Hello! I’m Sheila B Robinson, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor, and I have some questions for you today! Back in 2014, I published a similar post about AEA’s Conference History page, and decided it’s time again to ask a few more questions.
Hot Tip: Poke around AEA’s website (or go directly to this link under the “Events” menu) and you’ll find some fascinating trivia about our annual conference. Perhaps some of these burning questions have kept YOU up at night. For instance…
1.) Who was president of AEA in 1988?
2.) In what year was the AEA Annual Conference first held in Washington, DC?
3.) How many different US states and Canadian provinces have hosted the AEA conference?
4.) When was the conference theme: Evaluation and Social Justice?
5.) How many times has the AEA president’s first name been the same as that of a previous AEA president?
6.) Where will Evaluation 2020 be held?
The answers are all there!*
Cool Trick: Want to know about the sessions your favorite evaluator presented in any given year? Curious to see what the hot topics were when the conference theme was Evaluation Quality? Perhaps you have an idea about a new topic and wonder if anyone has presented on it before. Or, you’re just learning something new about evaluation and want to see who the thought leaders on that topic appear to have been over the past few years, so you can follow up on their work or even network with them. You can access conference programs for the last 15 years from the Conference History page for all of this information. Most are even searchable online!
Cooler trick: Want to know how the conference was evaluated and how it performed in any given year? How many evaluators attended in 2003? What do we know about them? How many were students, researchers, professors, or consultants? How many conferences had they attended before? Did they consider themselves novice or expert evaluators? What were their reactions to the conference in that year? Evaluation data and reports are available for several conference years.
Rad Resource: AEA’s Conference History page: Everything you wanted to know about Evaluation 1986 – Evaluation 2018, (33 years!) but were afraid to ask. (Well, perhaps not afraid…)
Bonus Rad Resource: The page also includes links to the websites of the last 6 Summer Evaluation Institutes.
*Except for this one: #3. I counted 17 different states plus Washington, DC, and two Canadian provinces.
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.