Dear AEA Members,
We are writing to inform you of changes to the AEA annual conference. We are making targeted improvements to help members navigate the program more easily, reduce duplication, and strengthen proposal review while keeping TIG-community-building central. The planned redesign incorporates targeted improvements in response to comments and requests by AEA members and conference attendees. In addition, there are two critical contextual factors that are driving this redesign:
- Improve the clarity and navigability of the conference for all members of our community. Membership interests are increasingly diverse, expectations for learning and connection are high, and the conference has become a central space where many communities seek visibility, belonging, and professional growth. However, for the past few years, attendees have reported that they are finding the conference increasingly difficult to navigate, noting issues such as duplication of content across sessions, unclear learning pathways, and issues of equitable access to presentation opportunities.
- The financial and logistical realities of hosting the conference have changed. Rising venue and staffing costs, the size and structure of the current program, and decreasing revenues mean that AEA cannot sustainably support the conference at its existing scale using the processes and structures that were developed in a different context under different circumstances. In addition, recent disruptions to the evaluation workforce due to external political and economic circumstances are serving to exacerbate these realities to an even greater degree. This creates a very real tension. We are deeply committed to bringing members together and advancing the field of evaluation. Yet, we also need to ensure the conference and our association remain financially viable and operationally manageable.
In response, AEA and its member-led Conference Advisory Working Group (CAWG) are undertaking a three-year, three-phase redesign of the annual conference, with particular attention to proposal submission, review, and program organization. The goal is not simply greater efficiency and cost savings but also greater clarity, coherence, and quality, all while continuing to support the diverse communities that make up AEA.
Changes for Evaluation 26 will include:
- a move to a stream-based proposal submission process,
- an updated and expanded proposal submission form with an aligned review rubric,
- an AEA-wide call for reviewers to join TIG volunteers on stream-focused review teams,
- a review process that is more centralized in its administration, but still a product of member review, and
- opportunities for TIGs to remain central to community building and to curate special sessions during the conference.
This redesign work has necessitated a shift in the submission calendar for this year. For 2026, the call for proposals will be released in mid-March rather than the traditional late January time frame. Watch for announcements in the newsletter and in a member email in March.
What We've Learned: Why Change Is Needed
A consistent theme in post-conference feedback is that the current structure — organized largely around Topical Interest Groups (TIGs) — has become increasingly difficult to navigate, particularly for newer members and those not already engaged with specific TIGs. With more than 50 TIGs, attendees frequently report duplicated session content across multiple TIGs, difficulty identifying learning pathways, and uncertainty about how to plan a coherent conference experience. Members have also raised concerns that, within this structure, a relatively small subset of individuals and groups have dominated program slots, limiting equitable access to presentation opportunities in a conference with a finite number of sessions.
Survey data also indicated that TIG affiliation is no longer the primary way many members engage with the conference. Roughly half of AEA members do not belong to a TIG, and many respondents noted that the number of TIGs makes it challenging to decide where to submit proposals or identify how sessions relate to one another across the program. Attendees consistently ask for clearer organization, reduced duplication, more equitable opportunities to present, and more intentional alignment around professional learning needs.
What's Ahead: Stream-Based Organizing Framework
To address these challenges, AEA is redesigning several interconnected components of the conference proposal and review system. Each change responds directly to member feedback, post-conference evaluation data, and the operational realities of hosting a conference at AEA’s current scale.
- Stream-based conference structure: In the past, proposals have been submitted to individual TIGs. Proposals will now be submitted to one of five streams that have been defined according to functional and professional interests within the evaluation field, including: fundamental practice such as methods and theory; issues of concern to the profession and members, such as equity or building professional community in evaluation; and more global issues, such as futurism, technology, and innovation. The conference program itself will also be organized by streams to clarify learning pathways, reduce duplication of presentation content, and support more coherent, cross-cutting conference content. This change is in response to repeated post-conference feedback about difficulty navigating the program, duplicated content across TIGs, and the absence of a cohesive structure focused on professional learning pathways rather than topical foci, particularly for newer attendees and new evaluators. In direct response to concerns about participation equity, the participation limits (a maximum of two slots on the program as a presenter and two as a discussant) that have always been a part of the conference will be maintained and built into the submission process.
- Revised proposal submission form: The proposal application form will be revised and expanded to ask proposers to more clearly articulate the session’s purpose, intended audience, learning intent, engagement approach, relevance to the stream, and, if relevant, how it connects to the conference theme. This change is based on evaluation data, noting concerns about uneven session quality and frequent uncertainty among attendees about what they would gain from a session.
- Centralized and coordinated review process: Proposal review will be conducted within streams by teams of volunteer reviewers drawn from membership at large as well as from TIGs. Cross-stream guidance and oversight will be provided by the Conference Advisory Working Group, a voluntary working group consisting of AEA members — many of whom have previously been TIG leaders themselves. AEA staff will provide logistical and administrative support. This change addresses concerns about duplication, inconsistency, and workload across the more than 50 separate review processes that have been in place until now, while creating a more sustainable, transparent, and scalable process for program submission and review.
- New AEA-wide call for reviewers and revised reviewer application: AEA will implement a centralized call for reviewers and a revised reviewer application to build broader participation in the review process. Reviewers will continue to come from TIG communities, as they have in the past, but recruitment will also be expanded through a general call for volunteers to engage the many AEA members who do not belong to a TIG. This change is driven by the changing realities of AEA and TIG membership, the administrative burden and inefficiency of managing more than 50 parallel TIG-based review processes, and feedback about reviewer fatigue, inconsistent practices, and the need to broaden participation in shaping the conference program.
- Updated review criteria: A review rubric aligned to the submission form is being designed to more effectively assess proposals on session quality, audience alignment, participant engagement, contribution to the field in ways that may extend beyond a single project or context, and alignment with the selected stream. To encourage meaningful engagement with the conference theme, proposals that are very closely aligned with the theme will be identified for consideration in the presidential strand. Note that alignment with the conference theme will not be a requirement for overall conference acceptance decisions. This change responds to multi-year post-conference evaluation feedback highlighting uneven perceived value and variability in session quality and a high degree of duplication based on the theme each year.
Look for more details on each of these changes when the call for proposals opens in mid-March.
The Continuing Role of TIGs
TIGs remain a vital part of AEA. They play an essential role in building a professional community, both during the conference and throughout the year, and that role is valued and encouraged.
Under the redesigned conference model, TIGs will no longer directly manage proposal submissions or the review process. However, TIG leaders, as well as all AEA members, will continue to play important roles by:
- serving as proposal reviewers and contributing subject-matter expertise to the review process,
- encouraging high-quality submissions from their communities and networks, and
- curating TIG-sponsored sessions and strengthening community-building activities at the conference (including the TIG Fair) and beyond.
These changes are intended to reduce administrative burden and support TIGs in expanding activities within and between conferences while preserving meaningful TIG influence and visibility.
Ongoing Engagement
The Conference Advisory Working Group (CAWG), a voluntary working group consisting of AEA members, is actively engaging with TIG leadership, the Board, and the Professional Development Committee as this redesign takes shape. Member input remains central to this work, and additional opportunities to learn more and provide feedback will be shared as plans continue to develop.
This work is also informed by multiple sources of input, including:
- Analysis of post-conference evaluation survey data from the past three years (summary report coming soon)
- The financial sustainability of the conference and the association (see the 2025 AEA Annual Business Meeting)
- Conference attendee and AEA member feedback shared through conversations, meetings, and follow-up communications
- Scans of other professional conferences, including evaluation associations
- Review of the literature on conference design and organization
We appreciate the care members bring to strengthening AEA and its annual conference. This redesign is intended to better align the conference with how members learn, connect, and navigate an increasingly large and diverse association while sustaining the communities that make AEA what it is.
Thank you for your engagement and continued support.
The AEA Conference Advisory Working Group