Greetings from Atlanta, where two members of our team are attending Evaluation 2016 – the American Evaluation Association’s annual conference, bringing together thousands of professional evaluators from around the world.
The theme this year is Evaluation and Design, which challenges us to think about how we design programs for impact, evaluations for success, and information for easy consumption.
A highlight was a panel discussion on design failures with Michael Quinn Patton, Stephanie Evergreen, Leslie Cooksy, and Michael Morris. Each speaker told a story of a blunder they had made in their evaluation career and what they had learned from it. Then brave souls from the audience got up to share their own funny, painful, and revealing evaluation fiascos.
We got a chance to step out of the conference venue, too, visiting the Trees Atlanta program, which protects Atlanta’s urban forest and educates citizens on its benefits.
