Ingrid Albrecht self portrait

Last week, I had one of those unexpected pleasant surprises after picking up the phone and getting to meet a new TeachStreet Pro member, Ingrid Albrecht. Ingrid is a Chicago painter and watercolor teacher and she’s offering a fantastic assortment of first-time painter and watercolor classes in the Chicago area in the coming weeks.

For other aspiring Pro Members, you really should check our her profile — she not only uploaded a great looking banner (that incorporates one of her paintings) but has also added 3 showcase listings, more than 20 reviews from past Chicago art students (twenty plus!), has great classes (with prices ranging from $170 to $285) and is enabled for TeachStreet payments. I especially like her description, that talks about how her grandmother got her started painting at age 4 — it’s always great to hear how people’s passions were ignited. If you’re in the Chicago area and have had a hankering to learn how to watercolor and/or paint, Ingrids Originals would be a great place to start!

Have you always wanted to learn how welding works?  Me too!  So, last weekend, 5 of us (including Twitters Courtney Johnston (@c_johnston), Jason Vonnieda (@vonnieda), and Jeff Smith (@JeffreySmith), plus my wife and I) took a Seattle Welding Intensive class to learn about welding, and to get get hands-on experience and practice with several different types of welding equipment.  In three words, “it was awesome!”.

Class was held at the Hazard Factory, in South Park (a neighborhood south of Seattle, near the Georgetown neighborhood), and it was amazing how fast the 5 hours flew by — we learned about the different types of welding (MIG, TIG and Stick) and got to practice with different machines — we were actually welding things together in the first 1-2 hours, and I’m actually feeling competent enough to do some work around the house — really, I highly recommend it.

The teacher, Rusty Oliver, has been welding for the last 13 years, and is also a sculptural artist — he was a fantastic instructor (he said that his mom was a teacher, so he learned the skills from her), and made it a fun day that I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget.

This video was from early in the day, as he explained the differences between MIG and TIG welding:

And, here are a few photos of us decked out in our gear:

I have the benefit (or curse) of having been a CPA in a prior working life, having started out my career with Arthur Andersen after I graduated from college.  I quickly (it only took me 7 short years) figured out that the life of debits and credits wasn’t for me, but now that I’m working as an entrepreneur, I’m thrilled that I have that background under my belt.

For many other entrepreneurs with backgrounds in engineering or marketing, it isn’t so easy to quickly digest financial statements and projections — for those who live in Seattle, help is here — I met Diane Renihan last year, and she has awesome financial experience working with Avelle (formerly known as Bag Borrow or Steal), and many Seattle startups, and she’s now offering Financial and Accounting Boot Camp classes to Seattle entrepreneurs.

Wow — if my Mom knew what NPR Morning Edition was, she’d be really impressed — I told her that we’re going to be on the show tomorrow morning, and she asked what NPR was (sigh).  But, for the rest of the world beyond lovely Leesport, PA, we couldn’t be more excited — I mean, NPR Morning Edition is the pinnacle, right?!?  Or, at least, it’s a pretty darn good basecamp!

NPR’s Yuki Noguchi and Wendy Kaufman reached out in the last few weeks to ask for TeachStreet’s response to Chris Anderson’s new book, ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price’ — they noticed that we very recently moved from an all-free model to one where we charge performance-based fees for teachers.  In short, we’re big believers in the power of free — that is, we always expect that there will be a free experience for teachers and schools, to add their teaching profile to TeachStreet, and a few classes.  But, we also think that having performance-based fees helps to make the TeachStreet student class/learning/discovery experience better for everyone — students will get faster response from teachers who have skin in the game, and everyone will know that reviews and ratings have more credibility, because we’ll be able to verify that a paid transaction happened between that buyer and seller.

There are many benefits to having a vibrant economic system, where a few dollars are being exchanged, and value is being created, for everyone — we hope you enjoy the TeachStreet NPR Free radio segment — you can hear it here!

NPR Morning Edition - TeachStreet Free (Chris Anderson Book)

Several weeks ago we blogged about our ‘TeachStreet win’ at the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum — today, our friend Chris Pirillo posted the video of the TeachStreet talk — it’s actually a pretty good 5-6 minute intro to what we’re building with TeachStreet, and why it may matter to you (and millions of other folks like you).

Enjoy — and, thank you to Chris — check out his tech/community site — it’s about as good as they get. And, if you’re in Seattle and you’re interested in technology, blogging and/or what’s new and exciting, you really should attend a conference he puts on called Gnomedex — it’s in mid-August each year, and I try to never miss it!

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

I’ve been asked (and have answered) the question many times, “Where did you come up with the idea for TeachStreet?”.

Yes, it all began with my scooter-riding class, but it really began much earlier.  You see, I’ve been a class-taker and lifelong learner for as long as I can remember.  After graduating from college in 1990, I pursued my CPA (yes, I’m an accountant!), and during those first few years also pursued courses in Financial Planning, while taking Wine Appreciation classes with my wife while we lived in Wayne, PA.  That Wine Appreciation class may have been the earliest seed of the TeachStreet idea — I distinctly remember being a little apprehensive before each class, as were the rest of the students, but by the end of class we were all having a blast, laughing and learning (of course, the wine probably helped!).

Over the years, I’ve taken Photography classes at Seattle Central Community College, classes at the now defunct DiscoverU, Intro to HTML at the University of Washington Experimental College, online classes at eduFire and Lynda.com, and spend a lot of time reading both books, blogs, magazines and whatever else I can get my hands on.

Sound familiar?

I bet it does, else you wouldn’t be reading this blog, and so passionate about TeachStreet.

However, during the early days (and years) of TeachStreet, I worked myself to death, to the point where I wasn’t taking classes.  Isn’t that crazy?!?  I was working every waking moment to build a website to help people discover great classes, teachers and schools, but I wasn’t taking the time to “eat my own dogfood”, as they say!

So, in the last few weeks and months, I’ve started to take some time to recharge, and to check out some great local teachers.  I wrote recently about my first pilates classes — they were a blast, and were great for loosening up my back, and strengthening my core.  And, this weekend I’m signed up for Speed Reading classes — what I loved about this one was that they offer a $100 discount for students who contact them via TeachStreet — that’s awesome!  And, my keyboard is finally on the way (I bought it with frequent flyer miles — so it was free — Anita the Piano Teacher will FINALLY get me as a student, after talking with me about Pianos for more than a year!)

So, why?  I guess just because I love to expand my skills, and probably because I’m still hoping to be a virtuoso at something… I obviously still haven’t yet found that special skill

What are YOU learning this summer?  Can we help you find it?

p.s. I’m going to learn to fly a plane one of these days — a longer-term goal is to fly seaplanes regularly (crazy dream would be to own one… tied up behind my house on Lake Washington… to fly up to my other home in the San Juan Islands!)

Yours truly got some local Seattle tv-air time today in a fun “iPhone vs. Blackberry” showdown, co-starring with one of our good friends Todd “Startup Advisor” Sawicki. As you’d expect, the iPhone won handily

Todd Sawicki and Dave Schappell duel their phones

Do you have technology questions that you’d like answered? If so, find a local technology teacher!

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Week 1 “The Selected Few” from Andrew on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to finally meet Brad Feld in person – he’s sort of a big deal in the tech/startup space, as both an experienced entrepreneur, blogger, early BBS hacker, passionate investor, and one of the founders of TechStars.  TechStars is a startup incubator with locations in Boulder, CO and Boston, MA (and hopefully soon in Seattle… hint, hint…) — in a nutshell they help encourage and teach wannabe entrepreneurs how to build companies, teams and successful products.

The recently launched their first original web series, The Founders, which will track three tech startup companies throughout the summer as they relocate to Boulder to take part in the highly selective program.

The 14-episode series, which releases weekly, will follow startups The Next Big Sound, Everlater and ReTel through their founders (Alex White, David Hoffman, Samir Rayani, Natty Zola, Nate Abbott, Adam Rodnitzky, Scott Roberts and George Aspland).

SMX is in Seattle this week, bringing in web celebs like New York’s Allen Stern, of Center Networks — he stopped by TeachStreet World Headquarters today and shot a quick video (here’s the TeachStreet blog post on Center Networks) — normally, I’m uncomfortable watching these, but I really enjoyed this one — I’m looking forward to drinks at Paddy Coyne’s in a few hours, to learn more about Allen’s projects!

We’d be remiss if we didn’t ask Allen what he’s learning… his answer, “German Classes in New York”

TeachStreet wins Seattle WTIA Fast Pitch Forum 2009

Suffice it to say that last week was a really good one for the TeachStreet team — not only did we announce our TeachStreet expansion to Chicago and our recent funding (on top of our New York City Teacher and Classes expansion a few weeks ago!), but we also participated in the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum in Seattle with 22 other great Seattle startups — and, attendees voted us TeachStreet of the 3 ‘Best in Show’ Seattle startup companies!

Humbling to be sure, because there were some awesome companies (Redfin, Swype, Socrata, RealityGap, and more — really, I feel guilty leaving them all out!)

Here was some follow-on news coverage from the event:

AdReady, Swype, TeachStreet Win WTIA Awards by Greg Huang (xConomy)

Startups and Silver Linings: Insights from a WTIA Forum Panelist by Patrick Ennis (xConomy)

TeachStreet named one of 3 Best in Show at 2009 Fast Pitch Forum in Seattle