Meteor - SoundSage

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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 pitches

Dig 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 in

And 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 Anger

Dig 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 sustainable

Dig 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 program

Dig 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 anymore

Dig 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 stages

Dig 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.

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.]
Recent career realizations that we haven’t talked about on air yet.
Keeping up our enthusiasm for long-term scicomm commitments.

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:

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/)

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.

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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 mentoring and our profession just isn’t structured to provide it?

Either way, where do mid-career and advanced scicommers look for mentors?

This week, we take on those questions, plus:

When mentoring is needed
Alternatives if you don’t want mentors
How mentors “happen”

Dig in for yourself: What kind of mentorship do you feel you need, if any? What kind of mentorship would you most like to offer right now?

Thanks for listening! Pass us a note…we sit right behind you, at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm.

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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 confident in their own expertise, and how expertise is and isn’t respected.

So, this week, we tackle questions like:

Who defines expertise?
Who actually is an expert?
What responsibility goes along with that?
What if you don’t feel like you’re an expert but you’re asked to do expert things?

Dig in for yourself: How do you feel about being called an expert? And, what’s one thing you’re really good at that you can help other people with?

Thanks for listening! Give yourself some props - we’ll cheer you on at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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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 we’d go out on a limb and say what jargon we think works, what matters, and what jargon debates feel unnecessary.

Why does the jargon matter? Because our work -- scicomm -- is about people, and words matter to people.

So this week, we tackle things like:

Being ready for situations by having thought through the terms you prioritize
The debate about being a scicomm trainer vs. scicomm facilitator
Scientific communication vs. science communication (aka scicomm)
Bethann’s rant that ‘blogging isn’t dead’ and ‘newsletters are just blogs’
Citizen science vs. community science vs. civic science

Dig in for yourself: What’s an aspect of scicomm jargon that you think really matters …or maybe one that you think is downright silly?

Thanks for listening! Share your jargon rant with us at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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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 and ‘voice’ of the organization - or project, place, or even species - that you’re representing or sharing about.

So this week, we tackle things like:

What you have to weigh when you’re representing someone/something else
Everyone knows there’s a person behind the social media account, but what’s that mean for scicommers who are that person?
What drives the shift to frame things in your own voice instead
The many voices of a single scicomm career

Dig in for yourself: Is your voice your own right now? And, how do you feel about that?

Thanks for listening! Step up to the mic - we’re all ears at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm

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First, a reminder - we launched applications for the first cohort of SciComm STEP last week! 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 there should be more to it than that.

So this week, we tackle things like:

Name recognition and credibility
Balancing the need to uplift new voices with the need to vet someone before handing them the microphone
Power imbalances

Dig in for yourself:

What’s your gut feeling about the pros and cons of visibility?
And, if you had a mega platform, what’s an issue in scicomm or social justice that you’d tackle head-on?

Thanks for listening! Meet us on stage. We’re going for a sold-out show and encores at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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We’ve been talking a lot, without the recording button on, about when it’s time to stick our necks out to try to spin a negative situation into something positive.

Basically, when’s it time to raise a ruckus?!?

And how can we make a totally-outta-line request or situation into something that jives with our commitment this season to work actively toward the positives?

So this week, we tackle things like:

Reframing a commitment after you’ve said yes
Accountability and validation buddies
The equity side of raising a stink
Not just saying no nicely - saying no in a way that makes sure someone else doesn’t get asked to do the same unreasonable thing
Leaving as an act of making change

[And, of course, the only people who can make a stink are people who don’t anticipate being punished. Basically, you often gotta have privilege to willingly ruffle feathers.]

Dig in for yourself:

Do you feel like you can make a stink for you or for the greater good from where you are right now?
What factors did you weigh the last time you wanted to raise a ruckus?

Thanks for listening! Meet us in the empty lot. We’ll have a bonfire going at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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Now, change is basically a whole genre of opinion pieces, workshops, and podcasts right now. But, there are some specific, mid-career scicomm aspects of change that we want to tackle.

So we’re putting a Meteor spin on it this week, talking about:

Wrangling expectations - yours, mine, and ours
Branding and tipping points
Negotiations - how I get what I want, so you get what you need
Treating people right
Whose job is it to follow through on what, and when
Finite and spatial career changes
Trying to stay while leaving
Time tracking to manage change

Our theme this season is saying yes makes room for action, accountability, impact, and yep, even hope in the realm of scicomm. And grappling with change is a huge part of taking action.

So, we’re wondering about you:

What changes are you currently considering in your scicomm work?
What factors are you weighing as you think through this decision?

Thanks for listening! Join us on the front porch to chat about this. We’ll have sweet tea at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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First, a reminder - we launched applications for the first cohort of SciComm STEP yesterday! Visit our website to apply! https://www.meteorscicomm.org/scicomm-step

Now. Collaboration is about so much more than finding people to collaborate with.

There are hard decisions we cannot put on autopilot, no matter how a collaboration arises.

Our theme this season is saying yes makes room for action, accountability, impact, and yep, even hope in the realm of scicomm. So, this week, we’re tackling:

Applying an abundance mindset to collaboration
Collaboration isn’t always about bringing your own funds to the table
The hassle tax and other contract-style things that should always be part of your collaboration set-ups
Collaboration red flags
Saying no to say yes

Dig in for yourself:

What power moves are you currently using in your work relationships?
What made you pick up those moves?

Thanks for listening! Let’s have a daaance party at https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm with those moves!

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First - two big announcements:

Season 2 is all about finding hope through action and saying yes. ✔
We’re running the first cohort of SciComm STEP this fall! Listen to this episode for details and join our email list (https://www.meteorscicomm.org/scicomm-step) for a ping when the application goes live!

Now, we’re gonna say it. Finding and picking your people is not just nice, it’s crucial.

There’s not enough time in the day, or energy in our overwhelmed, burnt-out selves, to compromise about who we spend our time with.

*[And yes, we know it’s an enormous privilege to get to work this way! Some of us have a lot of obligations that don’t leave room for choosing who we work with. Family. Finances. Friends.

Still. We’re finally at a career stage where we can make some choices.]*We hope this conversation helps you identify at least one aspect of your work or personal life where you can be as discerning as you want and need to about who you spend your time with.

So, this week, we tackle:

How we know when there’s a spark.
Why it matters to look for people we actually want to work with.
The value of community to inspire and lift each other up.
Why we refuse to see scicomm as service anymore.
Shared values as a higher priority than shared skills/knowledge.
Looking for people who say yes to ideas, who create opportunities from nothing!

Dig in for yourself:

What is your SPARK?
How do you know when you’ve bumped into a person or idea that you really want to work with?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck - come on over to https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm!

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In this episode, we’re really talking with you about scicomm. We are answering YOUR questions, and we’re excited to rove widely through topics and questions you’ve sent us.

We touch on the big picture and the nitty gritty of:

How we approach the on-going work of staying on top of convos around justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion and how they relate to scicomm.
Framing up a scicomm CV (or do you really need a resume?!?).
Pitching scicomm experimentation to clients, coworkers, or supervisors.
Getting back to scicomm basics when talking a supervisor or client into prioritizing aspects of scicomm that are beyond their comfort zone (like experimentation or assessment).
Life-long learning as a scicommer and how to learn new things in a scicomm career.

Our hot takes?

Learning about diversity and inclusion doesn’t and shouldn’t have an end point.
If you can’t wedge scicomm into a CV using Bethann’s tips, maybe you gotta ditch the CV and dig into the world where resumes rule.
Don’t forget - you probably spend more time thinking about scicomm than anyone around you. What you think is reasonable might feel risky to someone else. Just calibrate for that.
Don’t get bored. And, don’t look to scicomm alone for new ideas - lots of the innovative scicomm you get pushback for would be beige in other comms and marketing settings.

We also shout-out The Writer’s Co-op (https://www.thewriterscooppod.com/), a podcast about running a freelance writing business. We mention TWC while talking about career transitions including freelancing. While we’re on break, TWC might fill the podcast-sized hole you’ll have in your schedule. After all, a lot of the procedures and good habits of freelancing are productive in institutional scicomm settings, too.

Thanks for cruising along with us for all of Meteor’s first season! If we didn’t cover a question or big theme you’d like to hear us tackle, hit us up!

We’ll be back in the new year with another season and some great courses. Virginia’s running one about scicomm on TikTok, and Bethann’s running a course on melding life and scicomm goals.

Be sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter. We’ll take the work out of keeping up and send all the details about these courses and our next season straight to your inbox.

Take care and talk soon!

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us what questions you want answered next year!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

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We (Bethann and Virginia, not the collective ‘we’) actively resist the notion of “work-life balance”. It has too many vibes of work and life being mutually exclusive, as if they’re balanced against each other on a scale. And, in a lot of #SciComm, work and life are already so stinkin’ integrated.

So, we lean into the framework of “work-life harmony”. We aim for getting work done and fulfilling ourselves along the way.

This gets complicated when we’re doing scicomm for someone else:

How fully do you want to “assume” the identity of that brand?
When do you byline as yourself versus the brand?
How do you keep from taking feedback personally?
What if there’s no brand strategy, so every scicomm piece hits a bottleneck?

Navigating thin boundary lines is necessary in scicomm coaching and mentorship, too:

Reconciling when you can work to make something better and when the client will have to take it the rest of the way.
Setting our own metrics for success since we can’t control if a client actually does what we recommend.
Helping someone grow without getting too involved in their business and life.
Knowing when to say goodbye, with the acknowledgement that we often don’t get to know “the rest of the story” for someone we mentor, once they move beyond us.

Work-life harmony is about active decisions, not passive participation. We’re not always going to get things the way we want them, but we’re trying.

What about you? What keeps you up in the middle of the night? What are you so invested in that it pops up without invitation?

It’s not always bad... but the unbidden things indicate that your investment could be more deliberate. You don’t necessarily have to get out or get rid of it. Just reckon with the space it’s occupying.

Bonus! Bethann’s running a big-picture goals workshop in January. We’ll be looking at trying to align our vision for our own lives, rather than pitting various priorities against each other. If you want to join that convo, sign up at meteorscicomm.org/courses.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us what you're making time for!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/11/24/ep9-balance-schmalance/

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Our last episode for this season will be an open Q&A. Send us your questions, ideas, puzzles and dilemmas by November 22, and we’ll fit in as many as we can for the December 2 episode!

There’s a lotta baggage around being someone’s partner, especially a wife, especially in science. These issues leak over into scicomm for many folks, whether you’re a ‘science wife’ or navigating some other kind of partnership.

This week, we tackle:

What we wish we’d known about being a science wife before started our relationships.
Things about being married to scientists that we wish were common knowledge.
The hardest thing for us in our roles as science wives.
Ways that our science partnerships have positively shaped our careers.
Navigating shared/overlapping professional identities and spaces.

Dig in for yourself:

Do you spend a lot of time calibrating for the people around you?
Do you give yourself much just-you time?

Take some time to yourself today, even just 5 minutes, to just be you.

*[We know...this kind of assignment might feel like it’s for hoity toity people. But “taking 5 minutes for myself” could be just laying on the floor with the door shut against the kids, being unavailable for just a little while.

And making that time, just a little every day, can help us feel way more in control. More like we choose who we are and the role we play in the world.]**** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us how your unavailable time goes!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/11/18/ep8-identity-science-wives/

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Our last episode for this season will be an open Q&A. Send us your questions, ideas, puzzles and dilemmas by November 22, and we’ll fit in as many as we can for the December 2 episode!

There's a whole sticky mess of having time vs. making time, and it can drag you down, make you question your sense of accomplishment, and even put you at odds with folks you care about. This week, we tackle some ways of re-thinking time, timelines, and commitments.

There’s the friction of timelines in scicomm:

Nanosecond turnarounds in the media sector.
Agonizing over messaging at the institutional level.
Possible micromanaging and bottlenecks associated with message control.
Calibrating your own brand as a scicommer, wherever you work.

There’s likely not a magic solution to this tension, because the stakeholders for a given product often have mutually exclusive needs. For example, fine-tuning a statement may satisfy an institution’s PR personnel while scrubbing the personality off of something ultimately destined for distribution via social media, where personality is key.

And then there are short-notice opportunities, too! When we’re trying to juggle those, we keep in mind:

Does this help me meet a professional metric?
What do I have to say no to in order to say yes to this? What actions must I take to avoid being the bottleneck in someone else’s workflow?
What’s the balance between “done” and “done enough”?

Take stock of what’s demanding your time:

Is there an ongoing thing that you’re letting linger? Could you wrap it up? And if you’re not doing so, why not? What would saying “good enough, done” help you say yes to next?

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us what you're making time for!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/11/11/drop-everything-for-something-new/

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No one can decide what you do for free but you.

Volunteering is often a portal into relationships and career experience. It’s also a way to give back to our community or professional environments. But, unpaid labor is often exploitative (or not possible for some of us). It’s a rotten conundrum. ⚖

An equitable system should do away with volunteer opportunities and every opportunity should instead come with payment or other meaningful compensation. 💸

However, we gotta recognize that the system will not change overnight. So even if people believe that everyone should get paid for everything, there will still be volunteer opportunities out there today and tomorrow. You have to decide whether you’re going to volunteer yourself and if you’ll ask people to volunteer. 🤔

Here are a couple of factors we usually weigh:

Bethann has figured out that some things can’t be done for free, or she’ll wind up resenting the project, especially if it’s being done for colleagues/professional friends.
Virginia reminds herself of the priorities a project needs to hit using a modified version of the passion - prestige - pay triangle that folks often recommend for freelance gig decision-making.
Sometimes volunteering really will make a difference in your life. Maybe you want to transition to scicomm, like we both did. We did both volunteer in lotsa ways while making that transition, even in order to make it.
On the flip side, there’s a whole different calculation. What if you have an opportunity but you don’t have the funds to pay people for it?

Dig in with us this week. Examine your process:

What do you do for free?
What would you ask someone to do for free?
How do you decide so that your actions match your big-picture goals?

BONUS! 🎁 Bethann’s running a workshop in January on big picture goal-setting. If you want to sign up, visit meteorscicomm.org/courses.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (how do you juggle 🤹‍♀️ the whole volunteer thing?) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/11/04/ep6-the-privilege-of-volunteering

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Being a good person means helping people for free and being a good business person means NOT helping people for free. So there has to be some kind of middle ground here for professionals. But how do you decide who you help and when?

Saying no is complicated. You’re weighing a lot:

You might need to make money, or typically do make money, from this activity.
Giving advice for free risks limiting you to giving low-quality advice or eating up your billable hours/time you could be spending making progress on your own work.
Access to free advice is tied closely to the networks and inside info that can lead to career success. Thus, free advice plays a crucial role in gatekeeping.
But, helping people can be so meaningful, and so many of us got where we are because people helped us for free.

When navigating this obstacle course, we assert:

Remember, whether you’re an academic, a consultant, or an employee, there are only 24 hours in a day. You will have to say no sometimes.
Keeping track of who you say yes and no to can help you identify unconscious biases (usually in favor of folks you know).
Free help can feel more viable if it’s going to be common or public knowledge that lots of people can access for free (think blogs, articles, podcasts, etc.).

Audit your own process: Who are the last five people you said no to helping for free?

What did they have in common?

Do your answers match your goals?

BONUS! 🎁 Bethann’s gonna run a workshop on the question of big picture goal-setting. If you want to sign up, visit https://meteorscicomm.org/courses.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us about your guardrails!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/10/28/ep5-why-i-dont-help-people-for-free

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We are going to assume that #1: you agree that we could all benefit from expanding our networks, but #2: there’s a cultural treatment of networking as if it has a bad aftertaste. 🤢

There are some real challenges here:

How do you find people, or pick people to contact? Especially if you’re offering even a pipsqueak-sized platform or you’re inviting them into a space that will reflect on you or your brand?
How do we ask for people’s attention in respectful ways that leave puh-lennnnty of room for them to say no? 😣
Whaddya do if you can’t pay someone and you’re asking for their time and expertise?
And, omg, how do we tackle the gatekeeping aspect of all this!?!

Examine your own feelings about networking:

How do you get info about people you don’t already know? What concrete steps can you take to build on that?

We propose:

If you can’t get over the ick or tongue-tied part of networking, remember: humans evolved as a social species. Lean into the biology. 🤓
Be really up front (but not crass!) about whether you can pay people or not. And if you can, find other ways to provide value for them (exposure isn’t enough; you can die of exposure 🥶).
Remember that networks are relationships, not transactions (though Virginia thinks that relationships may feel like transactions). Investing in a relationship is a long-term commitment (Bethann likes Inger Mewburn’s take on this: https://thesiswhisperer.com/2020/02/05/academic-spy-networks-and-why-you-need-one/).
Expect people to say no to you and give yourself the grace to decline invitations, too.
Do your homework. For example, lots of tools exist for finding minoritized voices.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us how branding impacts you!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Listen to the full episode for all that ☝, plus:

Rough scripts for framing invitations and referral requests.
The rubric we used for setting up a recent panel on inclusive scicomm training.
Taking the mentorship convo another step, to sponsorship.
How to borrow a simple strategy Bethann’s used to start relationships that (over the long haul) grew into research projects, funded grant applications, and publications.

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/10/21/ep4-networking-beautiful-friendship-or-not

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We have a love/hate relationship with branding, as in: we love to use branding to share the goods while we loathe some aspects of the system branding happens in. But we talk to lots of people who feel that branding themselves or their work is moldy-peach gross.

Plus, branding seems to run counter to traditional science assumptions:

Results are supposed to speak for themselves.
Spinning someone’s perception borders on unethical.
Anything worth branding should be compelling enough on its own, without any marketing.

We get where that comes from. We were trained that way too. But we say NO to those assumptions.

We argue that:

Scientific processes help us strive for objectivity in research processes, yes. But, science isn’t neutral even if we want it to be.
Deciding if something is compelling or not is rooted in our individual values, which vary from person to person.
Avoiding branding doesn’t mean that your thing emerges unbranded- instead it means that you’re letting dominant science narratives or your institute assign the branding.
Science mentors must advise their trainees on marketing and career advancement in the context of unjust systems.

Examine your own relationship with branding:

Why is it easier to market your work than it is to market yourself?
What concrete steps can you take right now to practice getting comfortable marketing yourself (who can you talk to or get feedback from, what materials will you share with them, etc.)?

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (tell us how branding impacts you!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Listen to the full episode for:

Why we embrace branding and why we think some folks we work with don’t feel great about it.
What we think about fame (bring it on!).
How Virginia (https://www.virginiaschutte.com/) is trying to view negative responses to her personal brand as a sign of success.
How Bethann (https://commnatural.com/) advises early career scientists about branding given unjust societal constructs.

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/10/14/ep3-branding-is-not-a-dirty-word

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Instead of CVs and resumes being a tally, how can we think differently about CVs and resumes to get an extra career boost out of them? Lately, we’ve tried:

Using these documents as self-assessment tools to encourage positive self-evaluation
Crafting our own job titles and definitions of ourselves so they reflect our motivations rather than the tasks we perform for a paycheck

Two tips to shift the way you present yourself in just a few minutes:

For no less than 2 min: write down all the motivation words you can think of for why you hold your current position (don’t stop until your timer goes off!)
Build your own job title; make it reflect your word cloud better than the job description title you’ve been assigned by your employer

Knowing your "why" is adjacent to setting attainable, measurable goals and will set you up to productively work more on this later.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (we’d love to know how reframing your position title impacts your sense of self!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Listen to the full episode for:

A cheeky summary of our own CVs, resumes, and thoughts about these documents,
How Bethann (https://commnatural.com/) and Virginia (https://www.virginiaschutte.com/) have used CV and resume updates to ask for permission less and assume roles more confidently, and
Our strategies for getting quality and quantity into an application package.

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/10/07/ep2-resume-or-cv-fairest-of-all/

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How can we set and use scicomm goals so they lift us up instead of drag us down? We suggest:

Clearly articulate your goals from the beginning of any scicomm project or whenever you have an inflection point in your career.
Give yourself permission to give self-reflection the time, energy, and respect it needs to serve you well.
Allow yourself to use your goals as a “living document” and recognize that your goals will change over time. That’s life, not failure.

How to get started setting your own goals in just a few minutes:

For 5 min: write down (in brief) all the goals you can think of, big or small, that you’re currently pursuing.
For 5 min: write down why you are pursuing each goal.

Knowing the why is adjacent to setting attainable, measurable goals and will set you up to productively work more on this later.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (we’d love to know your why!) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Listen to the full episode for:

Why setting goals is essential for science communication project and career success,
How Virginia (https://www.virginiaschutte.com/) uses goal-setting to chart her freelance career,
What it’s like to set goals as a team,
How Bethann (https://commnatural.com/) uses goal-setting to strategically add opportunities to her academic workload,
How personal and professional goals can inform each other, and
When goals become a burden and what strategies we use to turn things around.

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/09/30/ep1-goals-life-raft-dead-weight/

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We want to talk more with fellow science communication professionals (like you!), and we have lots of opinions!

We think scicomm needs:

More funding,
A reliable way to hold people with power accountable,
Leadership and development opportunities that extend beyond basic skill-building,
More integration between practice and research, and
Buy-in and formalized support from those with funding and power.

Which is why we made Meteor! (https://meteorscicomm.org/)

We want to talk with STEM professionals who are exploring science communication as a component of their career and with people who are pursuing a full-time scicomm position within an institution or as an entrepreneur. No matter what your plan with science communication is, we want to help you do it inclusively and sustainably.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (what do you think of our list?) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share this episode using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/09/23/ep0-what-scicomm-needs/

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Where are mid-career science communicators (like us) supposed to go to level up? We crave deep conversations about advanced scicomm so we can grow and check ourselves when people disagree with us.

And talking to each other and our peers helps us grow. So, we are opening up our conversations so that we can learn from folks with other perspectives and other folks can potentially grow with us.

Which is why we made Meteor! (https://meteorscicomm.org/)

Meteor episodes will explore science communication career issues like branding and practical issues like finding project ideas that matter. We will also grapple with stuff that makes us uncomfortable... ...like how much space two privileged white ladies (like us) should occupy in the inclusive scicomm community.

Plus, each episode ends with a suggested action that scicommers can take to move ourselves forward.

*** Join this conversation: follow us here and say hello (what made you check us out?) on Twitter with @MeteorSciComm (https://www.twitter.com/meteorscicomm).

Share the trailer using this link: https://meteorscicomm.org/2021/09/16/podcast-trailer/

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