My name is Susan Kistler, the Executive Director for the American Evaluation Association. I contribute each Saturday’s post to aea365.
Hot Tip – Submit a Proposal for Evaluation 2011: The 2011 Call for Proposals went online this week for AEA’s annual conference to be held the first week of November in Anaheim, California. We anticipate that over 2500 delegates from around the world will join us in California for this, AEA’s 25th Anniversary Conference.
Hot Tip – Consider a Poster or Roundtable if this is your first time presenting: The poster exhibition is the most well attended session at the conference. Roundtables are small-group discussion-based exchanges. Both posters and roundtable allow for the types of dialogue that help to build your professional network and may be less intimidating than a formal presentation in a large room.
Hot Tip – Focus on the Evaluation part of Program Evaluation: All proposals submitted to AEA go through a peer-review process via one of over 45 reviewing teams. While it may seem obvious, to increase your likelihood of acceptance, if you are talking about a program evaluation focus more on the evaluation and less on the program. Let the program specifics and the findings themselves provide context for things such as your lessons learned about conducting quality evaluations, about how to report evaluation findings, and about how to facilitate evaluation use.
Hot Tip – Sign up for AEA’s Free Webinar on Submitting a Conference Proposal: If you haven’t submitted to AEA before, sign up for our free webinar on proposal submission to be held on Thursday, February 3, from 2:00-2:20 PM. If you aren’t a member and would like a free pass, email Heidi at heidi@eval.org.
I hope to see you in November in Anaheim!