This week, SAMEA holds its 7^th biennial conference in South Africa. Conferencing is hard work, so we put together five to optimize your next Evaluation Conference:

1. Write down five things you want out of the conference before it starts. Ann Emery suggests planning to attend at least one session on: a brand new topic (for new insights); a beginner-level topic (for confidence boosting) and an advance topic (for a ‘reality check’)
2. Identify a few rock star evaluators that you want to approach before the conference
3. Engage in the online conversation! This means that you need to know the correct conference hashtag before the opening ceremony. It’s also faster to type from a laptop than a phone
4. Collect visual evidence to serve as reminders (capture interesting slides, and take photos of delegates’ name tags to remember their names and caption them correctly afterward)
5. Make a note of five new things you’ve learnt and how you want to action it at the end of each conference day