by Florent Gomez

Have you ever tried to grow evaluation capacity across your organisation? And this, with very limited resources?

At the recent AES International Evaluation Conference in Sydney, I shared some learnings from our successful Evaluation Community of Practice in the NSW Department of Customer Service (previously NSW Department of Finance) and other soft approaches to evaluation capacity building we are using in our department.

by Anthea Rutter

Chris Milne was an early pioneer in the use of program logic.  As a founding partner of ARTD Consultants, he has designed and delivered numerous evaluations across diverse sectors and built the evaluation capacity of government and non-government organisations. In recent years, he worked with another AES Fellow, Patricia Rogers, on the NSW Government evaluation toolkit.

I enjoyed speaking with Chris. He struck me as a man with a high degree of humility, as well as someone who considers his answers in a balanced way. He is obviously committed to the environment and the world in which we live, and passionate about making it a good place for the generations that follow.

by Anthea Rutter

All of us in the AES were greatly shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Jenny Neale. Jenny had been a member of the Australian Evaluation Society for over 20 years and was an active contributor to the society both in her local Regional Network Committee in Wellington as well as a regular contributor at the AES International Conferences. 

Jenny was a Senior Research Fellow Health Services Research Centre, Faculty of Health, University of Wellington, New Zealand.

I interviewed Jenny last year and was rewarded by a frank discussion of life in the field of evaluation, its ups and downs and its frustrations!

by Aneta Cram, Francesca Demetriou and Eunice Sotelo

We’ve heard it time and again: people don’t necessarily set out to be evaluators, but fall into the field. For those of us relatively new or emerging, this can be confusing to navigate.

As three self-identified early career evaluators (ECEs), who also grapple with what it means to be ‘early career’ or ‘emerging’, we were interested to learn more about how ECEs orient themselves, set their career pathway, and build their evaluation capacity. For the past eight months we‘ve been working on a research project exploring the experiences that current self-identified ECEs have had entering into and developing themselves across the diverse range of entry pathways and work contexts in Australia and, in part, New Zealand.

by Jade Maloney

Ever found yourself more engaged in the coffee break than the conference agenda? Ahead of the International Evaluation Conference #aes19SYD unconference day, Ruth McCausland, Kath Vaughan-Davies and I trialled an approach for the Australian Evaluation Society NSW meet-up that combined the best of both worlds – purposeful encounters with a coffee break vibe.

We adapted Open Space Technology, established by Harrison Owen in the 1980s, with the aim of finding “a way towards meetings that have the energy of a good coffee break combined with the substance of a carefully prepared agenda.” The approach has since been used around the world as a way of enabling people to self-organise around purpose.

by Gerard Atkinson

There is less than two weeks to go until the International Evaluation Conference #aes19SYD, taking place on 15 – 19 September here in Sydney. For those presenting at the conference, it’s time to polish off your presentation skills and get your materials ready. In the theme of “unboxing evaluation”, we’ve unboxed the art of developing effective and engaging presentations and put together an easy guide you can use not just in conferences but in any presentation.

The blog posts offers a few tips.

by Anthea Rutter

Anne and I have been colleagues and friends for many years. I have long been an admirer of her ability as a practical evaluator and I refer to Anne and Ian’s book frequently for my own practice. I caught up with Anne at the AES International Conference in Launceston, Tasmania, where we found time to share some lunch and some great conversation.

by John Stoney, AES President

I was a policy and program wonk before I became an evaluation tragic. One of the things that excited me about remaining on the AES Board and taking up the President role was that one of the first tasks would be developing our next set of Strategic Priorities for the period 2019–2022.

by Anthea Rutter

Interviewing John was a pleasure for me. He was my teacher at the Centre for Program Evaluation back in the 90s. Indeed, John and his colleagues have taught a large number of the members of the AES over the years. John and I have also worked on projects together.

by Eunice Sotelo & Victoria Pilbeam

Many evaluators are familiar with realist evaluation, and have come across the realist question “what works for whom, in what circumstances and how?” The book Doing Realist Research (2018) offers a deep dive into key concepts, with insights and examples from specialists in the field.

We caught up with Brad Astbury from ARTD Consultants about his book chapter. Before diving in, we quickly toured his industrial chic coworking office on Melbourne’s Collins Street – brick walls, lounges and endless fresh coffee. As we sipped on our fruit water, he began his story with a language lesson.