Susan Kistler on a Potpourri of #Eval12 Preparation Items – Even for Those Not Attending

I am Susan Kistler, the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director and aea365 regular Saturday contributor. Here in the AEA offices, we’re counting down the days to Evaluation 2012. This time next week, we’ll already be in Minneapolis, getting things set up and looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.

It is busy busy busy, but a number of items have come across my desk in the past week to share.

Rad Resource – AEA on YouTube: We’ve got an AEA YouTube channel! There, you can find the set of Ignite presentations from Evaluation 2011 as well as the historic rendition of Evaluation Pie from the culminating session. I’ll share more as it expands. We hope to post the 50+ Ignite presentations from Evaluation 2012 there.

On another front, AEA is Setting Records (we think): We believe that Ignite AEA 2012, with its 50 ignite presentations across two days, will represent the largest single O’Reilly recognized Ignite event!

Hot Tip – Twitter: If you are Tweeting about Evaluation 2012 use hashtag #Eval12.  If you can’t be at the conference, follow #eval12 either through Twitter or we just had the Twitter feed embedded on the Evaluation 2012 homepage here.

Hot Tip – Twitter 2 – EvalAHA!: And,  this from our innovative evaluation team – the first 200 conference attendees who tweet an “aha moment” at #EvalAHA! will receive a special gift at the AEA Conference Evaluation Table.

Rad Resource – Map: If you are attending the conference, this super useful map is worth downloading and printing to help you get around. Sessions will be at the Hilton Minneapolis Monday-Wednesday, and at the Convention Center Thursday-Saturday. The little red lines are the indoor Minneapolis Skyway system.

Rad Resources – AEA Public eLibrary: I will post on this again as the repository grows, but we’re already seeing uploads from the Evaluation 2012 start to add to the already substantial collection in AEA’s public eLibrary. Thanks to everyone who is sharing.

Rad Resources – Procrastinators Unite: Chris Lysy, of Fresh Spectrum, is one of very few evaluation cartoonists (ok, maybe the only consistent one?). He’s chairing one of the sessions at Evaluation 2012 and shared the cartoon here along with encouragement for the presenters in his session to finish their presentations. We’re hoping that everyone will up theire presentation’s awesomeness factor. Don’t forget to visit the guidance from AEA’s Potent Presentations Initiative, and to attend the p2i sessions on messaging, design, and delivery, at Evaluation 2012. Even if you aren’t attending, a range of potent presentations resources are already available on the p2i website and there will be more post-conference!