Walkabout.sg was a big hit with Singapore’s tech players

See what happens when 77 technology companies throw an open house.

Walkabout.sg was back for its second year and for tech lovers it was a chance to visit any one of 77 participating companies and literally walkabout their offices meeting with company executives.

The event is organized by Kristine Lauria from Mission Street Media and an interactive map showed which offices were throwing open their doors for all comers to walk into and meet with company execs and take a peek around the office.

Major companies like Microsoft and Amazon participated, with Amazon even doing walk-in job interviews and people who were looking for funding could also chat and leave post it notes on the wall.

Some came seeking jobs or internships, some because they were curious, and some just for the Pizza and snacks. But behind the frivolity of a city-wide office party, there was some serious networking to be done.

This year more than 1200 people signed up to the event, a kind of amazing race around Singapore’s tech corridors, from 12.00 pm to 5 pm, said Mission Street Media’s Kristine Lauria. About the only two big companies not present were Google and Facebook , who were invited but did not participate.

“Twitter is a one person shop and the person managing it is in Japan. Google and Facebook were invited this year hopefully we can get them next year,” said Ms Lauria. So what is in it for the participating companies? 

“Last year non stop games found an engineer, it’s a great way to spread ideas and find talent. There are VC’s and accelerators involved. The benefit is like a community participation and to say we are not in banking and the typical Singaporean company. Globally we want to make a point that Asia has a point on the global the scene.”

“There is such a massive turnout has been pretty surprising and it makes you feel like we are here for a reason and we are not dreaming that tech will take off in Asia; we are here already. If you look at most offices in Asia they are sales and marketing, they are not development teams. What you are seeing with Walkabout.sg is you are seeing the scene growing deep roots not just sales and marketing, but all types of people working including marketing, HR. It’s not just a bunch of developers coding away.