I’ve been inspired by TED talks for some time. How can you not be? With talks  from amazing minds like Temple Grandin, Kary Mullis, talents like Sirena Huang, Sara Kay, how could you not spend a little time each day being inspired too?

So of course when I was asked to volunteer a little time to live-tweet the TEDx San Jose event I jumped at the chance. I can tell you that there is nothing like actually being here. Here’s just a few of the speakers who inspired me.

We heard from Margo McAuliffe, a 75 year old agent of social change in Kenya who is changing the world for young girls by giving them the opportunity to get an education.

Dr. Kim Silverman, PH.D. reminded us of the power of magic to lift our spirits and re-animate our inspiration. “When problems return to our lives, it’s the universe giving us an opportunity to free ourselves”

Cris Waugh from IDEO reminded us to keep open to new ideas, and the story of how he was inspired to work with Jamie Oliver to create a corporate cooking program, changing the way employees think about cooking and eating.

Kevin Surace pointed out that the  US now leads the world in obesity, gun ownership and debt. But he followed that revelation with mention of how we also lead in disruptive innovation with products ranging from Facebook and Zynga to bricks that absorb CO2 from their environment, and that we are now able to create a ton of steel with just 1 man hour of labor.

Ge Wang shared his opinion that  being able to be expressive is sometimes more important than being realistic and played the theme from the Legend of Zelda on his iPhone with Ocarina, one of several apps created by his team at Smule and he if music is universal to humans and now we have this ubiquitous technology to share music, how can we use that to connect people?

Karen Trilevsky, like Margo McAuliffe would not be distracted by challenges. She kept  her focus on providing the best possible quality and sticking to her core values and impacted the people she worked with and then the local community in amazing ways.

If you have the opportunity to attend a TEDx event, wherever you are. Go. You’ll leave inspired and with a new lease on hope. How could you possibly resist that?