Date: Friday, October 31, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Happy Halloween, evaluators! We’re Liz DiLuzio and Elizabeth Grim, your AEA365 curators, here with a friendly seasonal PSA about something that haunts even the bravest curators: ghosting.
In the coming weeks, Liz DiLuzio be reaching out to TIGs, affiliate groups, and other leaders in the evaluation community to start filling our 2026 AEA365 calendar. If your group is thinking about sponsoring a week, this blog shares a few things to know and a few tricks to help your experience go smoothly.
We know when you sign up, you do it with the best of intentions. You’re excited to highlight your community’s work, share resources, and lift up diverse evaluator voices. But sometimes, life intervenes. Deadlines pile up, contributors vanish, and suddenly the week you planned feels like a ghost story in progress.
When that happens, please don’t disappear. Ghosting creates a ripple effect on the backend: missed slots, emergency reshuffling, and some very worried curators refreshing their inboxes.
If you’re struggling to fill your week, or something unexpected happens, reach out early. We know it’s not fun to say, “I’m behind,” but it’s so much better than silence. We can adjust timelines, combine weeks, or help recruit extra posts. Think of us as your behind-the-scenes allies, here to make sure your stories still get told.
Getting a full set of seven posts can feel daunting, but other curators have shared tried-and-true ways to find great contributors:
These simple steps often turn a half-empty calendar into a vibrant showcase of voices and ideas.
Bookmark the AEA365 Author Guidelines for quick reminders about word count, deadlines, and formatting tips you can send to your contributors.
As we head into this Halloween season and toward another exciting year of AEA365, remember: please don’t ghost us! If you book a week, stay in touch, keep us posted, and let’s make 2026 our most engaging, community-centered year yet.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.