By Gerard Atkinson

Have you ever felt like you have put in a lot of work on an evaluation, only to find that what you have delivered hasn’t had the reach or engagement you expected? I’m not sure I have met an evaluator who hasn’t felt this way at least once in their career.

It was because of this that late last month I led a session at the 2018 Australasian Evaluation Society conference in Launceston, titled “Evolving the evaluation deliverable”.

<pBy Fran Demetriou

The theme of transformations resonated with me. I’m relatively new to evaluation and it’s been an intense journey over the last two years in learning about what evaluation is and how to go about it well. This conference (my first ever evaluation conference) was a pivotal point in that journey.

By Jade Maloney

Our world is transforming at a dizzying rate. What does this mean for evaluation and, by extension, evaluators? That’s the question posed by the 2018 Australasian Evaluation Society conference in Launceston this week. So what do our keynotes think?

By Ruby Fischer

Evaluations are like diets – you know they’re good for you, you always start off with good intentions and desperate optimism, but eventually you slip back into your old habits. So how do you stick to them? Here are 5 tips from AES NSW’s latest seminar on how NGOs can stick with evaluation in our do-more-with-less world.

By Zazie Tolmer

Late last year an opportunity came up for a Clear Horizon consultant to work full time as an embedded evaluator in a Collective Impact initiative. I jumped at the opportunity and have been part of the backbone team for the last eight months.

By Jade Maloney

There’s still a chill in the air, but the days are starting to lengthen, and you can sense the promise of spring. Must nearly be time for another AES conference.

I remember my first one: Canberra, 2009. I was still ‘green’, 18 months after falling out of publishing and into a role in evaluation. Andrew Leigh had just come out with his proposal for a hierarchy of evidence to inform Australian policy making, and there was an afternoon panel, including Leigh himself, to discuss it. The proposal in itself was nothing new (it drew on models from medical research in the US and social policy in the UK), but it added fuel to the still burning embers of the fire that was (is?) the methodology wars.

By AES Blog Working Group

Australasia has some excellent evaluators. More than that, we have an evaluation community full of ideas and a willingness to share. The AES has long provided a place for us to come together, at regional events and the annual conference, to develop our community together. Now we’re taking it online!