We’re looking forward to meeting with colleagues and sharing our work at the annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Join us for two conference sessions that highlight a few lessons learned over the past year. We’ll be tweeting about the conference using hashtag #eval13.

Strategies and Technologies to Manage Complex 21st Century Evaluations
Panel Session 40 to be held in Suite 7101 on Wednesday, Oct 16, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
This session includes a set of presentations about innovative technologies and methods to coordinate and manage evaluations to allow new staff to easily take over project management duties, collect information through a data portal and triangulate observation and quantitative data in a statewide evaluation, apply social network analytic methods, and use e-learning tools to create logic model training for a nonprofit organization. Dr. Jarosewich and co-author Stephanie Fairchild will discuss “Strategies and Technologies for Project Management in Multi-Site Program Evaluation Projects”.

How to Create Infographics to Tell Evaluation Stories
Demonstration Session 459 to be held in Lincoln East on Friday, Oct 18, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM
“Telling” evaluation stories visually can be a powerful way of communicating findings with stakeholders. In this demonstration, Dr. Jarosewich will join Ginger Fitzhugh of Evaluation & Research Associates and David Fetterman of Fetterman & Associates to show how to use several widely available software programs (including Illustrator, Word, Excel, Visual.ly, easelly, infog.am and Pikotchart) to create infographics, which summarize bite-size amounts of data in a compelling visual manner, and interactive data visualizations, which allow the user to sort and analyze data. The presenters will also explain some of the principles behind the design of infographics and data visualizations. All three presenters recently participated in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Infographics and Data Visualization taught by Alberto Cairo and sponsored by the Knight Foundation. The presenters will walk through the process they used to conceptualize and create their final projects for the course, including an infographic about the membership of the American Evaluation Association and an infographic presenting survey response rates in a longitudinal study.