Meteor

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.

First - two big announcements: 

1. Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st. 
2. 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.

First - two big announcements: 

1. Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st. 
2. 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.

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. 

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.

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.

First - two big announcements: 

1. In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. 
2. 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. 

First - two big announcements: 

1. In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. 
2. 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.

First - two big announcements: 

1. In Season 3, we’re digging into systems and what we think about as we consciously try to change them. 
2. 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.

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.