If you know someone who experienced TEDxAustin, I feel for you. Your friend or loved one has probably already gushed about this speaker or that speaker, the entire group singing full bore at the end with Craig Hella Johnson, or how easy it was to meet people. Yes, the experience lived up to its hype- exceeded it.

The theme this year was "Beyond Measure", which I took it to mean, "going above and beyond to solve big problems". And man, we saw some big problems being solved.

But let me set the stage a bit to underscore why this group of speakers was so good - so much better than those you see in the most circulated TED videos. When the producers needed time to set up the stage for the next speaker, we watched a video from a past TED or TEDx presenter. Amazing stuff. The inventor of Captcha, that horribly annoying human verification system, has re-invented it so that, when you enter a Captcha word, it's actually digitizing a word from a book that computer scanning couldn't interpret. Heady stuff. Brilliant.

Brilliance sadly inaccessible to mere mortals like me.

But the 14 speakers (14!) at TEDxAustin are solving major problems differently. Now, while they may be as brilliant as Luis van Ahn, the re-Captcha inventor, they're going beyond measure using something we all contain and can access: passion, unabashed determination, and love for their fellow human.

We all have those things in us. Just got to use them.

So, while I'd love to come back, I'm cool with someone else taking my seat next year and experiencing the wonder. But that doesn't mean I won't apply....