By Jaclyn Carlson Each year I look forward to the Vivid Festival in Sydney. For a few short weeks the city glows with light and each night hundreds of visitors and families flock to Circular Quay and the surrounding areas to be mesmerised by light - in all forms.  This year there were light installations in the water, billowing sails projected onto the Opera House and the MCA transformed into a kaleidoscope of moving pictures - it was amazing and a huge congratulations must go to the organisers for the work that was put into this year's event.

Beyond the light installations was another part of the festival called the Vivid Ideas Exchange, a creative collaboration with artists, businesses and more that resulted in a stellar line-up of events and workshops held in Sydney over the past few weeks.  Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend one of those events called Etsy Success Sydney.  The event was a day long conference where the CEO of Etsy, Chad Dickerson talked about courage and other creative types and bloggers held sessions on everything from styling to DIY PR. For anyone with a creative spirit it was 8 hrs of bliss. I walked away floating despite my embarassing run in with the CEO that I wrote about on my blog earlier this week.  I believe they will be posting all the event videos on the Vivid site so I highly recommend grabbing a cup of tea and listening to Chad's presentation. Sometimes you just need to learn from someone else's experience,someone who has accomplished great and wonderful things.  His advice was simple but strong - Take the leap. Courage comes from doing - you just have to start.

Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Jaclyn Carlson is the author behind the Sydney-based blog, Little Paper Trees. When not documenting her expat adventures, she can be found working for one of Australia’s top design & homewares trade shows. Passionate and prone to wasting hours on Pinterest, she has years of experience in marketing, advertising and PR and aims to put Sydney’s creative women in the spotlight with her monthly column.