Where do I start?
If you read my last blog post, you’ll know a little about my plans to turn FreshSpectrum from being my personal/consulting blog into a kind of evaluation forever conference.
At this moment in time, early August of 2025, I have lots of ideas and zero funding. I have done a little work rewriting some of the website copy, and restructuring pages a bit. But the biggest fuel for growth on the web is not intent or structure, but content.
Whether it’s blog posts, videos, newsletters, or podcasts, the act of regularly producing content anchors any website. And when you have little time, focus is critically important.
Building on my strengths.
Here’s what I know about myself.
First, I write like I speak. And apparently, I speak like a middle school teacher.
I’ve been using AI lately to analyze content on different resource websites. I’ve also turned that analysis on myself. Even my more technical blog posts rarely go above an 8th grade reading level. And most of the time I’m writing at like a 5th or 6th grade level.
For the last decade I thought my cartoons and illustrations were my differentiator, and they are to some extent. But I didn’t really consider my writing style as being all that unique. Sure, I’m more informal than a lot of sources, but I still talk about technical stuff.
Turns out, at least in evaluation, the way I write is super rare.
To give you an example, here is what the AI analysis says about how I write here at FreshSpectrum and the content written at Better Evaluation.
FreshSpectrum is 6+ grade levels more accessible than BetterEvaluation, reflecting fundamentally different communication philosophies:
- BetterEvaluation serves as a comprehensive professional resource, using academic language appropriate for its expert audience
- FreshSpectrum functions as an accessible learning platform, using conversational language to make complex topics approachable
Both styles are effective for their intended purposes, but FreshSpectrum’s approach would reach a much broader audience while BetterEvaluation’s style maintains the precision and authority expected in professional evaluation contexts.
Analysis by Claude.AI
What should I focus on creating, first?
Until I’m able to generate at least some sponsorship or partnership funding, I’m going to be limited in how much time I can commit to creating stuff. So I need to make a choice.
I think there are four different types of content that could anchor this site. This is beyond my regular blogging/cartooning.
Evaluation Simple Tutorials.
When I talked about “recipes” this is what I had in mind. Basically, the idea would be to create short focused step by step tutorials for different evaluation activities (ex. How to create a simple logic model, Creating a basic evaluation rubric, Designing a one page report). These could eventually be organized into collections.
Evaluation Practitioner Guides.
Evaluation practitioner guides are deeper dives into practical evaluation topics. The posts would be longer and more comprehensive but still written with my middle teacher voice. I could also adapt popular, academically written, guides and pdfs into accessible long-form blog posts (ex. FreshSpectrum guide to Formative, Summative, and Developmental Evaluation, a Practitioners Guide to Systems Evaluation, Breaking Down the CDC’s 2024 Evaluation Framework).
Evaluation Expert Webinars.
Webinars are about tapping into the broader evaluation community. The idea would be to have casual conversations with Evaluators to talk about their work. So if someone publishes an interesting paper, let’s talk to them about it. The evaluation world is filled with authors, presenters, bloggers, and practitioners that might join me for a little bit to talk about their work in front of a live audience.
Evaluation Courses
On this list, courses are the most involved. These would be created with my style but built against a set of learning objectives. My idea for these would be to launch each as a series of live webinars. Then I will adapt these webinars into self-paced courses.
The Other Stuff
I have no shortage of ideas, that’s never been my problem. So I do have a bunch of other things I have been considering. But I think in the short term, those four represent what I think would be a good first step.
Want to provide me with your input?
So if you’re reading this soon after I’ve published it, I have a poll going on LinkedIn. Please visit the poll and let me know what you think I should focus on.
Sponsorship & Partnership Updates
So as I mentioned early, I don’t currently have any funding for this work. But I have talked to a bunch of smart people about it and it’s helped me come up with a strategy.
I don’t think I should just go after grant funding. It would take a good amount of time and energy to do so, and that would take away from just diving in and creating content.
Instead, I plan to search for Sponsors and Partners.
My Sponsor Pitch.
My sponsor pitch is pretty simple. I’m going to ask companies who usually sponsor events like live conferences to sponsor this website. I already reach more people than most conferences and get really high open rates on my newsletters.
I don’t plan to fill this website up with ads, instead I want to get sponsors to help me develop specific pieces of content. This would naturally put them in front of my audience via my emails, this website, and any social media sharing I would do for that piece of content.
My Strategic Partnership Pitch
My partnership pitch is a bit different. I want to work with organizations interested in increasing the accessibility and engagement of their own evaluation resources. To do this, I would adapt one (or a few) of their resources into FreshSpectrum Practitioner Guides and share them on this website.
The act of adapting materials naturally results in a set of illustrations and social media assets. Taking a PDF written at a graduate reading level and adapting it to a series of blog posts, illustrated with comics, and written with my middle school teacher voice would greatly increase reach. I’d also provide the evaluation analytics to prove it along with some content strategy consulting.
This would be perfect for organizations already publishing evaluation resources in PDFs that really want to do something to spread their work beyond just a few downloads.
Want to help?
In the future I’ll be looking for experts, but in the meantime if you know anyone who make a good sponsor or partner, could you provide an introduction? And if you have any questions, just reach out and let me know (https://freshspectrum.com/contact/).