Next week, hordes of social and mobile game developers from around the world will descend on downtown San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference 2012 and Inside Network will be on hand to cover the show.

From left to right, Inside Network managing editor AJ Glasser, Inside Mobile Apps and Inside Social Games staff writer Kathleen De Vere and Inside Social Games lead writer Mike Thompson will be at the show throughout the week. We’ll be meeting with developers see what they’ve got in the works and hear about their future plans for social and mobile titles.

This year’s GDC is noteworthy because so more social game developers than ever before will be presenting at the show. While many of these include big names like EA, Zynga and King.com, there’s also a host lesser-known successful developers and newcomers with games hitting Facebook, Google+ and mobile in the coming months. On the platform side, Facebook has revealed that its platform team will be on hand Monday for an all-day series of events designed to help developers learn how to make successful social games.

Meanwhile, a hot topic amongst developers will be Zynga’s new platform, which will allow third-party publishing of social games. Case in point: Zynga COO John Schappert will be delivering one of the six track keynotes at the show. For many indie studios, this new partner publishing represents a safeguard against having a larger group clone their title; at the moment, though, only a few groups have actually announced that they’ll work with Zynga.

If you happen to see us on the show floor or at one of the industry parties, don’t hesitate to come up and introduce yourself.