The Quest for Post-Academic Community

...or if not community, commiseration, conferences, and colleagues?

I drafted this post in Philly last week, as the city ramped up for its Super Bowl victory parade¹, while attending a qualitative researchers annual conference. I’m a relatively new member of this organization, and this is my first time attending their conference, which I’ve found to be friendly and, so far, useful for stepping back and considering the practice of doing qualitative research to produce meaningful insights for organizations —in other words, pausing from my day-to-day to think big thoughts and connect with others around my job.

Many of you read this newsletter because you are, or have been, on unsteady professional footing traveling between academia and industry. Some of this process involves getting comfortable with a new professional identity, as I’ve explored before, and some of this is about the communities that travel alongside it. Today I’m exploring what this has looked like for me, with curiosity about how the process looks for you. Be sure to tell me in the comments below!

This quest is only my most recent in what has become a years-long effort, since leaving academia, of trying to find a professional circle that feels like a good fit. My academic discipline of sociology, like many others, talks regularly about the value and importance of applied sociology, but when I tried to find places to connect with others outside of academia in our national or regional conferences or to share insights with those considering careers outside of higher education, there hasn’t been any real traction. Organizations like the American Sociological Association or the Midwest Sociological Society, those I considered a professional “home” for nearly two decades and still deeply appreciate and respect, still exist primarily to serve those engaged in academic disciplines, either as students or professors. That’s fair, but even so, I ultimately decided to quit shopping for milk at the hardware store, and moved along to try to find others.

Photo by Matthew Osborn on Unsplash

My next effort after bidding farewell to my academic organizations was in finding an organization that is more narrowly tailored to practitioners who use my specific skill set in business or other organizational settings. While I found a terrific organization for this, the one time I attended their annual conference, I found it to be…. too academic! This reaction was a total surprise to me, as there are quite permanent parts of me that would still love to talk with others about semiotics, radical imaginaries, and artistic friction², but I found very little of practical value in solving some of the challenges I face day-to-day, like the epistemological challenges of working on mixed-methods teams or navigating stakeholder constraints alongside research rigor. That first organization I tried holds a wealth of resources for its members, and I heartily recommend its membership to any other qualitative and especially ethnographic researchers out there, but the conference itself was not a concrete value-add for me, so I keep my membership active but no longer really consider attending their conferences.

I then found a hyper-local organization that puts on an annual conference right in my backyard, with affordable membership and conference prices, but because I’m a CX (customer experience, which is more holistic and focused on overall consumer needs) rather than UX (user experience, more sharply focused on people’s experiences with specific products, websites, or apps) researcher, there was a (smart!, interesting!) design focus to most of that conference, which I attended last fall, that was still misaligned to my day-to-day work. Again with this org, I find the membership valuable largely because it’s affordable, and I will probably attend their conference again later this year because it is budget-friendly and involves no overnight travel, but this one still wasn’t “it” for me.

So here I am, delightfully(!!) chilly in Philly, while I attempt another search for a new professional home. The sessions here are already a better fit —I’ve attended sessions about understanding one’s own orientation as a researcher and how that brings strengths and weaknesses to one’s overall team or process, sessions about conducting specific kinds of field studies and how to do so in ways that are efficient and effective, etc. It’s the kind of conversation I’m looking for. And the people are really welcoming! But there are also, for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, few in-house researchers here (most, instead, work for companies who do research for other companies —the difference seems small but ends up mattering), and the sessions aren’t quite as advanced as I’d like.

So as I continue to try out new orgs and their associated conferences, I’ve had to wonder what I’m really after, and whether it’s realistic:

• Do I instead need to break my mental habit of thinking that conferences are where you stay up on the latest insights and trends? This was true in academia, where we continually cut into the edges of, and in that process grew, our subfields of expertise. How true is that in industry? Conversations like those about the role of AI (for example) are exploring our shared boundaries, and I wouldn’t expect individual contributions to knowledge like we often see in academia, but I still don’t know.

• Do I need to ask big questions and think challenging thoughts with other practitioners at my level? I want to, but I do strictly need to? I’m not yet sure. Either way, I’ve so far found that those big/deep conversations I’m so hungry for start, but don’t quite catch. This could be because the kinds of roles we hold and organizations we work for vary so widely.

• Do I want or need to network? Kind of always that’s probably wise, sure, but also {{screams in introversion}} please, for the love of god, noooo! I mean, the number of totally friendly new acquaintances that I told today that I didn’t actually plan to attend the big conference social event this evening because it didn’t sound fun to me³…. I had a lovely time getting a nice solo dinner out with a good cocktail and reading my Kindle instead. Pajama time in this quiet, clean hotel room is my self-love language, damnit! But then again, jobs can always end, and if I found myself unexpectedly looking for work, knowing people in the field could be beneficial —or, perhaps more importantly, I could also serve as this bridge for others.

• Do I, on some level, still want to be seen and known? I don’t thiiiink so, but it’s a real difference from when I was an academic and recognized for such things, serving on the Board and a steady rotation of committees for my regional org and seeing the same (lovely!) people each year as they earned tenure, raised kids, and worked on new projects. I really do like being ordinary rather than a “rising superstar” now; there is a true comfort in invisibility. So is this just another professional habit I need to break —being involved, Doing Things, Being Known? Do I need “my people” in the same way, professionally? I. Don’t. Know.

I’m still looking for …something. But I’ve also gotten closer to the right circle with each new effort. Maybe the next step is to raise my hand and offer my time and skills to this org to see how things might deepen. Or maybe I’ve learned that a professional community just isn’t something I need or have to offer for growth and community in the same ways I did in my previous career.

I’d love to know, for those of you out there in a variety of professional settings —what do you get out of any professional orgs and conferences that you engage? Is it enough? How do you know? Let’s chat more in the comments.

In the meantime, keep fighting for the integrity of democracy and all of the work we hold dear. I’ll pledge to do the same.

1. {{{sobs in Honolulu blue}}}

2. To anyone out there who thinks that folks outside of academia are not deeply intellectual in their work, take note!

3. Ping pong? Dancing? Prizes? It just sounds like a lot of shouting “How has the conference been for you?” and “So what do you do” in loud rooms where you can barely hear the answers to me. I’ll recycle my drink tickets!