Evaluation 2009 was held at the Rosen
Shingle Creek convention facilities.

I had the privilege to be one of the Improve Group staff who was able to make the trip to Florida for the Evaluation 2009 Conference put on by the American Evaluation Association last week. It was my first trip to the national conference and I was pleased with the quality of the presentations I attended.

I flew in for the final 2 days of the conference to be part of a roundtable discussion on blogging and the possible merits of a more unified effort to share knowledge among evaluators using our collective blogs. I was surprised to learn that there is a huge disparity in evaluator’s opinions on the value of blogging. I also discovered that tweeting is well used among many of the evaluators present. Time to create and maintain a useful blogging exchange was the biggest concern in the room. After a lively discussion the group decided to sign up for committees that will create more definitive steps on the use of blogging in our profession.

I also attended sessions on: technology use in social service evaluation; an historical context on post-war evaluation; storytelling to communicate evaluation results; evaluation accountability, context, and transparency in the new administration; online classroom technology observation tools, and more.

I appreciated the time I was given for this professional development event and I hope to bring all that I learned into practice at the Improve Group. Please look for upcoming blogs on specific presentations that gave special insight into the work we do.