This data could be family networks, staff in an organisation, partnerships or arrangements between members in a coalition or the relationships between families in a town. Try this map of the interactions between Game of Thrones characters.

The session began with a deep dive into some of the key concepts and theoretical underpinnings of SNA (but not too much to put everyone to sleep). The purpose was purely to build the understanding of what SNA is, what you can (and can't) use it for and why it might be useful.

Once the background was out of the way it was time to dive into a hands on activity. Participants formed small groups and were presented with an example which they had to map onto a corkboard using a range of craft supplies. With good humour everyone dived in, and it was fascinating to see how (with only the background provided) participants approached visualising their network example.

Following the 'corkboard' exercise, participants dived into using our preferred SNA platform, Kumu. Using the same data that formed the corkboard exercise, everyone was then able to visualise their network on computers, but with the understanding and forethought of WHY they were visualising things in a certain way.

​Last month I attended the Private Land Conservation Conference here in Melbourne. Coordinated by the Australian Land Conservation Alliance, the conference brought together a couple of hundred environmental, land management and conservation professionals from Australia and overseas.

This included academics and researchers, policy practitioners and government officers, landholders and land managers, philanthropists and non-government representatives… as well as budding evaluators!

The two-day conference was a fantastic opportunity to meet and learn from experts in the field and the people getting their hands dirty with conservation work every day.

I heard inspiring stories about innovative covenant arrangements and land management practices, and conservation programs with a range of social, environmental and economic benefits… as well as stories about the urgent and increasing need to continue making progress in private land conservation.

The biggest take-home message from the conference for me was that monitoring and evaluation in the land conservation space has never been more important. It is critical to effectively demonstrate the value of the range of conservation work happening in Australia and around the world to continue making progress and increase momentum.

​Emerging from this year, an important focus for next year’s conference will be monitoring and evaluation. I’m already looking forward to the 2017 Private Land Conservation Conference in Hobart – any excuse to visit my hometown!

The problem onion is a conceptual image that I have settled on as a good way of thinking about designing programs and projects. Particularly nowadays many of the 'easy wins' have been won - so we now have this blurry amorphous soup known as 'complexity' (or wicked problems) to deal with.

The problem onion is a simple three stage process that I have seen emerge from several projects (and heard about from several others at the AES Conference):

1. A problem is seen/identified at the start, a project or program is designed in response
2. Once delivery starts you see that the problem is actually not the same as what it was at the beginning - maybe it changed, or was just plain wrong
3. By the end, you have identified the real problem. You might have found some good outcomes, but the core issue still exists.

This is not to say this is universal - simply something I have observed over the last few years. Instances where the problem onion (and accompanying tears) are avoided is when its carved up early.

The use of approaches such as human centred design, evaluative thinking and just plain critical thinking (i.e. is this really a problem in the way that I am assuming) are crucial to dicing up the problem onion and getting those tears out of the way early.

Design and evaluation methods are crucial to this - so I encourage you or anyone you know to think early about how you design and what your design is based on. Many of the complex problems we face are ones I think we can all agree need solving.

Matt Healey, Consultant
​E: matt@fpconsulting.com.au

​It’s been one year since I stepped into the world of evaluation and joined First Person Consulting. I’ve been mentored by the team and had the opportunity to work on a bunch of interesting projects on a range of topics from natural resource management, climate change adaptation and energy efficiency to financial literacy, innovation networking and public health.

Keen to explore the theory of evaluation methodology and how it might shape the work I do at FPC, I completed a subject on the practice of evaluation at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Program Evaluation earlier this year. This was such a valuable experience, and I never thought I would develop such a passion for rubrics!

The learnings and insights from this course have influenced my approach to evaluation, and have inspired much discussion at the daily FPC working morning tea meetings (which we invite you to come to and chat about all things evaluation if you are interested!).

Last week we were discussing various methods and approaches that shape the evaluative judgments and recommendations we develop through our work, based on diverse data sources and research.

In one of our recent projects – an evaluation of the Wingate Financial Literacy Program – I adapted and applied one of the approaches to synthesis methodology that I had been introduced to through my studies. Due to limitations in the quality of data available, and some of the nuances involved in financial literacy programs and working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, my approach involved developing descriptive metrics for making evaluative conclusions based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.
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This allowed us to produce findings that were rigorous, but also captured the complexity of evaluating the outcomes and appropriateness of programs that aim to change financial knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviour.