Insightful career advice was far and few between during my university years. During the looming imminence of my graduation, I recall walking the pavement on the way home, head down, mind in the clouds, wondering just how best to put my degree to good use and what career path to take. Apart from pamphlets that always seemed to pose more questions than offer answers and career fairs that harked different avenues for my degree, but seldom grounded advice, I was rudderless.

Dialogue with experts

Fast forward to 16 February 2011. I’m in a seminar room at Fusionopolis, sitting amongst a bevy of students from many different countries and different institutions, such as the Singapore Management University (SMU), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and INSEAD. These attendees are gap year visitors and professionals pursuing graduate studies, and unlike myself in my earlier years, they are benefitting from a hands-on dialogue as part of the latest installment of the Singapore Insights dialogues, with experts and practitioners from Singapore’s Infocom technology landscape.

Attendees from the Singapore Management University (SMU), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and INSEAD at the second Singapore Insights.

Presentations by JTC Corporation and DigiPen Institute of Technology Singapore and Magma Studios, the latter a digital media and game developer, are on the agenda for the day. The intent, as many of the students tell me, is to garner “insights” from experts in an industry they may be looking to join, for networking or just out of sheer interest. I turn to my left. I’m sitting next to an affable chap studying the biomedical field at NTU. His name is Muthu who hails from Chennai. I ask him why he’s here and he tells me that next year he intends to do his PHD in the infocomm technology. He also tells me that he chose to study in Singapore because of her reputation as a leader in the biomedical industry.

The first presentation starts, and the presenters from JTC outline the mission of Fusionopolis and the goal of positioning Singapore as a high value research and development hub. Operationally, the intent of JTC is to attract and create clusters of like-minded companies. As an “illustration” (pun intended), animation industry big player, Lucasfilms, which set up a studio in Singapore in 2005, will fully become functional here in mid-2013 (Yvonne Lim from JTC, underlines that with the talent direction of Lucasfilms, the hope is to build upon the pool of local media talent), along with the first soundstage in Singapore to be finished in 2012 (to be built by Infinite studios), and MediaCorp to be relocating nearby by 2014. Together, these companies would leverage off a value chain ecosystem.

In the lull between presentations, I talk more with the attendees. Behind me, Yimin Lin from Fuzhou, China, who is studying a business degree at SMU, tells me that he came to Singapore to experience its international diversity, and that he was attending this session based out of his interest for any future business opportunities. It seems this is the reason why many of the students are attending.

After a reception at the viewing gallery of Fusionopolis, Gabriel Lee, (Director of Operations for Digipen) gives everyone a lowdown on the game development industry. Gabriel is very animated and many attendees are agog at the statistics and demographics of users that are presented. Vinod, from Mumbai, and studying in SMU, espouses his desire to possibly work in the infocomm industry and is surprised at the size of the revenue numbers generated by the gaming industry. He too opted to study in Singapore because of its renowned infrastructure and reputation.

Are you game enough?

From Fusionopolis, we moved to a games development workshop in a low slung building in Shenton Way. Aroon Tan, Managing Director of Magma Studios conducts a forthright discussion about the business model of gaming and the industry pitfalls, whilst game developers beaver away on their terminals amongst the attendees. Aroon also takes us through a quick preview of the forthcoming game World of Temasek. Cogent points about the future of the gaming industry and the implementation of revenue are also discussed. Aroon’s honesty and willingness to share proves to be the highlight of the evening, as question after question were posed by the participants. It is obvious, that these insights into the business are the backbone to the Singapore Insight tours - it is only through discussing the industry firsthand with the industry players, that informed career decisions can be made.

I’m told that the next few Singapore Insight tours (conducted quarterly) will be focused on the Arts, and Urban planning. Students and prospective attendees would do well to attend, after all, if it’s anything that can help you to better understand what you want in a career, I would have to say “game on!”.

* Interested to know more about Singapore Insights? Sign up for the SIF or SGK newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook!