I am Herb Baum, Senior Director of Program Evaluation at the Data Recognition Corporation in the Washington DC office and looking forward to welcoming you here in October. For the past decade I have attended the AEA conference, attended some of the workshops and presented at many of them.
Here is my advice to both first-time attendees and those that have been there before:
Hot Tips – Making the most of the conference:
- Take advantage of early registration and get your housing reservation in early as well. http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=21
- Plan on being there for the entire conference. The presentations given at the last session are just as good as those presented during the first session. http://www.americanevaluation.org/search13/search.asp
- Introduce yourself to the person sitting next you at the session, you will meet some interesting people.
Cool Tricks—Things you should know:
- The Topical Interest Group (TIG) business meetings are a great way to meet evaluators with interests similar to yours. (In advance, select Business Meeting in the online Searchable Program to create a list of these, or look in the hardcopy program that you will receive on site, they are all listed in a two-page spread towards the front)
- Plan your time wisely and use this opportunity to meet other evaluators.
Hot Tips – What to Visit:
AEA chooses great cities to visit. My favorite thing is to visit in DC is the Vietnam Memorial, Korean Memorial and Lincoln Monument at night. It is safe to do that. Seeing these at night is very different at night than during the day.
This is the last of three weeks this year sponsored by our Local Arrangements Working Group (LAWG) for Evaluation 2013, the American Evaluation Association Annual Conference coming up next month in Washington, DC. They’re sharing not only evaluation expertise from in and around our nation’s capital, but also tips for enjoying your time in DC. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to contribute to aea365? Review the contribution guidelines and send your draft post to aea365@eval.org.