My three key moments of the #AfrEA2014 #Eval Conference

[Pablo Rodriguez Bilella]

Originally posted at Al Borde del Caos

Earlier this month was held the 7th AfrEA ( African Evaluation Association ) International Conference in Yaoundé , Cameroon . Taking into account the Cairo Conference in 2009 ( shared with a macro - event about impact evaluation ), along with the previous version in Ghana, this would be my third AfrEA conference. However, it is none the less the satisfaction and pleasure that I have always found this area of sharing, meeting and professional growth. Thanks to the generous support of the organizers, several dozen participants could take part in the event , so by this mean I would like to reiterate my sincere thanks them ( espcially in my case, coming from the end of the world , as a fellow national said :-) ) .

 

The AFREA conference was a really busy week , with several opportunities to meet, discuss , and celebrate. I was able to greet and talk briefly with the famous blogger John Gargani , the developer of the evaluation glossary app Kyle Hutchinson (who greeted asking me " Are you @ txtPablo ? " (If my mother knew ... !) , talk with the professor Eliott Stern (editor of the Evaluation Journal) , and almost meet Linda Raftree ( although we were able to cross some tweets) , I greet several times the powerful team of the Better Evaluation platform (already presented before in my blog), as well as many colleagues and friends of the VOPEs around the  world ( VOPEs is the acronym increasingly being adopted to refer to networks, associations and societies of evaluation, meaning Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation).

 

The conference program can give an idea of the main axes , as well as the most recurring participants´ interests. In particular I was struck by the large number of papers and panels that were organized under the strand of Knowledge Management , something that will surely be of interest to Carlos Rodríguez- Ariza and his blog TripleAd ( which I recommend to monitor –in Spanish) .

 

In this occasion I just want to mention three areas in which I participated during the #AfrEA2014 week, which for various reasons were very significant for me . Here they are , in strict order of appearance :

 

1) Workshop about Systematization of Experiences: with my friend and colleague Esteban Tapella we proposed and we were accepted to conducte an introductory workshop to the Latin American method of Systematization. While we have practiced it several times , and also have carried on this workshop several times, this was the first opportunity that we did it for an audience without any fellow of the Patria Grande ( Latin America ) , and also in English. It proved to be a valuable experience for us , and we believe also to several participants from whom we had some feedback later. It would be interesting to know whether there has been a Systematization workshop before in Africa, or if this was the inaugural contact of this South-South exchange.

 

2) Toolkit Workshop: here I played the role of participant rather tan facilitator, but that did not mean I work less. Benita Williams, a blogger and also twittered, coordinates the development of this toolkit to support and strengthen VOPEs in its various dimensions (an initiative of EvalPartners ). This time , we did test the different sections of the toolkit so far prepared . My impression is that the toolkit is a set of tools VERY VALUABLE for VOPEs , regardless of their level of development. So far all the materials are in English, but we trust it will be ready and available in other languages soon. To follow their progress , they can be followed on Twitter at @ VopeToolkit

Ah ! An extra joy for me was that during this workshop I shared our tasks with Adam Suleiman, who on the end of the conference would be elected President of AfrEA .

 

3) Panel on stories of evaluation that have made a difference : this is a project I have presented before in my blog, and with which I am very committed . Organizational problems forced us to change the place of the panel , which surely affected us to have a large audience. But what we lost in quantity we gain in quality, thanks for the comments by Jim Rugh , Tessie Cattsambas and Martha McGuire (all closely related to EvalPartners and IOCE ). I hope to return to this point soon.

 

To close this post, I would like to dedícate the final words to the organizers of this #AfrEA2014 Conference, who were quite attentive and concerned all the time to achieve the best results of this occasion.

 

Au revoir!

[JaiShanker Choubey]

Great post Pablo!  There are a lovely  process to orient for knowledge mgt and sharing for achievement of various goals for developmental tasks...

Some great take aways, to be sure.  I did my own debrief for a podcast yesterday with James so look for that on Twitter when it's up. 

[Pablo Rodriguez Bilella]

Thanks, Kylie! If I don´t react on time on your podcast is that I´m missing it, so please let me know when it is ready... 

[KylieHutchinson]

Great post Pablo!  I similarly found the emphasis on knowledge management and sharing something new for me.  Some great take aways, to be sure.  I did my own debrief for a podcast yesterday with James so look for that on Twitter when it's up.