Meteor

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 spendi...

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 too...

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.”  Scicom...

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...

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 leadersh...

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 o...

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 (over...

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 communities  We also get real...

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 t...

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 t...

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 ai...

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 inequi...

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...

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 succes...

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 profess...

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...

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...

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 per...

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 shape...

Per Meteor tradition, our last episode for this season was an open Q&A.  This week, we tackled some questions and provocations from y’all! They fit into a loose theme of sustainability, including topics like:  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.] ...

A quick opening note: Our last episode for this season will be an open Q&A. Send us your questions, ideas, puzzles and dilemmas by September 6. We’ll fit in as many as we can for the September 8 episode!  The whole upper rungs of mentoring, on the scicomm career ladder, are missing.  Is it a question of relationships? Resources? Respect?  Or is it that beyond-beginners need different kinds of...

A quick opening note: Our last episode for this season will be an open Q&A. Send us your questions, ideas, puzzles and dilemmas by September 6. We’ll fit in as many as we can for the September 8 episode!  In scicomm, it’s inevitable to run into some expertise questions. There’s the matter of whether one has expertise in science, how that compares to the expertise of others, whether one feels c...

First, a reminder - applications for the first cohort of SciComm STEP are due TOMORROW: August 19, 2022! Listen to this episode for details and visit our website to apply! https://www.meteorscicomm.org/scicomm-step   There’s a lot of jargon in science, so it’s no surprise there’s also a lot of jargon in scicomm. We’ve been chatting… aaaand ranting… about scicomm jargon for a while. So we thought w...

First, a reminder - applications are open for the first cohort of SciComm STEP! Listen to this episode for details and visit our website to apply!  https://www.meteorscicomm.org/scicomm-step   There’s a nuance to scicomm careers that can really bog down your mental energy…and even complicate how you think about your own identity.  That is: doing scicomm well often requires taking on the identity a...

First, a reminder - applications are open for the first cohort of SciComm STEP! Listen to this episode for details and visit our website to apply!  https://www.meteorscicomm.org/scicomm-step   Visibility can mean influence, access, and power, which can lead to a sort of visibility monster issue (cue the Genie in Aladdin).  Basically, visibility is often shorthand for credibility.  But, we think th...