I had the pleasure of attending TEDxBoston earlier this week. I’ve been a huge fan of TED since I first discovered it and someday I hope I have the wallet and the invite to attend an actual conference.

The day didn’t start off that great as the organizers didn’t have a collective decision on if pictures could be taken or not. I was told yes by one and then told no by another. Not wanting to cause problems I said that I wouldn’t take any. Of course as I go out and look for photos I have yet to see any that I can post.

This is something events must realize is that people will be writing about the event and would love to include photos. If you don’t let them take pictures then you should insure that you have your pictures up as quickly as possible. I know they had a photographer for the event, but I can’t find them anywhere yet.

The content for the day was amazing. They put together a great line up of speakers on a variety of topics. I wish they had mixed in some of the health topics that seemed to dominate the second half with the ones in the first half just for variety sake.

You can see all the speakers on the TEDxBoston site and there wasn’t a single bad one. Dave Edwards approach to art, life and science really changed the way I think about some things and what Hugo Van Vuuren and his team are doing to bring electricity from dirt in Africa was mind blowing.

Finally, I am happy to report that I met the most passionate man on the planet and his name is Benjamin Zander. This guy lives and loves what he does and that is music. I got chance to shake his hand and instead he hugged me and thanked me for telling him how much I loved his passion.

The day ended with him conducting the Youth Orchestra of the Americas for all the attendees. He earlier said “I measure success by the number of shiny eyes in the audience” and I can safely say that as we all rose to our feet in a standing ovation filled with energy from the performance there was not a single NON shiny eye in the place.

Thanks to the organizers of TEDxBoston. I look forward to next year and hope I can be part of it as well.