Young Alumni Award Presented to Alex Carobus '95 April 30, 2010

When Alex Carobus was at Shipley, he developed a passion for video games and the then-new web games, particularly those that were creative and journey-oriented. He determined then that he wanted to spend his career working with games.
Within six years of his graduation from Shipley, he had degrees in artificial intelligence, liberal arts, and computer science earned with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, and was simultaneously called by two companies for interviews. One was Google, the other was EA Sports, a large sports gaming company. He took the Google job at a time when the company had only 200 employees.
During his time at Google, Mr. Carobus worked on search and content-targeted advertising software and as a result, holds two patents in the field. After six years, he left to pursue his first love—games.
Over the last three years, Mr. Carobus has been building a start-up company to develop games. His vision for the company is to be the gaming equivalent of the Indie film—to design creative and intuitive style games. His goal is not to compete with large companies or game platforms, but to influence them and move gaming into new, more innovative directions.
As we give Mr. Carobus the 2010 Young Alumni Award, we applaud his success so far in pursuing his passion and look forward to seeing the results of his latest and future endeavors.

Acceptance Speech

I was very honored and, honestly, a bit surprised to receive this award from Shipley. You see, I wasn’t exactly a model Shipley student. I didn’t participate in a lot of activities; I didn’t do any sports, or theater, or student government. I did well in my academics, but I wasn’t the best in my class. And, perhaps most telling, I was voted “class mute” in my senior year. I definitely preferred to blend in rather than to stand out.
But these facts alone might create the false impression that Shipley was not an important or a positive experience for me. The good friends I made and the great teachers I had at Shipley had more influence on the direction of my life than any other people I have ever met.
Mr. Rich made Virgil and Catullus come alive and it’s great to see that he still is. I took programming from Mr. Barrott because I wanted to learn how to create computer games and he opened up a whole new world to me. To this day, I still see his disapproving glare every time I’m tempted to use “go to” in a line of code.
Shipley proved to be a solid foundation from which I went on to UPenn, then Stanford, and finally joining a small company with a silly name as a software engineer. At this company I got to work with the smartest, coolest, most interesting people on the planet. And, no longer quite so mute, on one memorable occasion I got into an argument with Sergey Brin, when I disagreed with his decision on a technical question. We ended up still doing it his way, but I’m pretty sure I was right.
Playing my small part in building that company into the behemoth it is today was the best experience of my life, and the rewards were beyond anything I could have imagined. The best reward is that now I have the freedom to spend all my time writing games.
I tried to think of something to say in this speech that would have been helpful to me when I was a student at Shipley. But thinking back on myself at that time, I’m pretty sure I would have ignored any advice and perhaps rightfully so. So all I will say to you, is you should be really excited. There’s a pretty amazing world waiting out there for you.
Thank you to the Alumni Association for this award. I am truly honored. And, good luck to all of you.
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Young Alumni Award Presented to Alex Carobus '95 April 30, 2010

When Alex Carobus was at Shipley, he developed a passion for video games and the then-new web games, particularly those that were creative and journey-oriented. He determined then that he wanted to spend his career working with games.
Within six years of his graduation from Shipley, he had degrees in artificial intelligence, liberal arts, and computer science earned with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, and was simultaneously called by two companies for interviews. One was Google, the other was EA Sports, a large sports gaming company. He took the Google job at a time when the company had only 200 employees.
During his time at Google, Mr. Carobus worked on search and content-targeted advertising software and as a result, holds two patents in the field. After six years, he left to pursue his first love—games.
Over the last three years, Mr. Carobus has been building a start-up company to develop games. His vision for the company is to be the gaming equivalent of the Indie film—to design creative and intuitive style games. His goal is not to compete with large companies or game platforms, but to influence them and move gaming into new, more innovative directions.
As we give Mr. Carobus the 2010 Young Alumni Award, we applaud his success so far in pursuing his passion and look forward to seeing the results of his latest and future endeavors.

Acceptance Speech

I was very honored and, honestly, a bit surprised to receive this award from Shipley. You see, I wasn’t exactly a model Shipley student. I didn’t participate in a lot of activities; I didn’t do any sports, or theater, or student government. I did well in my academics, but I wasn’t the best in my class. And, perhaps most telling, I was voted “class mute” in my senior year. I definitely preferred to blend in rather than to stand out.
But these facts alone might create the false impression that Shipley was not an important or a positive experience for me. The good friends I made and the great teachers I had at Shipley had more influence on the direction of my life than any other people I have ever met.
Mr. Rich made Virgil and Catullus come alive and it’s great to see that he still is. I took programming from Mr. Barrott because I wanted to learn how to create computer games and he opened up a whole new world to me. To this day, I still see his disapproving glare every time I’m tempted to use “go to” in a line of code.
Shipley proved to be a solid foundation from which I went on to UPenn, then Stanford, and finally joining a small company with a silly name as a software engineer. At this company I got to work with the smartest, coolest, most interesting people on the planet. And, no longer quite so mute, on one memorable occasion I got into an argument with Sergey Brin, when I disagreed with his decision on a technical question. We ended up still doing it his way, but I’m pretty sure I was right.
Playing my small part in building that company into the behemoth it is today was the best experience of my life, and the rewards were beyond anything I could have imagined. The best reward is that now I have the freedom to spend all my time writing games.
I tried to think of something to say in this speech that would have been helpful to me when I was a student at Shipley. But thinking back on myself at that time, I’m pretty sure I would have ignored any advice and perhaps rightfully so. So all I will say to you, is you should be really excited. There’s a pretty amazing world waiting out there for you.
Thank you to the Alumni Association for this award. I am truly honored. And, good luck to all of you.
Back

Alumni in the Spotlight

The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.