Mana Mushrooms

Chapman was graduated in 1997 from the Tandem Friends School, a small private high school in Charlottesville, Virginia. After completing high school, at the age of 18, Chapman moved to South America for a year where he worked to become fluent in the Spanish language. He then returned to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he simultaneously pursued an Associate's Degree in the Liberal Arts at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) and managed a farm in Orange County, Virginia. Being fascinated with languages, Chapman integrated studies in Spanish and French with his degree program and, upon being graduated Phi Theta Kappa from PVCC, was given a scholarship by the Blue Ridge Rotary Club to travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he acted as a cultural attaché giving presentations to technical school students about the higher education system in the United States of America. He remained in Argentina for three months.

Upon completing his scholarship in Buenos Aires, Chapman relocated for several months to Montréal, Québec, to pursue intensive French language courses at l'Université de Montréal. He continued his French language studies in Grenoble and Paris, France, where he lived and studied French language and culture for one year through the Boston University. Upon completion of his studies, Chapman stayed in France for several months as an intern for Gato Loco Productions, a music festival production company located in Paris. He worked as a translator and cultural attaché in the Communications Department to organize "le Primtemps de Bourges", a yearly spring music festival in Bourges, France.

Still interested in pursuing more languages and exposing himself to foreign cultures, Chapman took time off from school and work to travel for three months in the south of the People's Republic of China, where he simultaneously initiated informal studies in the Mandarin Chinese language and lived and practiced Taijiquan in a Buddhist monastery in the mountains outside of Dali, in the Yunnan province of China.

Upon leaving China, Chapman relocated to Central Tanzania to volunteer as a field reporter for the The International Small Group and Tree Planting Association (TIST), an international not-for-profit reforestation project founded by his mother and step-father. He remained in Tanzania for two months, studying Swahili in his free time.

Having been accepted to the University of Virginia (UVA), Chapman returned to Charlottesville, Virginia, for two years to pursue a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics. During summer break, he traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, to continue working for Gato Loco Productions, acting as cultural attaché and translator in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English for the Cosmopolis music festival. In 2003, he was graduated with distinction from UVA.

During his time at UVA, Chapman became fascinated by the transformational power of the World Wide Web, most specifically the unprecedented potential of the immense, worldwide Free Software community. After finishing his studies at UVA, Chapman and his brother started Lightservers.net, a company that offered web-based Free Software solutions and consulting for individuals, small businesses and corporations.

This work led to a year-long project with the JSerra High School in San Juan Capistrano, California, to initiate a school-wide laptop program. Chapman worked with his brother to research and implement best practices for laptop schools, creating an online database of openly available resources for laptop education, training teachers weekly and forming a computer club for students. He and his brother were also active in implementing several web-based Free Software solutions for the school, including internal and external content management systems. During his time in California, Chapman traveled to Japan for a month to research Web-based Free Software technology solutions in Asia.

After completing the project at JSerra High School, Chapman went on to co-found Mana Threads, LLC, with Justin Lowell-Bellew, a fellow student from his studies in Grenoble. Mana Threads, LLC, has since been active in independently researching sustainable and scalable bio-remediation solutions to create revenue streams from waste sources and improve the overall environmental health of the planet. Pioneered by Justin, this work has led to the implementation of a small-scale version of a globally scalable operation using waste materials to produce gourmet mushrooms. This project is called Mana Mushrooms.

While co-running Mana Threads, LLC, Chapman continued with his Free Software interests and formed his own company, Conscious Manifestations LLC, which provides consulting and Web-based Free Software solutions for individuals and businesses, as well as building freely-available online databases regarding a wide range of topics including Free Software for free language-learning resources, free wiki engines and free music production software, as well as other interests. Most of this work uses the Drupal CMS, a Free Software content management system licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Chapman's continued interest in language led to a three-month intensive Mandarin Chinese language and cultural studies program in Beijing, China, in the summer of 2005.

In his free time he makes acoustic and electronic music, surfs, snowboards and researches foreign languages. He is currently studying Mandarin Chinese, German, Italian and Russian.