Upcoming Conferences and Events

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Center for Evaluation (CEval) of Saarland University, Germany, is a globally active research institute for applied social science in the field of evaluation and member of the DeGEval (German Evaluation Society). On this occasion, we organize an international conference about “The Future of Evaluation in Modern Societies” on 14th and 15th June 2012 in Saarbruecken, Germany.

The objective of this event is to discuss the role of evaluation in societies comprehensively and on an international comparison for bringing different discussion strands together into a joint debate. For keynote speeches and lectures, we could already win numerous renowned scientists from the USA, Latin America, Africa and Europe.

Please find the detailed program and registration form on our homepage:http://futureofevaluation.ceval.de

The 12th International Conference on Computational Science and Applications (ICCSA 2012) will be held on June 18-21, 2012, in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

ICCSA 2012 will be the next event in a series of highly successful International Conferences on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA), previously held in Santander, Spain (2011), Fukuoka, Japan (2010), Suwon, Korea (2009), Perugia, Italy (2008), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2007), Glasgow, UK (2006), Singapore (2005), Assisi, Italy (2004), Montreal, Canada (2003), and (as ICCS) Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2002) and San Francisco, USA (2001).

Computational Science is a main pillar of most of the present research, industrial and commercial activities and plays a unique role in exploiting Information and Communication Technologies as innovative technologies.

The ICCSA Conference offers a real opportunity to discuss new issues, tackle complex problems and find advanced enabling solutions able to shape new trends in Computational Science.

The present ICCSA event, organized for the first time in Southern America, is aimed at contributing to the scientific advance of Computational Science in the whole continent and in Brazil in particular.

Submitted papers will subject to stringent peer review by at least three experts and carefully evaluated based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of exposition. Accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings to be published by Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (edited by Springer) and Conference Publishing Services (CPS).

Detailed information available here

Evaluation 2012 - Evaluation in Complex Ecologies: Relationships, Responsibilities, Relevance

Minneapolis, Minnesota

October 22-28

Call for Proposals: OPEN

Deadline: Friday, March 16

www.eval.org

Evaluation takes place in complex global and local ecologies where we evaluators play important roles in building better organizations and communities and in creating opportunities for a better world. Ecology is about how systems work, engage, intersect, transform, and interrelate. Complex ecologies are comprised of relationships, responsibilities, and relevance within our study of programs, policies, projects, and other areas in which we carry out evaluations.

Relationships. Concern for relationships obliges evaluators to consider questions such as: what key interactions, variables, or stakeholders do we need to attend to (or not) in an evaluation? Evaluations do not exist in a vacuum disconnected from issues, tensions, and historic and contextualized realities, systems, and power dynamics. Evaluators who are aware of the complex ecologies in which we work attend to relationships to identify new questions and to pursue new answers. Other questions we may pursue include:

• Whose interests and what decisions and relationships are driving the evaluation context?
• How can evaluators attend to important interactions amidst competing interests and values through innovative methodologies, procedures, and processes?

Responsibilities. Attention to responsibilities requires evaluators to consider questions such as: what responsibilities, inclusive of and beyond the technical, do we evaluators have in carrying out our evaluations? Evaluators do not ignore the diversity of general and public interests and values in evaluation. Evaluations in complex ecologies make aware ethical and professional obligations and understandings between parties who seek to frame questions and insights that challenge them. Other questions we may pursue include:

• How can evaluators ensure their work is responsive, responsible, ethical, equitable, and/or transparent for stakeholders and key users of evaluations?
• In what ways might evaluation design, implementation, and utilization be responsible to issues pertinent to our general and social welfare?

Relevance. A focus on relevance leads to evaluations that consider questions such as: what relevance do our evaluations have in complex social, environmental, fiscal, institutional, and/or programmatic ecologies? Evaluators do not have the luxury of ignoring use, meaning, of sustainability; instead all evaluations require continual review of purposes, evaluands, outcomes, and other matters relevant to products, projects, programs, and policies. Other questions we may pursue include:

• How can evaluators ensure that their decisions, findings, and insights are meaningful to diverse communities, contexts, and cultures?
• What strategies exist for evaluators, especially considering our transdisciplinary backgrounds, to convey relevant evaluation processes, practices, and procedures?