Sharing your work and experience

Sharing your work and expertise with others in the evaluation community will help you expand your network and build your reputation as a competent evaluator. Most importantly, by giving back, you will contribute to strengthening our evaluation community!

There are various ways in which you can share your work and expertise:

• Presenting at conferences: Presenting at conferences is a great way to build confidence, develop public speaking skills, and enhance visibility.

Tips from an emerging evaluator

Applying to present at a conference for the first time can be intimidating! Here are a few tips to help you overcome this:

Start small: Consider participating in poster sessions or lightning talks.
Collaborate with others: Reach out to other evaluators to explore co-presenting together.
Review your abstract: Ask an AI-enabled chatbot to provide feedback on your abstract based on the evaluation criteria for that conference to increase your chances of being accepted.

• Participating in global annual events: Several online events, such as gLOCAL and Youth in Evaluation Week, allow people with careers in evaluation to present their work and share their experiences.

• Publishing a journal article: Authoring a journal article shows your expertise, may enhance your reputation, and can help other evaluators doing similar work connect with you in the future. It is also a great way of strengthening your written communication skills.

• Publishing your evaluation work: Sharing evaluation reports and other knowledge products through websites and social media is another way to share your work. It may also be helpful to close the loop with evaluation participants and contribute to learning across the field.

• Creating content on social media: Social media content, including visuals, videos, and posts, is a great way to share your experiences and reflections and collaborate with others.

Tips from an emerging evaluator

You may find yourself in a situation where you are not allowed to share an evaluation report because of your organizations’ policies or your clients’ preferences. Use your creativity to find ways in which you can still share about this experience. Here is a list of examples:

• A social media post with the things you learned from the evaluation
• A blog about the methodology that you used
• A picture of the tools you used during an engagement session
• A conference presentation about the challenges you faced