Organized by local entrepreneur, author and all-around rock star Kevin Purdy, TEDxBuffalo was a full day of thoughtful words, inspiration, conversation, music, education, surprises, and crowd-surfing lobsters that had 100 people dancing, clapping and buzzing kazoos.

At first blush, one might find it incongruous to hear a series of modern secular lectures under the ever watchful stained glass gaze of the Virgin Mary and an assembled heavenly host. The Montante Center at Canisius College began life as Saint Vincent de Paul Church, a squat romanesque dome filled with decorative tile and narrow purpled windows.

I had the good fortune to attend the first ever TEDx in Buffalo. The event took place on October 11, 2011 at the Montante Cultural Center on the Canisius College campus in Buffalo, NY. During TEDxBuffalo , over a dozen speakers took the stage to tell stories and engage the audience.

The Martin Group's Creative Director, Greg Meadows was one of the 100 invited guests for Tuesday's TEDxBuffalo audience, and that was a pretty big coup. When Copy Editor (and self-professed TED-head) Wendy Reynolds won two tickets in their "Dream Big" contest, she raffled off her ‘plus one' here at the office.

At Tuesday's TEDxBuffalo conference, an entrepreneur who tries to harness the power of online competition for good followed a community organizer who wants to craft a holistic approach to healing sick cities. The organizer followed a business owner whose company converts plastic waste to ultra-clean alternative fuel, who had spoken after the small-scale dairy farmer.