Well, it’s been a while. My last concerted effort at blogging was in 2013 when I launched the 52×5 project. I set out to blog once every workday for an entire year. I sputtered out fairly quickly. Projects got in the way. Writing projects took precedent. In retrospect, my goal was too ambitious. Evaluating this undertaking in a summative sense would suggest it to be an utter failure. Neither its objectives nor its goals were met.
Evaluating my efforts developmentally might lead one to render a different judgment. To do that we would have to look to the reasons for undertaking the project and its activities in the first place. At the time, I knew I had several writing projects coming online, and so, I had wanted to develop myself as a writer. I saw blogging as a means to stretching my writing muscles and warming up for my writing projects; setting out to write 52×5 posts was only a means to an end. And at that, I’ve some demonstrable success.
Between now and then, I’ve been busy preparing manuscripts for publication. I also went through the credentialing process with the Canadian Evaluation Society and was successfully awarded the Credentialed Evaluator designation. All the while, I finished three major evaluation projects—of which two were developmental evaluation projects.
Moving forward, I hope you will find a renewed energy on this blog. There’s much that I hope to share on evaluation theory, principles, and practices—especially those that operate at the intersections of design, evaluation, and social innovation. And I can’t wait to get started. Only this time I won’t commit to as ambitious a publishing schedule as I had before.
Please say hi. It’s been a while!
Onwards,
Chi
Dr. Chi Yan Lam 