Eval Cafe

Episode Notes Carolyn and Brian are joined by special guest Chris Corrigan (http://www.chriscorrigan.com/) to talk about the intersections and interconnections of evaluation and facilitation. Are they warring factions? Soulmates in complexity? Can we "recover learning from the trauma of being judged" and move into a joyful practice as we navigate expertise in complexity for social change? Where does "mooshing" come into all of this? What do facilitators and evaluators have to offer each other and what can we wrestle with together? Tune in and find out! Bonus content: soccer, nonlinear pedagogy, and Brian's bookclub foibles, not necessarily in that order. Full episode notes available at our website.

Episode Notes Happy New Year! To kick off 2019, Carolyn and Brian take a look backwards and forward - tune in to hear how they did with 2018’s directions and their plans for the coming 12 months! Conversation topics include community development, creativity and arts-based approaches, the therapeutic benefits of podcasting, teasers for upcoming episodes, and a discussion on whether 2019 will (finally) be the Year of the Trombone. Full show notes available at our website.

Episode Notes Join Brian, Carolyn, and special guest Kim van der Woerd (Reciprocal Consulting) as we wander into the complex and intriguing world of principles-focused evaluation. Will our paradigms be shifted? Will our hearts be centered? Will we remember all the stuff that Michael Quinn Patton tried to instil in us from all the workshops and books and conference presentations?* Let's hope! Tune in and find out what we have to say about how we can use storytelling, whether program logic models can be redeemed, and how we're trying to overcome barriers to using principles-focused evaluation in our work. Full episode notes available at our website.

Episode Notes You definitely want to swipe right on this episode to hear Carolyn and Brian talk about client relationships! We discuss looking beyond the dating profile, deciding what questions to ask right at the get-go, handling the inevitable relationship woes, and deciding when to rekindle the romance or just walk away. Carolyn put it best: "The relationship metaphors just don't stop!" Full episode notes available at our website.

Carolyn and Brian are back in the Eval Cafe and ready for a brand new school-year that’s just “chalk” full of learning! Pull up a desk, get out your binders and cahiers, and be prepared to take notes because this will be on the final exam. What’s Brian’s ultimate whiteboard hack? How does Carolyn justify putting a bed in their office? What educational experiences are Carolyn and Brian most looking forward to and how did they spend their summer vacation? Warning: this episode comes with a reading list. This is the episode that may as well have been sponsored by Ikea, Staples, and 3M (makers of the best post-its, as long as you don’t accidentally buy the ‘pop-up’ kind). Please send us free office supplies! Also, the word of this episode is “excited”–count how many times Carolyn says it, win a prize! (Apologies for a small amount of audio distortion on the track at 12:26.) Full show notes available at: https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/episode-12-evalcafe-goes-back-to-school/

Carolyn and Brian pack their bags (and more importantly their podcasting gear) and meet up in Calgary for the Canadian Evaluation Society’s annual conference! This episode, recorded as a Thematic Breakfast Roundtable, features five attendees who joined our intrepid hosts at a wholly-unreasonable time of morning on the final day of the conference. Among other topics, we talk about the conference theme (Co-Creation), the upcoming updates to the CES evaluator competencies (now with 41% fewer words!), the idea of crashing a mayors’ conference, and the relative population density of Australia and Canada. We promise, the conversation makes more sense when you listen to it. Full show notes available at: https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/episode-11-co-created-conversation

Sarah Farina of Broadleaf Consulting joins Carolyn and Brian this week to talk about music and how it connects with our work as evaluators. Which one of us is “a big nerd for classical music”? How lucky is Carolyn at Random Karaoke? What two songs have scarred Brian and Carolyn for life? And most importantly, does this podcast meet Canadian content requirements? Apologies for some minor sound quality issues in this episode - to borrow from our episode 7 title, “Damn it, Jim, I’m an evaluator, not a sound engineer!” Full show notes available at: https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2018/03/07/episode-10-songs-in-the-key-of-eval

In the first episode of 2018, Brian and Carolyn kick off the new year with some retrospective musings and a bit of peering off into the horizon with goals, directions, and personal challenges for the year ahead. We cover a little of everything in what may be a preview of podcast content to come—learning new stats programs, getting an evaluation credential, using arts-based methods (and why Brian should play the trombone at a stakeholder meeting), engaging with reconciliation as evaluators and new approaches to evaluation ethics, community development, evaluation conferences and more! Check it out to hear about Brian's hot new podcast/blog idea and the context in which Carolyn uses the phrase "brain in a jar".

Brush off your hashtags and practice condensing your thoughts to 140 characters (or is that 280 now?), as Carolyn and Brian are joined by fellow evaluation consultant Dana Wanzer to talk Twitter. We chat about how we’ve used the platform to build community, our stand-out moments on Twitter, and of course our favourite memes (#omgmqp for starters). Plus, can evaluation benefit from more cute animal pics? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes. Full show notes at https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/episode-8-eval-the-twittering

Open hailing frequencies and get your warp engines online, it's our nerdiest episode yet! We're joined by Kylie Hutchinson, principal consultant for Community Solutions Planning & Evaluation, to talk about the lessons that evaluators can take from the Star Trek universe. From the Original Series to Voyager (no Discovery spoilers!), we share our favourite nerdy references and apply them to evaluation. Should we be battling the Borg? Embracing our inner Ferengi? Are evaluators more like Data or Spock (or Odo?) Did Michael Quinn Patton invent our profession's Corbomite manoeuvre? And where is evaluation as a profession boldly going next? Tune in and find out!

Join Brian and Carolyn in welcoming our first podcast special guest, Don Flaming, Manager of ARECCI (A pRoject Ethics Community Consensus Initiative) for Alberta Innovates! In this episode, we delve into the BIG questions. Do we need REBs to be ethical? What's the difference between research and evaluation? What ethics "myths" can we bust? And will Carolyn and Brian make it through a whole episode without mentioning #OMGMPQ? Tune in and find out!

Continuing on our October theme - what fears lie in the hearts of evaluators and how do we take the pressure off? Brian and Carolyn discuss the benefits of practicing mindfulness, saying no, and both connecting with and taking time away from other people. Start up the bubble bath and dig out your evaluator hat-crafting supplies, it’s time for some self-care! Show notes are available at https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/episode-5-under-pressure-evaluator-self-care

Grab your monster masks and a bag of candy, we're kicking off October with our scariest topic yet: the fear of evaluation! So what does evaluation have to do with quicksand and evil twins? How can evaluators be like the worst Batman ever? Will Brian and Carolyn manage to reference Michael Quinn Patton for a fourth episode in a row?? Tune in and find out! Show notes available at https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/episode-4-dont-fear-the-evaluator/

Brian and Carolyn fill their knapsacks with useful evaluation resources (physical and intangible) in this instalment of Eval Cafe. What evaluation tools would be useful in a post-apocalyptic society? How many evaluators could you fit on a desert island? Are drinking games a useful tool for professional development and skills assessment? The answers to these questions may be found in this episode! (or not) Show notes available at https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/episode-3-resident-eval-apocalypse/

Brian and Carolyn get participatory! In this episode, we talk about the hows and whys of getting stakeholders engaged in the evaluation process. Questions include: Whose participation are we getting? How do we design for participation? Have either of us really done 'participatory evaluation'? Show notes available at: https://evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/episode-2-engage/

Brian and Carolyn kick off our first evaluation podcast by exploring the apropos topic: how do we introduce ourselves as evaluators and explain what we do to others? We talk about the pains of being an invisible profession, share our successes, and discuss some interesting suggestions from the evaluation community about how to define ourselves… Evaluation scientists, anyone? Show notes available at evalcafe.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/episode-1-the-phantom-profession/