Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I Am An Evaluation Groupie

February 22, 2011 by Beth

When people ask me what my blog is about, I usually say, “It’s about everything except work.” Well, today I’m breaking that rule ((I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s my blog and I’ll prevaricate if I want to.)) because I just *have* to show you this:

Yesterday I went to an workshop on Developmental Evaluation ((to make a long story short, it was about applying systems and complexity theory to the field of evaluation)) being run by Michael Quinn Patton. M.Q.P. is sort of the grandfather of evaluation and, being that I’m an evaluator, I was stoked to get a chance to hear him speak. I’ve never seen him before and had heard that he is a very engaging speaker. And he totally lived up to the hype – he conveyed a lot of complex information in a very understandable way, he told a number of wonderful stories that highlighted the concepts he was discussing, and he even did a rant on the term “best practice” ((I love a good rant!!)).

At the end of the day, because I’m totally an evaluation groupie, I got him to sign my copy of his Developmental Evaluation book. In case you can’t read what he wrote in the photo above:

“Beth,
In celebration of the complex journey,
Best wishes,
Michael Quinn Patton
Vancouver
Feb 21, 2011″

I can smell your jealousy from here.

Comments |2|

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.