Hello dear readers! Sheila B Robinson here, AEA365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor with a note of thanks, and a few updates for you. In just a few days, we will have published our 4000th article on AEA365. Isn’t that amazing? Hundreds upon hundreds of generous evaluators have contributed their experiences, lessons learned, hot tips, cool tricks and rad resources to what has become an incredibly rich archive of evaluation know-how.
And the good news continues! Just between us, I used to worry about filling 365 days with original material. Now our editorial calendar is filled for sponsored weeks for about a year. No worries though! We always retain slots for individual posts and usually run about 2-4 months ahead for publication of those, and groups are still reserving weeks for the next year!
How does it all work? The only way to publish a blog EVERY SINGLE DAY is to have help. During “sponsored weeks” we feature TIGs, Affiliates, and other groups, as well as themed weeks suggested by readers. Each sponsored week has a volunteer curator who helps us by working with authors, ensuring posts comply with contribution guidelines, and assembles a week’s worth of posts to send to us in a batch.
During “individuals weeks” we save slots on the calendar for the individual posts that people send to us. We accept individual articles on a rolling basis year-round on any evaluation-related topic, and schedule them for publication only once we have an article ready to go (in other words, we don’t save particular slots for individuals).
We used to save all Saturday slots for AEA staff and AEA365 curators, but more and more groups have asked to submit 7 articles for their sponsored weeks. For 2021, all sponsoring groups have a choice to submit 6 or 7 articles, and the AEA365 curators will fill in the open Saturdays. For 2022, all groups will be asked to submit 7 articles. AEA365 curators will still contribute on some Saturdays during our “individuals” weeks.
Lesson Learned:
We’ve heard from many authors that sometimes 500 words just isn’t enough! So, we’ve upped the word limit to 600. We still welcome shorter articles, but now also those that are a bit longer.
Hot Tip:
Keep sending in your individual article drafts for consideration, or write to request a sponsored week for a group or a theme. As always, please read our updated Contribution Guidelines before submitting.
THANKS to ALL our loyal readers and authors!
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. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.