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!

The new AES blog will be a space for AES members – both new and experienced – to share their perspectives, reflecting on their theory and practice, and learnings from AES events. Even if you haven’t written a blog before, we welcome your contribution. The AES blog team can help you work out how to share your idea with our community. We are also open to reposting blogs, with original credit.

Seeking your best ideas

In the coming months, the AES blog will be the place to find interesting content that speaks to our Australian evaluation context.

• Has a recent AES event got you reflecting on your own practice conducting evaluations?
• Do you have a key learning from your experience commissioning evaluations?
• Does a recent development in evaluation get you excited?

If the answer is yes, the AES blog team would like to hear from you!

What are we looking for?

To help you put together an article for the AES blog, we’ve developed some guidelines. The full guidelines – word count, publishing etc. – can be found here.

1. No jargon or bureaucratese. Keep the language simple and straightforward. If you are using technical terms, please explain them for people who may not be familiar with them.
2. Keep it interesting and conversational. Try to make your post as practical as possible – even when discussing theory, think about how the reader might use the concepts in practice. This might include links to tools or resources, as well as practice tips and tricks.
3. Write in your own voice. Where appropriate, use first person voice as if you are talking to an acquaintance or friend sitting next to you. Speak for yourself, as an expert (because you are sharing insights and reflections through your writing) and as a learner (because there is always room to grow and improve).
4. Well-structured. The reader should know what to expect from the blog: the title and introduction should create an expectation of what is to follow. Include a clear conclusion, such as a call to action for comments/sharing, or food for thought. Use section headings to break up the text when it makes sense. Subheadings make it easier for the reader to skim the blog to the section they would most like to read. Keep each section as contained and coherent as possible so the reader does not feel lost for not having read what came before.
5. Original content. Most of the text must be of your own writing. If quoting another source, give a link or citation, and limit the quote to a few sentences.
6. Self-edit. Write the content in a program with a good text editor to eliminate most writing errors. While the AES blog team vets all articles, we ask that you provide us as clean a copy as possible.

We’ll be officially launching the blog at the AES Conference in September. This is a great time to share your thoughts on our conference theme – Transformations. Check out our first blog post, from ARTD Director Jade Maloney, reflecting on her experiences at AES conferences gone by.

If you have a blog idea or an article you’d like to share, please send it through to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Members of the blog team will be attending the AES Conference in Launceston – come and say hi if you want to find out more, or chat through an idea.

AES Blog Working Group


Eunice Sotelo

Jade Maloney

Joanna Farmer

Liz Smith

Matt Healy