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Sharon Lyle spent eight months planning for the second TEDx�鶹�� conference. She combed through magazines and blogs looking for speakers, took suggestions from everyone, including her mother. �She sends me at least one a week,� Lyle says. �Mostly, they�re people she�s heard on Think.�

Because TEDx�鶹�� hews close to the roots of the California-born symposium��It was a fantasy dinner party of smart people,� Lyle says�her job was to get the speakers and the listeners in the same room, then step aside and let them talk.

So it wasn�t a surprise that, when the day came in October, Lyle was invisible. That attendees could only catch a glimpse�maybe the shoulder of her green sweater poking out from backstage when architect Joshua Prince-Ramus mentioned her name�meant everything was going to plan.

Lyle, the daughter of Bobby Lyle (as in �鶹��s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering), swore she�d never come back to Dallas. Before Geoffrey Orsak, the dean of her father's namesake department, called her to run the first TEDx�鶹�� event, Lyle was in Austin and on her way to San Francisco, preparing to �make my mark on the world in education.� Orsak asked for five months. Then he�d help her go wherever she wanted.
�Of course, five months later, I was totally hooked and I loved it,� Lyle says. �There are amazing resources here. The next 10 years are going to be a really interesting time to be in this city.�

A big part of that is because of Lyle, who is readying for another TEDx�鶹��, as well as the Dallas debut of Slideluck Potshow, which is even more literally a �fantasy dinner party of smart people.� And another chance to start a conversation.

�ZAC CRAIN

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