Happy Weekend Loyal Readers! I’m Sheila B Robinson, AEA365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor with an early celebration of our 3000th post and some key insider information about our beloved blog. We’re not quite to 3000, but getting close (today’s post is 2085). If you want to keep track, check out our archive where you can see how many articles have been posted each year (while we aim for 365, like the world around us, we too are imperfect).
First, some history. AEA365 began on January 1, 2010 with Amy Germuth on Reports and Checklists. And we’ve been going strong ever since. Hundreds of authors have contributed posts over the years, and dozens of TIGs, Affiliates, and other groups have sponsored weeks, making this one of the richest collegial and collaborative online resources for professional learning for evaluators.
With this celebration, I want to offer a little insider information, some reminders perhaps, and a few Hot Tips on contributing to this awesome community.
Hot Tip: We have two types of weeks – “sponsored” weeks and “individuals” weeks.
Individuals weeks are saved for when individuals contribute articles not associated with a specific sponsored or themed week. As these come in, we correspond with authors and schedule the posts only when they are ready for publication (we generally don’t reserve specific dates). Authors are welcome to send drafts for consideration at any time – 365/24/7. There are usually about a dozen individuals weeks each year. Publication can be anywhere between about 2 and 12 weeks from the time an article is ready to go.
Cool Trick: Want to contribute an individual post? Check out our Contribution Guidelines and send it to us any time!
Sponsored weeks are planned well in advance (up to a year!) and a week is reserved on our editorial calendar. These weeks are sponsored by TIGs, Affiliates, or other groups interested in having a week on a particular topic or theme. Anyone can propose a sponsored week and that person then becomes the curator for that week. Sponsored week curators round up a group of authors and collect posts. They ensure that the authors adhere to contribution guidelines, and then deliver the set of articles to an AEA365 curator by a set due date. An AEA365 curator is always on hand to help the sponsored week curator through the process (it’s easy!).
Cool Trick: Want to propose a sponsored week? Get in touch with me to find out which weeks are available for sponsorship.
Cooler Trick: Please do your best to come through if you’ve made a commitment to a sponsored week curator to write an article. We don’t stock “extra posts” to plug in and sponsored weeks are always 6 days; Sunday – Friday (AEA365 and AEA staff generally contribute the Saturday posts).
Rad Resources: Check out these other articles on how AEA365 works!
- On using images and minding copyright for photos: On being Picture Perfect! by Sheila B Robinson
- On adding comments: Interacting with Others on AEA365: Making and Receiving Comments! by Sheila B Robinson
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 submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.