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!

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!

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 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!