Day 1 of echelon 2010 was full of surprises, with Dave’s awesome keynote to kick off the day and foound rocking the launchpad. If you thought it could not get any better, Bret Terrill kicked off Day 2 by abandoning his East Beats West speech to tell us more about how Zynga succeeded. Impromptu, no slides, prepared over his morning coffee.

The way Zynga operates is by strategically identifying games that have a high chance to be sucessful.It involves killing other games with less potential and allows them to concentrate on developing games that will take them to the top. Without doubt, these efforts have payed off with Zynga’s Farmville and Texas Hold’em Poker ranking in the top 20 Facebook games. Keywords, Prioritize and Focus. Bret also talks about how Zynga goes for the cream of the crop because these people have been primed to be the best. They are dedicated and talented. When placed in a corporate environment, you just need to tell them what to do and push them to do more, which they are willing to complu as they are willing to go the extra mile to succeed.

The key takeaway for Zynga’s story is to have somebody leading the company who is capable of change. It is hard to give up on your own ideas but you should not be so in love with your own ideas that you cannot change. However, it is still important to maintain a long term vision that guides you along to ensure that progress is made.

Bret did a short run through on his actual keynote by highlighting a few facts. The main difference between the West and East is that Bret believes that innovation happens in the East, not in the West. He reaffirmed his point by saying that the West only has Facebook and they think that that’s all. In the East, there are many online social networks sprouting up like Mixi and RenRen that provides a lot of opportunities for social gaming. And farming games came from the East, not the West. Yes, it looks like we Asian farmers are bigger innovators than Western geeks.

Bret ended his keynote with his predictions that Facebook will no longer be the top platform for social games, opening the way for some interesting discussions in the following panel discussion.