I am Susan Kistler, the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director and aea365’s regular Saturday contributor. Last week, I wrote about 25 low-cost/no-cost tech tools for Data Visualization and Reporting. Here’s a bit more about one of them.
Rad Resource – Fiverr: On fiverr, people list things that they will do for $5. Lots of it is junk, but lots is useful as well – you just may need to look around a bit. I have used them to convert items to vector art and create video intros. And, an amazing woman named Ang, who goes by madmoo on fiverr, created the great picture above! For $5, she made a stencil from what I sent her, sprinkled the shavings, and sent me back multiple high resolution photos of the creation with different backgrounds and from different angles (see more of her work here). I’m totally in love with it – and, now I have a unique photo to use as an icon for the AEA website, a slide for when we’re presenting about the Coffee Break Webinars, and an illustration for this blog post!
Lesson Learned – High Impact Photos: Stephanie Evergreen, AEA’s intrepid Potent Presentations Initiative (p2i) lead, has reminded us a number of times of the power of high impact, full bleed, images. The handouts from her potent presentation on creating potently designed slides can be downloaded from the p2i website – there, you’ll find the slides and full notes from the p2i presentations on presentation messaging, delivery, and design. Check on the one on design in particular to learn more about selecting and using potent images. That’s why I was so excited to be able to have a fiverr entrepreneur create this unique photo, specific to my needs and program, that I can use in multiple reporting contexts.
Hot Tips – Free Coffee Break Webinars: AEA’s Coffee Break Webinar series offers over 40 20-minute webinars per year that are free to AEA members (and, if you aren’t a member, wouldn’t you like to join? Learn more here). We’ve got five coming up between now and the end of the year.
- November 15: HyperRESEARCH: A Simple & Powerful Tool for Qualitative Analysis – Paul Dupuis
- November 29: The New Classroom Assessment Standards – Barbara Howard
- December 6: Meaningful & Accessible: Presenting Results in Ways that are Useful to Clients – Laura Bloomberg
- December 13: Outstanding Evaluation Award Winner (2011) – Michael Coplen, Michael Zuschlag, Joyce Ranney, & Michael Harnar
- December 20: Map It: Using Geographic Data & Tableau – Julie Lo & Peter Neely
AEA members can read full descriptions and register online here http://comm.eval.org/coffee_break_webinars/CoffeeBreak/.
The opinions above are my own. AEA does not endorse individual products or services. 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.
Amazing. I an also using Fiverr for many gigs. It’s a wonderful.
i create professional whiteboard animation, not stock images, cipart, all illustration is unique and created from scratch .. http://www.fiverr.com/ruupe44/make-a-whiteboard-video
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Really good point Ang – definitely look closely at ratings, feedback, and work examples (all readily available on fiverr). If you go with someone with few ratings or mixed ratings, you’re rolling the dice. But, for only $5, if you love the possibility of something unique, go for it.
Another things to look for, in particular with items that produce photos, is the quality of the final photos. The work itself can be good, but bad lighting or low resolution can make it worthless.
Thank you for the endorsement, Susan. Like you, when I first heard about Fiverr 2 years ago, I was a little sceptical and saw some weird and wonderful things – and here I am now selling them! Some may seem like a bit of a joke at first, but as you’ve found, they can be used very effectively for an eye-catching and memorable addition to your blog or website.
With this particular ‘gig’ of mine, for the price of a cup of coffee you can actually have something that lasts a lot longer and presumably has more impact. All you need to do is spend a little time exercising a small amount of caution, reading the feedback or looking at the examples, then trusting your instincts.
The site is pretty addictive. You may end up with some junk (in your own words), however you may also find a lot of valuable and time-saving resources. I was happy to work with you – by all means check my fiverr profile to see what else I do, and keep an eye on my facebook page to remain updated – http://www.facebook.com/madmoofiverr.
Thank you!
~Ang (aka madmoo)