Эпизоды
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We had a come-to-reality moment and concluded that what the world needs right now is not another scicomm podcast episode from us. So, we are pausing what would be our next season of Meteor, indefinitely.
We have several reasons for this decision, which we discuss in this brief episode:
Our most reliable, trusted communities are tighter in scope and focus, and we’re especially prioritizing spending time sustaining those connections right now. We do not want to just join the pundit discourse about what’s happening in the world. Talking about the state of scicomm via the podcast just doesn’t feel like concrete action. A support course or coaching process around social justice and collective action would probably help us all, but the two of us don’t need to create that. Many, many valuable resources to this effect already exist. Social change and reciprocal communities/relationships require that we embrace knowing that the work takes all kinds of efforts and people doing all kinds of roles. (And that we divest from the toxic notion that we must, as one person, do all the roles.) In other words: we feel like we need to fill other roles than “podcaster” right now.The book Bethann mentions in this episode is Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Now workbook (socialchangemap.com). It helps identify lots of social change roles, emphasizes how important it is that people fill all sorts of roles, and underscores that we should not try to fill every role on our own.
Take good care, fellow scicomm folks!
Thanks for your support over the past 4 years! If you’d like to connect, you can reach us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
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As we both hit our 40s, we’re embracing the “lost all our f*cks” part of aging. That means we’re crying, we’re snacking, and we’re eye-balling this season’s wrap-up questions from a little different angle.
So, join us as we consider:
Do mid-career scicomm pros need an assistant? What would we have someone do, do we want to spend our personal money on that, and the like?What are our favorite tools for managing groups and group projects? Including some maybe-uncommon ways of using Google Drive plus Bethann’s secret, vintage comms weapon. How can we convince people they are an expert and it’s okay to act like one? (Or, should you just tell ‘em they need therapy!?) What are we looking forward to, and how completely are we committed to being feisty this year?Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: what’s something you’re looking forward to, personally or professionally?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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Пропущенные эпизоды?
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Doesn’t “in it together” mean…scicomm groups? Isn’t that obvious?
Well…actually. Scicomm community is not the only community or type of relationship that helps us be good, beyond-beginner scicommers.
So, we talk this week about OTHER spaces and relationships that serve us as whole humans:
Not everyone needs a big network to thrive. “You don’t have to have twenty best friends in public.” Scicomm isn’t the be-all, end-all. What we say no to gives us space to be people, not scicomm robots. (Find Bethann’s No-buddy blog post here: https://www.commnatural.com/post/get-yourself-a-no-buddy)Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: what’s a non-scicomm community or relationship that helps you feel like a full person?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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We vaguely talk all the time on this podcast about what we do and where we work. But, we don’t talk concretely about the specific projects we work on, which ones we love, and what makes them hard.
Plus, we talk all the time about saying no, and sometimes saying yes. So, today, we’re focusing on some things we actually said yes to.
Today, we cover:
Virginia’s role as Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of the ocean tech start-up Tini Scientific (https://www.tiniscientific.com/). Bethann’s excitement about being principal investigator on a recently funded grant from the National Science Foundation. How Virginia’s free, monthly coaching calls didn’t start out as a community, but have turned into something of one. Bethann’s nerdery and frustration and loyalty because …it’s her department! And she’s in charge of the department’s assessment work, which involves curricular overhauling to reflect their visioning and branding.It feels GOOD to gush. We rant and talk about the bad things and what all needs fixing A LOT on this podcast. Doing that is essential for making a difference. But, we have to remember that there are good things happening too. That can keep us connected to our core motivations for doing this work. It can also help us remember that we do do work that matters, and that work actually does make a difference. (The opposite of that — convincing yourself nothing you do matters — is a recipe for burnout, y’all.)
Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: what’s a scicomm project you’re working on — with a community aspect — and why are you excited about it? (We really mean it on this one; please tell us!!)
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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We are building, maintaining & running facilitated settings/communities. It’s different to work hard to make a safe, productive scicomm community space (vs. just showing up and glorying in such a space). These spaces don’t just happen.
This week, we tackle what it feels like to be that someone who has to step up…and what’s possible, in a good way, when we do step up!
Moderation and leadership aren't just the fun stuff. And, ain’t it tricky when you’re co-running things, or only running part of a thing? And….what happens when WE are the ones who need course correcting!? 🫠 But also, even if you’re on the greatest team, how do you balance democracy with efficacy when you're making decisions?However you answer these questions, we decide that doing the hard work is what makes a community worth joining.
Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What’s an aspect of managing or running a community that you find challenging…yet still rewarding?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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We find we have predictable periods of “now what”, with the podcast, Meteor, as well as in our own, separate professional endeavors. And we’re trying to embrace these cycles as one of the indicators that we are in an advanced stage of our scicomm careers.
The symptoms of our identity crises depend on our circumstances, like:
the cadence of our evaluation cycles (say, annual reports for a grant or a supervisor) our workload (sometimes all freelance clients want everything at the same time!)and may display in recognizable ways, like an itch to update our websites, change our profile pics everywhere, or overhaul our bios.
While we used to anchor ourselves first by asking whether we were doing the things that meet (external) expectations, now we’re asking: how does this work serve our communities or this stage in our careers?
Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What are you trying to decide in your scicomm life right now, and what sort of reflection questions do you use to navigate that decision?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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Genuine community and relationships make everything else possible. You want to change something? You can’t change it alone. You want someone to whisper-network vouch for you? As we said in the last episode, you don’t build professional community and relationships by lurking.
But that’s not all of it. There are a *lot* of payoffs to having strong professional ties.
In the interests of being (overly) honest, this week we asked ourselves: what’s the hidden curriculum of the success we’ve had in scicomm?
And…it’s COMMUNITY!!!
But, what’s that actually look like?
This week, we tell you exactly what kinds of good things have come from having strong professional relationships. (And we ponder the downsides of the amount of time, effort, and perhaps money that it may take to build these relationships.)
For example, we cover:
Working with other people who care about the same effort/outcome/change can keep you going (in good ways and…also…maybe unsustainable ways). The material benefits and credibility that can come from working with/inside a given professional community and having strong relationships therein. How belonging in more than one professional community can facilitate code-switching that you can leverage for professional growth.Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What’s the hidden curriculum that you think is responsible for your success in scicomm?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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Today, we're doing the big sister thing and sharing some straight-up advice:
Lists of a lot of the places where we find (or are aware of) scicomm communities, especially online Recommendations on how not to be a creep (just in case you need to pass that advice along 😏) How important it is to actually get involved, not just hang-around on the fringes of these communitiesWe also get real honest: you have to interact with people and build relationships if you’re going to feel like you have found a scicomm community where you belong. Lurking ain’t working.
Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What’s a scicomm community that you are in and want to gush about, or one that you’re working your way into?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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Generosity is about a lot more than just money. We pondered this reality from a few points of view. And we found ourselves thinking through a lot of questions.
For example:
Is it possible to think about being generous with time separately from money? Is it possible to scale our impact while still protecting our professional (and thus personal) time? In what ways can we extend to other people the same assumption we grant ourselves — that we’re all trying to be a “good guy” — and what are the mutual benefits of doing so? What kinds of expert knowledge, processes, network connections, and/or materials do and don’t we share..and why? (And what differences here should we be scrutinizing wrt how individual scicommers/trainers operate vs. the big scicomm organizations?)Bottom line: Generosity doesn’t always have to focus on financials. So, how else can we create abundance, together, beyond the bounds of money?
Dig in for yourself: What’s a non-montetary form of generosity that you practice professionally?
Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
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First, we have a big announcement!
We’ve not previously opened the show to guests because we can’t monetarily compensate anyone for being on the podcast (even ourselves). But, we’ve heard from people that y’all would like to join the convo anyway. So, let’s do this! If you want to join the possible guest pool for next season, visit meteorscicomm.org/podcast. And, if anyone listening has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!
Now, on to today’s episode!
We’re kicking off SEASON 4!! 🥳
We’ve been hearing from you, listeners, for four years now. Together, we’ve gone from advanced how-to’s to hope is an action to systemic change, and we love feeling like we’re really in this together. So, this season’s theme is “We’re in this together, now what!?”
Today, we're taking a look at the risk there is, in the scicomm field, to see everything (and everyone) as competition, as a limit on what’s possible. This scarcity mindset dominates when we perceive a scarcity of resources. The tricky thing is, we’re often operating in situations where there are — actually — plenty of resources! It’s just a question of how we (or folks in charge, when it’s not us) choose to allocate those resources.
All of this leads to some real potential for issues among scicomm professionals and organizations.
For example, we think:
Environments with loads of resources are actually more likely to foster a scarcity mindset. There are individual, institutional, and systemic points of responsibility (and opportunity!) to change these attitudes to be more oriented toward abundance and generosity.As always, on this “overly” honest podcast, we talk through several examples in our personal and professional lives.
Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself:
What’s a shift toward abundance that you could make in your mindset or habits around the scicomm community/profession?Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.
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REMINDER: We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳
In this fast-paced episode (with a few audio flickers, boo Wyoming wind that knocks out the internet), we make this honest podcast about scicomm with impact a bit #overlyhonest. We tackle:
Why we think academia still matters Why people “valuing” scicomm ain’t what we need The truth that professional development is too-often worse than no investment/change at all A tough reality: there’s no one place to go to “level up” your scicomm career if you’re beyond-beginner How we deal with (the unavoidable, we argue) jealousy of being advanced scicomm'ers How to stop getting in your own way with your scicomm project/funding pitchesDig in for yourself:
What’s a scicomm change you’re going to make in 2024? And, what’s one honest thing about scicomm systems that you think needs to be said out loud?!We love you for being part of the Meteor community for another season! 💖 Stay connected with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - two big announcements:
Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳Truly, yelling and naming is how we process, cope, and then work toward action and change when we’re facing schtuff that’s inequitable, obstructionist, or devalues work in scicomm. We talk through a lot of layers on this one:
Naming what is really going on when people and systems undervalue the vital work that makes communities, systems, and good change happen Pushing back to make the work more legible or appreciated Taking a hard look in the mirror: how much of this work do you want to keep doing? Weighing whether someone even knows or intends the disrespect Holding an icy grip on rage in order to move through the spaces we need to operate inAnd all the time, we need community that can validate us when we are angry, and hold space when we are furious.
We also talk about a couple of books that have been a valuable frame for us:
The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s AngerDig in for yourself:
What is a systemic scicomm issue that you just need to name right now? And, what’s something you need to yell and stomp your feet about?Thanks for listening! Get good and mad! 🤬😤 You can holler at/with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - two big announcements:
Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳Wanting to get paid real money (plenty of it) is OKAY. Full stop. And, we argue it’s also important if we’re all going to do the collective, hard work of making the world better through scicomm. In this episode, we talk through:
Why enjoying getting paid isn’t something to be embarrassed about The caution of worldviews that note “desire is the root of all suffering” A key reframe: anchor jobs are not sell-out jobs; they can be self-determined sponsorship of your passion projects/professional goals Income models are wildly different across realms of scicomm and other types of media/creator jobs; that’s not just okay, it’s great Funding at the systems change/program-building level is hard to access, unpredictable, often exclusive, and rarely sustainableDig in for yourself:
Tell us about the dollars that you’d make a difference with! Or, what is something about money that you need or want to know right now?Thanks for listening! Money, honey; let’s actually talk about it. 🍯💰Connect with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - a big announcement: we’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳
Articulating and providing evidence of success is reliably hard in scicomm. At the systems level, it can feel swampingly abstract. That’s why concrete examples are super useful. So, in this episode, we dissect how we articulated what success would be for the SciComm STEP program (Sparking Transitions for Experienced Professionals).
We talk about:
Articulating our own metrics of success Finding funders with shared values Mapping our self-defined measures of success onto funders’ values (scicomm 101, really!) Designing the program to track metrics we’d articulated would evidence success Framing up a program, process, and perspectives on enduring funding that will be sustainable, not just a one-off…while having very clear exit strategies that leave relationships intact Being flexible and responsive as we delivered the programDig in for yourself:
Check out our report on STEP and see how we stated success and the evidence we collected to inform our assessment of STEP’s success. Are you building a program? Are you pushing on a system? How have you defined success?Thanks for listening! Let’s holler about success, together! 📢🥳 Connect with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - a big announcement: we’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳
In the mid-to-advanced career stages of scicomm, we’re all routinely making things up. But even if we’re good at that, we can’t accomplish real scicomm systems change solo. So, this week, we get into:
the downsides of transactional professional relationships how hard it can be to ask for help how much harder it can be to accept help and recognizing that everyone's in their own normal, and someone else's insight can be vital for progress.Put another way, we assert that shouting at each other about new (fun, fancy) underpants can be a model for reciprocal relationships that have a shot at changing the world.
Dig in for yourself: what kind of reciprocity (or underpants!) do you feel you need right now?
Thanks for listening! Hop into something fabulous and let’s jam. 🤩 Connect with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - a big announcement: we’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! 🥳 Apply here
Dealing thoroughly with a system -- enough to rise to power within it -- can prevent us from changing it.
How?
The system keeps us too busy. Or, we get recognized for being able to navigate the system, and thus get asked to do the work of navigating it when we’d actually like to be overhauling it. And, when we do get a shot at changing it…of course: the system resists change.So, we’re talking today about overcoming all that inertia, handling FOMO when you wanna say no, and, also, reckoning with when you might just want to jump ship.
Dig in for yourself:
What would you be building if you weren’t too busy? And, what would you cut/stop doing to make space to do that building?Thanks for listening! Let’s do some benevolent empire-building! 👑 Connect on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - two big announcements:
In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Join our email list for a ping when the application goes live November 1st! 🥳Today, we’re getting real: Doing big things, like trying to tackle systems-level change in scicomm, is a heavy lift.
This week, we discuss:
The futility of trying to do this work alone Ways we can boost and build up people to be sure we are all able to do (and recognized for) this work we do together The role of being a hype buddy to yourself and within a team The data we see about scicomm folks who want to work together How we’re only selectively asking for permission anymoreDig in for yourself:
How are you consciously hyping yourself up in a team setting? How would you like others to be hyping you? What can you do to hype up the people you work with?Thanks for listening! Grab your hot drinks and let’s have a chat! 🍵☕ Connect on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - two big announcements:
In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Join our email list for a ping when the application goes live! 🥳Today, we’re reckoning with reality: lots of us have anxiety about our careers. And that’s probably related to anxiety we have about our personal lives. AND there are whole lists of the most common ways that human brains add anxiety to our existence, which just feels totally unfair!
Luckily, if we can identify what’s happening, we can combat it.
So, this week, we discuss:
Common ways we experience anxiety in our careers The most common ways humans experience anxiety in our lives Wider ramifications for scicomm professionals How we wrangle these issues at mid-to-advanced-career stagesDig in for yourself: how have you had success reframing your mindset?
Thanks for listening! Autumn still feels warm where we live, so come sit in the sun with us! 😎🍂 Connect on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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First - two big announcements:
In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Join our email list for a ping when the application goes live! 🥳There’s a lot going on underneath the phrase “scicomm system”.
Today, we're taking a look at the state of the field and how that shapes those of us who work in scicomm. For example, we think:
the generally used definition of who is a scicomm professional is too narrow; we need to talk more about how there are reaaally different takes on scicomm (support, professionalization, extent of professional community) in the U.S., elsewhere in North America, and regionally on other continents; there are so many dimensions of scicomm, including scicomm tasks/products, types of audiences, etc., etc.In short, the scicomm field has not been professionalized. At minimum, we lack:
a clearinghouse that we can look to for information, power, funding, access; coherent networking; a professional infrastructure run by actual scicommers/scicomm leaders; productive, well-paying, sustainable mechanisms for moving into and up/through the field.What this means is that the scicomm field is at the mercy of and beholden to other systems with other priorities. (And, ahem, that puts field-leading beacons of scicomm at massive risk of vanishing.)
At the same time, the gaps in professionalization mean anyone from any corner of the worlds that intersect with scicomm can join the profession, influence it, reinvent themselves within it, and have substantial, positive impact on science and society through scicomm.
This week we also tackle:
changing scicomm systems from inside vs. outside those systems (e.g., within or beyond academia); how systems beyond scicomm still undervalue or even actively obstruct scicomm; how we describe advanced scicommers today (in one, nerdy sentence!); a theory of change that has reshaped how we imagine and build scicomm systems.Dig in for yourself:
How would you describe advanced scicommers? wWhat’s one big change in the scicomm system that would open up space for you to do the work you want to be doing?Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.
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Per Meteor tradition, our last episode for this season was an open Q&A.
Does scicomm have to make money? [Spoiler: we have lotsa thoughts on this!] What scicomm tools are you loving right now? [We talked about time tracking, accountability, and planning.] Recent career realizations that we haven’t talked about on air yet. Keeping up our enthusiasm for long-term scicomm commitments.
This week, we tackled some questions and provocations from y’all! They fit into a loose theme of sustainability, including topics like:
Bethann's time-tracking spreadsheet: https://bgmerklecommunications.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/20200511_academic_productivity_time_tracker_resource.xlsx The Typology doc: https://bgmerklecommunications.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/typology-for-public-impact-focused-research.pdf (which comes from this group: https://scholars.unh.edu/research_scholarship/)
Aaaaand, we got a little personal with some family relationship strategies that we thiiiink could have relevance for scicomm professionals.
Here are the two resources we mention in the episode:
Dig in for yourself: What are you looking froward to saying yes to or working on for the rest of 2022?
Thanks for listening! Keep in touch... we’re working on another Meteor project this fall, and then we’ll be back with season 3 in 2023! See you at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm until then. - Показать больше
