time employed, and provide their Canadian Record of Employment document at GDC Canada onsite registration to validate your status.
They will also need to pre-register now for the May 6th-7th event at the Vancouver Convention Center by following the instructions on the GDC Canada page devoted to the subject. Only a limited amount of these passes are available.
The GDC Canada event itself has now confirmed much of its content, with a full schedule of announced lectures now available, and the Canadian Videogame Awards now confirmed for the night before the event.

Organizers of this October's GDC Online game conference in Austin have confirmed Summits to run parallel with the major event, including one and two-day events dedicated to game development on Apple’s iPad, 3D stereoscopic games, iPhone games and video game narrative.
The summits, to be held on the first two days (October 5th and 6th) of the four-day event, will present key in-depth business and technical advice in these major up-and-coming facets of the game industry, ahead of the online game-centric Main Conference content.
The newly revealed topics to be presented at the Game Developers Conference Online (formerly known as GDC Austin) this October include the following:
iPad Gaming Summit
Debuting at GDC Online, the one-day iPad Gaming Summit, paired with the iPhone Games Summit, will provide an abundance of key facts and advice for all those working on the iPhone and iPad platforms.
Sharing key business learnings to top technical takeaways from developers already surging to major success on this already extremely competitive format platform, the iPad Summit provides a springboard into the world of iPhone/iPad game development.

GDC organizers have released two new free lecture videos recorded at Game Developers Conference 2010, including 2D Boy's Ron Carmel on funding independent games and Bungie's Brian Sharp on compassionate leadership in game development.
The two new lectures, published at the GDC Vault website, feature video technology that allows users to simultaneously view a presenter's slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.
First, the Independent Games Summit at GDC this year was kicked off by Ron Carmel's lecture, 'Indies and Publishers: Fixing a System That Never Worked', for which the full video presentation is now available.
Carmel, co-founder of World Of Goo creator 2D Boy, is one of the key movers behind the recently-announced Indie Fund, an "angel"-style funding source for indie game makers, and his lecture and Q&A discusses his thoughts on the future of funding for independents.
The lecture begins with IGS co-organizers Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink introducing the Summit and making remarks about the state of independent games - click on the 'Indies and Publishers' link in the navigation window if you'd like to move straight to Ron's talk.

GDC Canada organizers are remind prospective attendees that tomorrow, March 31, is the deadline for early registration for the May 6th-7th Vancouver event.
At the same time, Zynga vice president and FarmVille general manager Bill Mooney has been confirmed as the event's opening keynote, kicking off the event with a lecture on May 6.
Mooney's prior experience includes major game publishers like Activision and LucasArts, in addition to five years as a trial lawyer and stints as a television writer. At GDC Canada, he'll speak from his experience developing Zynga's social game hits Mafia Wars and FarmVille in a keynote entitled "Building Social Games: Games at the Speed of Light."
In addition to previously-announced talks from Obsidian, Telltale, Blizzard, Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno and many more, a new set of featured speakers has been highlighted for the upcoming conference, slated to discuss key focal points for the event like new distribution models, developing new global titles, and managing established franchises - as follows:

Game Developers Conference 2010 organizers have revealed plans for the GDC Vault, including free videos featuring Zynga, Ernest Adams and more, and regular free updates planned throughout the year.
The newly launched GDC Vault website is designed to hold free speaker slides from all GDC events, as well as specially synchronized video recordings of Game Developers Conference lectures and historical audio recordings.
The GDC Vault video technology allows users to simultaneously view a presenter's slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.
As an initial offering, the GDC Vault free videos section has made the 5 Expo Pass-included GDC 2010 sessions available for completely free viewing.
Free GDC 2010 Lecture Recordings
Free videos debuted thus far include the following notable hour-long GDC 2010 lectures, all available permanently online:
- 'Engineering Scalable Social Games' by Dr. Robert Zubek of Zynga, a programming talk in which the veteran developer "introduces best practices for building highly scalable infrastructure for social and web games" from the viewpoint of the Farmville creators.

Organizers of this May's GDC Canada event in Vancouver, BC have confirmed the first social game and iPhone lectures for the event, with speakers from Zynga (Farmville), iPhone experts IUGO, and Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno discussing major emerging markets.
Registration is now open for the event at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which talkes place on May 6th and 7th -- with early, reduced-price passes only available until the end of March.
This year, new tracks will focus on more hot games industry topics including digital distribution, social games, and iPhone games.
Some of the initially announced highlights for these vital tracks, many of which are bringing major creators to the Canadian market for the first time, are as follows: