Abstract
In June this year, the four national evaluation associations of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland organized the first Nordic Evaluation Conference. This begs the question why do that and not simply focus on the traditional yearly or biennial conferences that these societies organize on the domestic scene, or alternatively focus on the European Evaluation Society’s Biennial conferences (not to mention AEA and other events)? Is there a need for a regional event as well?
According to the organizers, the aim was to strengthen the Nordic evaluation tradition and to encourage interaction and cooperation among evaluation researchers and practitioners in the Nordic countries. More specifically, that meant to encourage and establish professional networks that would develop and strengthen the field of evaluation and the knowledge of evaluations as a phenomenon. The conference was organized around six workshops involving participants’ paper presentations.
One of the rather unusual features of the conference was that participants had to present papers, and there was also a peer-review panel to assess the presentation proposals. At the annual Nordic society’s conferences, there are usually between 200 and 300 participants, so in theory one would perhaps expect close to 1000 participants. But with this qualification for this conference, the actual number of attendees was around 80, with a total of 36 papers.
Due to this rather unique format, there was plenty of time to present and discuss each paper, with an average time slot of more than one hour for each paper. In addition, the six ‘streams’ were maintained through most of the conference, and thus more or less the same group of people met to discuss a topic, through the lens of six to eight papers, over the two days. This led to a level of continuity, progress and depth in the discussion that I have found to be very unusual at international conferences. This quality comes from the process and the format, which can be replicated anywhere.
A conference evaluation would probably conclude that the event, although not attracting a very large audience, did encourage and strengthen cooperation among evaluation researchers in the Nordic countries – and the focus was really on evaluation research. Even though the usual mixture of consultants, public administrators and researchers was found in Aalborg too, the research agendas doubtlessly dominated.
Did it strengthen a Nordic evaluation tradition? Certainly not; indeed, there was a lively debate on whether there is a joint Nordic tradition and the tentative answer seemed to be ‘Nej/No/Non/Ikke’ (at least that’s what I heard). Nor was there any conclusion that there should be a Nordic tradition of theory and practice, although many potential virtues were compared and debated, such as the practical solutions to transparency, participation, and use of evaluation findings in democratic governance.
In conclusion I found the event a very refreshing experience, a different mode of interaction at a slower pace but with more substance than at many other conferences. Such an event certainly has a place on the ‘conference circuit’ and I look forward to the next joint Nordic conference, which will be in Norway in 2014.
This piece was contributed by Kim Forss.