Here’s how I did following my own advice for navigating the spectacle of ASAE in Nashville last week. 1. Take time for silence and be mindful. Grade: C On the positive side, I noticed the wonderful music and thoroughly enjoyed the delicious food and drink of Nashville. Staying fully present in each session allowed me to experience ASAE in a new way. It’s amazing … Continue reading Following my own Advice
Have you ever come home from a conference exhausted and wondering what the heck just happened? This happens to me, especially at large conferences like the American Society of Association Executives annual meeting and expo. ASAE is large (5,000 people here, I think) and has more going on than one simple person like me can follow. I am a dust bunny and it’s Spring Cleaning. … Continue reading Six ways to be more intentional and have more fun at a conference
We talk a lot about resistance in the field evaluation. “Evaluation has so much to offer. Why do organizations, funders, participants, and leaders resist our efforts?” People resist evaluation for the same reason we resist exercise, meditation, and eating our Brussel spouts*. We fear change. Even “good for us” change, especially “good for us” change, is scary. Often, we can’t do anything about the “bad … Continue reading Evaluation Resistance Dudes
It’s Social Work TIG week over on the AEA365 Blog and I hope people have been reading. I’m glad to see Kathy Bolland calling attention today to the common values held by both social workers and evaluators. Those values are what drew me to these fields. What social workers and evaluators do is different, but there is a lot of overlap in why we do … Continue reading Social work, evaluation, and life (or What My MSW Taught me Part 1)
Last week the aea365 blog reposted an intriguing challenge from John LaVelle at Claremont Graduate University. John asked us to develop our own personal statements about evaluation- what it is, how we do it, and what we draw upon to inform our work. Evaluation is dominated by theories of evaluation often linked to the work of marquis names. One of the ways I read John’s … Continue reading What are you doing to help yourself learn?
One of the reasons I started this blog is because I am always finding neat evaluation-related content online that I can’t incorporate easily into my work. I don’t have other evaluators around to discuss things with and I care too much for my colleagues to ask them to pretend to be excited about my online evaluation discoveries. Recently, I found this post on the Education … Continue reading What are you doing to help your clients learn?
I promised to share some of what brought me to this blog and have since realized completely fulfilling that pledge is a process that will emerge over time rather than an item I can address in a single post. I’m still really slow with this whole blog post writing thing. My internal editor is far too critical for my own good thanks to years of … Continue reading Entering the Evalusphere
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