Tag Archives: social change

Climbing the mountain of more engaging presentations: an evaluation fable By Sabrina Khan, Rachel Douglas, Nicole Spence

When the CES 2017 call for presentations was released, our team quickly recognised the conference themes of innovation, action, and reflection within our lived experiences of conducting an internal evaluation of a communicable disease program restructuring initiative in BC’s regional Fraser Health Authority.

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Evaluation Can Be Influential in Creating Change By Kim van der Woerd

My name is Kim van der Woerd, I’m a member of the ‘Namgis First Nation of Alert Bay, BC, and have been doing program evaluation work for over 20 years. I own and have run an all-Indigenous consulting firm called Reciprocal Consulting, for the past 14 years. I’m excited we are holding this year’s CES conference in Vancouver, the unceded homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Wau-tuth peoples. Continue reading

Announcing the Fellows’ Plenary Panel – Pushing Forward: With or Without Evaluation by Natalie Kishchuk

The Fellowship of the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) is made up of individuals who have been recognized by CES for their lifetime achievements, service and prominence in evaluation. Since its inception in 2003, 23 individuals have received the CES Fellowship. One of the Fellowship’s roles is to provide leadership and collective experience, including at CES national conferences. Starting in 2015, the Fellows began organizing a special strand within the conference, bringing together recognized leaders to address timely and often controversial issues in the field of evaluation.

We are delighted to announce this year’s Fellows Plenary Panel, to be held on Tuesday May 2nd, 2017. We believe it will deliver a critical, edgy perspective, and stimulate dialogue at the conference and beyond. Continue reading

Facing Forward By Brian Hoessler

From previous blog posts (see here, here, here, and here), you can tell that I’m a fan of expanding my skills and learning in evaluation through conferences. Attending these events, hosted by the Canadian Evaluation Society and the American Evaluation Association, has also connected me into a diverse community of practitioners, academics, consultants, students, grantmakers, government officials, and more who are brought together by a common interest in the field of evaluation. Given this blend of learning, sharing, and connecting, I try to make it out to these conferences whenever circumstances allow.

The next Canadian Evaluation Society conference will be taking place in Vancouver from April 30 to May 3, and I’m excited for a couple of reasons – not least because Vancouver is a beautiful city to visit, relatively close (well, close by Canadian standards, at least) to my home base of Saskatoon, and home to several evaluation colleagues and friends. What really piqued my interest is an initiative for the conference that’s being led by one of those colleagues and friends, Sarah Farina of Broadleaf Consulting. Evaluators are being encouraged to blog on the conference theme (Facing Forward: Innovation, Action and Reflection) in the months leading up to the conference. It’s a neat way to start the conversation well in advance of the meeting itself, and hopefully have it continue afterwards! Continue reading

CES 2017: Facing Forward

How are evaluators responding to the new and emerging demands of a changing world?

We are in the midst of an era with revolutionary changes in the way we work. Technology, social media, economic challenges, globalization and a wide range of emerging trends is changing the way we think and act in our profession and how we solve problems.

The theme for next year’s conference is: Facing Forward: Innovation, Action, and Reflection.

Together, we’ll explore how we, as evaluators, are thinking about our work and how we are meeting the challenges of a growing discipline operating in a rapidly changing society.

We invite you to join us in Facing Forward by reflecting on your work, and sharing your ideas and experiences. This space is dedicated to reflection on the CES 2017 theme.

Share, Learn and Collaborate at CES 2017 in Vancouver

We are working hard to organize a dynamic and engaging CES 2017 Conference in Vancouver. CESBCY members voted in June 2014 to host the conference, and since that time, we’ve been working with CES National to create a meaningful event that brings together evaluators in diverse roles to share, learn and collaborate. We’ve passed a few important milestones:

  • Selecting the scenic Westin Bayshore as the venue, with a layout that supports maximum networking
  • Setting up an incredible conference planning team with our talented volunteers
  • Testing innovative ways to support learning and networking at one-day conferences: CESBCY 2014 Health Evaluation Conference: Evaluation as a Learning Process and CESBCY 2015 Evaluation Conference: Collaboration, Contribution and Collective Impact
  • Creating a conference budget and workplan
  • Engaging volunteers via volunteerspot

We thank the team of CES 2015 in Montreal and CES 2016 in St. John’s, who have provided valuable guidance. Our incredible team of volunteers is made up of experienced and new evaluators from throughout BC and Yukon as well as national CES members located throughout the globe. We have received invaluable advice and insights from our colleagues at AEA. All in all, this experience is bringing out the best in our profession and we thank everyone who is working with us to make CES 2017 a great success.

Keep an eye out here for more updates!