Reflections on the Wollongong Conference: October 2002
| Author | Herbert Stock,Susan Dawe |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X0200200210 |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Wollongong |
39
Wollongong
A novice’s view
Herbert Stock, Flinders Institute of Public Policy and
Management, Adelaide
Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, 29 October I wandered
into the foyer of the Northbeach Novotel wondering
what the h*** I was doing there1 – I’m not an evaluator, I
know little about evaluation and my only contact with
the Australasian Evaluation Society was that a few
months earlier, faced with the boredom common to all
the newly redundant/retired, I had volunteered to try and
help Colin Sharp both with the Evaluation Journal of
Australasia and with coordinating the refereeing of
papers for the Wollongong conference; then, when Colin
couldn’t go, I accepted the Organising Committee’s offer 2
that I attend the conference in Colin’s place, partly to
solicit papers for EJA.
These, then, are the impressions of an evaluation
novice of the Wollongong conference. First of all, this
was not my first conference, just my first evaluation
conference – so I started from the viewpoint of
comparing this conference with the other conferences that
I had attended.
In the main I was used to conferences with a clearly
demarcated and unifying theme and where the
participants had essentially common backgrounds,
training and interests. Not so at Wollongong – my first,
and most obvious, impression was of the diversity of the
discipline and the diversity in the backgrounds, training,
experience and interests of the attendees. This led quickly
to my second impression, the difficulty in determining
which papers, in the concurrent sessions, I should try to
attend.
This was further complicated by having to take part
in a round table (on a subject where my ignorance was
profound) at the same time as another round table I
wanted to attend because the abstract suggested that it
would deal with a subject I thought I knew something
about. Ah, well – let’s move on.
In fact, in the end, the problems of choosing which
papers to attend proved to be insurmountable; not, as I
originally feared, because I didn’t know enough to make
attendance meaningful, but because there was so much of
relevance to my, non-evaluator, interests that I couldn’t
go to them all. I would like to say I chose wisely, but it’s
likely that my pin was as successful, at Wollongong, as it
was, subsequently, in (not) picking the winner of the
Reflections on the
Wollongong conference
Melbourne Cup. To those whose contributions
I missed when I shouldn’t have, apologies.
Yet, it was the spaces between papers and
sessions that were the most interesting and
rewarding. Because I had the responsibility for
chasing material for the EJA, I had to
approach the keynote speakers, something that
a neophyte would be ill-advised to attempt in
the hierarchical disciplines (science/
engineering/public service) I was familiar with
– the public, sarcastic putdown that such
impudence would inevitably occasion would
deter even the most thick-skinned.
And this led to my third, and most abiding
impression of the conference – everyone I
approached (from the ‘Gods’ to the mere
mortals) treated me as an equal (well, almost
an equal) and went out of their way to explain,
help and inform – and, lest I thought that this
was just because I was wearing an EJA hat, I
could see the same occurring right across the
conference – there was a collegiality that
marked this conference as different from any
other I had attended.
When, in the mid afternoon on Friday,
1 November I wandered out of the foyer of the
Northbeach Novotel to start the journey
home, I felt that I might have achieved
something useful – the next few issues of the
EJA may confirm that impression – and
certainly I had learned a great deal, made a lot
of contacts and, hopefully, acquired some
acquaintances who may become friends. I had
even started to doubt my earlier certainty that
I wasn’t an evaluator.
Notes
1 Numbers 22, 21–35
2The financial assistance of the Organising
Committee, and the help of Alan Woodward
and Eve Barboza, is acknowledged with thanks.
October 2002
To continue reading
Request your trial