As summer winds down—and so does conference season…well, mostly.
I’ve been thinking about my hot-cold relationship with professional conferences and how it has changed over the years.
I’ve attended the big gatherings in evaluation, sociology, psychology, education research, and statistics, and I’ve learned a great deal from them. They can be wonderful places to encounter new ideas, meet colleagues, and see where a field is heading.
But as my career has evolved, I’ve become more selective about which conferences I attend.
I’m not in academe, so I don’t have the same need to continually present, publish, or build a professional profile. After many years in evaluation, I’ve found that I’m often more interested in depth than breadth—fewer conversations, but more meaningful ones.
That’s probably why I’m still drawn to meetings connected directly to projects and grants. There is something particularly valuable about being in a room with people who are working on a shared problem, looking at real data, and trying to figure out what happens next.
And I do think conferences have an especially important role for early-career evaluators. Go. Listen. Present. Ask questions. Meet people outside your immediate circle. Learn the history of the field and discover possibilities you didn’t know existed.
I did that too.
But perhaps one of the privileges of having been in the field for a while is being able to ask a different question:
What professional spaces are most useful to me now?
For me, it’s less about being everywhere and more about being where the conversations are meaningful—and where ideas can turn into better practice.
Maybe professional growth isn’t about attending more conferences. Maybe it’s about choosing the right ones.
