Three A&M professors, one high school teacher and one artistic director spoke Saturday for TEDxTAMU – a student-organized Technology, Entertainment and Design conference with an A&M twist.Event organizers from MSC ALOT, the freshman leadership organization that orchestrated the event, said the speakers for the sold-out event were “phenomenal.””Their talks were incredible,” said Dillon Thomison, junior engineering technology major and a director of TEDxTAMU. “It was diverse and multi-disciplinary like we had planned.”Jenna Ingram, junior accounting major and a director of TEDxTAMU, said every speaker was an exceptional part of the first-ever TEDx at A&M.”I could not have asked for a better group of speakers, much less a better first group of speakers for the first TEDx event like this,” Ingram said.Ingram said nearly all of the speakers have some connection to A&M, making this TEDx unique from others. Three are current A&M professors while John Story, management and marketing chair at the University of St. Thomas, is Class of 1991.”We tried to stick with some kind of connection with A&M [when choosing speakers],” Ingram said. “We’ll continue to make that a tradition to keep it within not only A&M but the A&M community that can be extended to bring that spotlight to A&M.”Ingram said the timing of the conference was important.”The past semester and year, [A&M] has been under the spotlight more,” Ingram said. “The program and potential growth of the program will keep A&M in the spotlight not only in athletics, but also in academics.”The coordinators plan to make TEDx an annual event in the community.”This is the start of something great for A&M,” Thomison said. “The [conference] has set something incredible in motion. A&M has so much potential with the Tier I research going on along with the world class professors and speakers we have on campus.” TED conferences inform global audiences about “ideas worth spreading” and have been held since 1990. In 2009, TED began providing licenses to communities to provide their own independent TEDx events.Allie Mock, freshman English major and member of the speaker committee for TEDxTAMU, said Saturday’s conference held true to the original TED mission.”It really embraced TED’s ideal of spreading new ideas and innovation,” Mock said. “TEDx is a brand-new thing, while A&M is a school known for its traditions. We are really just continuing the tradition of academic excellence.”Topics of discussion ranged from the influence of milk on developing countries to the need for art.Jane Weiner, president of Hope Stone Inc., an arts outreach program for children in Houston, demonstrated the importance of art in education by acting out a fairy tale.”We need creative, problem-solving, critical thinking people, an army of artists to invade society,” Weiner said.