This week, SAMEA holds its 7th biennial conference in South Africa. Conferencing is hard work, so we put together five to optimize your next Evaluation Conference:
- Write down five things you want out of the conference before it starts. Ann Emery suggests planning to attend at least one session on: a brand new topic (for new insights); a beginner-level topic (for confidence boosting) and an advance topic (for a ‘reality check’)
- Identify a few rock star evaluators that you want to approach before the conference
- Engage in the online conversation! This means that you need to know the correct conference hashtag before the opening ceremony. It’s also faster to type from a laptop than a phone
- Collect visual evidence to serve as reminders (capture interesting slides, and take photos of delegates’ name tags to remember their names and caption them correctly afterward)
- Make a note of five new things you’ve learnt and how you want to action it at the end of each conference day