Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
Thursday, June 30, 2022
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Monday, June 27, 2022
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Saturday, June 25, 2022
Friday, June 24, 2022
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Step-by-step Guide to Networking to New Opportunities
I’ve gotten lots of networking advice over the years.
A lot good.
Some bad.
And one I never understood:
”Use your network.”
I could never figure out what steps were involved to “use my network.” I understood calling people up and grabbing coffee. But “use my network?” How would that help me?
So I ignored the advice. And no surprise, no great new opportunities rained down on me.
Then one day I learned how to network to new opportunities.
I was helping a friend of mine on the East Coast. John was a career HR person, mostly in the CPG industry. He was looking for a new job, and getting discouraged. John was getting interviews, but not getting to the offer stage.
Finally I asked him, “What specifically are you looking for?” and he replied, “You can’t help.”
I pressed again, and John said, “I’d love to get into HR at Apple or some other high tech firm on the West Coast.” And then he repeated:
“I don’t think you can help.”
I laughed. I told him one of my best friends had a family member who worked in HR at Apple.
Then it dawned on me.
You never know unless you ask.
That revelation made me realize, I was the same as John. I wasn’t riding my network to new opportunities because I was assuming my network couldn’t help me.
The secret to “using your network” is telling your network what you’re up to and asking for help.
Since then I’ve been amazed at how my options have opened up by giving an update and making a simple, clear request.
That's all it took.
Here’s how you can network to new opportunities
- Divide your contacts into these groups
- Close friends
- Close colleagues and trusted mentors
- People you were close to, but lost touch with
- People you don’t know well, but that could be good contacts for new opportunities
- People you’d like to meet
- Identify what you need
Make a list of what you’re looking for. For example:
- Names of recruiters
- Introductions to contacts in businesses you’re interested in.
- Job hunting advice
- Help with resume writing
- Potential investors for a new business venture
Remember: You have to make a specific request to get specific help
- Start with your close friends, mentors and colleagues
The easiest way to get traction is to start with the people you know the best.The risk of rejection is low, and you’ll gain the confidence and momentum to engage with people outside your comfort zone. Call or email them and explain your status and ask for help.
Just follow this template:
[Background and context] + [Specific request]
“Joan, I’m getting ready to look for a new job and I need some help. Do you have any recruiters you could refer me to? Or friends at Acme manufacturing?”
It’s not so hard because they know you, and you can be short, sweet and direct.
- Next connect with the people you lost touch with
If these were people you were once close with, they’ll remember you and want to help. Start by sending a note and asking for an update.
[Rekindle the relationship] + [Why you’re connecting] + [Brief personal status] + [Request to reconnect]
“Greg, how are you? It’s been a long time since we worked together. I made a resolution to be more connected, and wanted to see what you were up to. I’m still at Smith Bros Accounting Firm. I’d love an update.”
Re-engage and rekindle the relationship. After 2 or 3 exchanges, if all is well, then tell your contact what you’re up to and ask for help.
- Expand to people you don’t know well and ask to meet or ask for advice
Once you start actively networking, you’ll start to gain confidence, and it will be time to broaden your reach.
[Context and background on how you’re linked] + [Request to connect] + [Topic and Reason why the other person might be interested]
”Maggie, we met a few years ago at the annual networking event. We were both panelists, but on different topics. I would love to connect and hear what you’re up to. I think we may have some opportunities to join forces.”
Build a relationship and when the time is right, make your request.
- Use branding by association.
Use your connections to get introduced to people or businesses you don’t know. Branding by association is your network’s branding extending to you.
[Name the contact you’d like an intro to] + [Background on why you want the intro] + [Introduction request]
“Rick, I know you’re friends with Tom. I’d really like to meet him and see if there are any opportunities at his firm. Will you make an email introduction for me?”
Personal referrals are like gold. Your network is you, amplified.
- Cold connect with someone you’d like to meet
Now that you’re a confident connector, take one more step: Network with a connection that you don’t know. Do some research on something meaningful to them, plus identify what you have in common. Then reach out.
[Brief context on why you’re reaching out] + [Topic that is meaningful to them + Genuine impact that it made on you] + [Request to connect + Why your connection would benefit them]
”Susan, I’ve been following your posts on LinkedIn for a while. Your last piece on networking was awesome. I tried your tips and they made a huge difference in the number of connections I made. Would you have time for a talk? It looks like we have a lot in common.”
Demonstrate you have a genuine interest in them and that they have made an impact on you. Then ask to connect and give a brief explanation on how it might benefit them.
Never assume your network can’t help.
Activate your network and create new opportunities.
Not every connection will get a positive response, but if you keep using your network, your network will continue to expand.
So will your opportunities.
You just have to ask.
Let me know if you use these templates, or generate new ones, I love to learn and reapply. Just drop me an email at rebecca@evoke.pro.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Monday, June 20, 2022
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Friday, June 17, 2022
Thursday, June 16, 2022
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Monday, June 13, 2022
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Saturday, June 11, 2022
Friday, June 10, 2022
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meanings of the Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period
Glaser, Stephanie A. The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meanings of the Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period. Ritus et artes, 9. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018. Pp. 393. $100.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56813-3.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Carson Pastan
Emory University
epastan@emory.edu
Medievalism--which may be briefly defined as the investigation of the reception of the Middle Ages in later periods--has emerged over the last several decades as a field in its own right. This anthology is a testament to the strength of this burgeoning and multidisciplinary field. What might have once been a later chapter in a monograph devoted to a given medieval monument, in The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral has become an exploration that focuses on later perspectives towards and appropriations of Gothic monuments in a sustained way. For example, Emile Mâle’s famous statement enunciated in his monograph L’Art religieux du XIIIe en France (1898) that the art of the thirteenth century is “frozen music” might be understood within the context of Mâle’s chapter as a metaphor attributable to his interest in medieval liturgy. But in her essay, “Frozen Music and Symphonies in Stone,” Stephanie A. Glaser demonstrates that the analogy between architecture and music is part of a much larger discourse with origins in eighteenth-century aesthetic philosophy. Not only do her insights highlight unexpected thematic connections between such luminaries as Goethe, Victor Hugo, Viollet-le-Duc, Beethoven, and Mâle, but they also further contextualize how Gothic architecture came to be viewed in a more positive light, at least in part through its analogies to music.
Some anthologies can be dipped into at random, but The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral is structured from the opening historiographic overview by Glaser to the concluding reflections by Richard Utz to build upon itself in a coherent way. The essays are divided into three sections: The Cathedral and the Nation; The Cathedral between Art and Politics; and The Cathedral in the Arts. Within each section, the final essay provides commentary on the other contributions. Thus, Kevin Murphy’s “The Gothic Cathedral and Historiographies of Space,” is not only a fine essay in its own right, but he is also in conversation with the other essays in this particularly strong first section. His reference to the other historiographies in this section further strengthens his case, using Henri Lefebvre’s influential Production of Space as a conceptual model, that Gothic cathedrals tended to be “read” rather than understood as “lived” social spaces. An illuminating essay such as Klaus Niehr’s “Patterns of Behaviour: Architectural Representation in the Romantic Period” gains additional momentum through its appearance in this volume. Niehr thoughtfully examines different modes for illustrating architecture--including Viollet-le-Duc’s unpeopled “scientific” illustrations emphasizing structural issues and Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s “verbal pictures” with their atmospheric and snapshot-like perspectives--without forcing a teleology upon them. Niehr’s is one of a handful of essays in this volume, along with those by Jean-Michel Leniaud, Maylis Curie, and Utz, that insist on the importance of subjective response, a point made quite deftly by the latter in drawing attention to neologisms of the period, including “medievalism” itself (345), which serve to define and qualify time. [1]
As Michael J. Lewis articulates, “The Gothic Revival was a bundle of ideas--artistic, religious, and political--but the relative proportion of those ideas differed in England, France, and Germany.” (81) Yet despite the varied national discourses drawn upon--which include British travelers looking at Spanish cathedrals, the engagement of Spanish cathedrals with forms found in Islamic buildings, French painters’ representations of Gothic architecture, imagined, unfinished, and unbuilt cathedrals in Germany, and the French architect and restorer Viollet-le-Duc’s popularization of Viollet-le-Duc--the reader is guided clearly and cogently into the thesis and expertise of almost every author. This volume is about the idea of the Gothic cathedral, a notion which provides a focus for a yeasty range of perspectives, including (but not limited to): nationalistic, pedagogical, anarchical (here rather idiosyncratically defined), fantastical, and by means of “fictions of factual representation” (259, from Niehr’s contribution, quoting Hayden White to good effect). Each new historical artist or commentator presented is clearly identified with dates, and complete bibliographic references in the footnotes offer scope for further reading. A case in point is the rich documentation in Matilde Mateo’s “Moorish-Gothic Cathedral,” which allows the reader to pursue the fascinating historiography of the much-debated Islamic roots of Gothic architecture.
Besides the excellent essays already noted, I particularly enjoyed Elizabeth Emery’s “L’Histoire d’une cathédrale: Viollet-le-Duc’s Nationalist Pedagogy,” examining the historical fiction geared towards adolescents that Viollet-le-Duc penned later in life, which provided him with a means of delivering his last word(s) on the Gothic cathedral. Although he was criticized by contemporaries for downplaying the religious function of Gothic architecture in the Dictionnaire, Emery argues that the semi-fictional genre allowed Viollet-le-Duc to further publicize his theories promoting the Gothic cathedral as a symbol of social solidarity and French patriotism.
Even in this exceptionally well-structured volume, there are a few minor areas that might be improved upon or critiqued. Occasionally, I wished that the illustrations were larger or commented upon more fully in order to understand how a given author was reading that image (for example, figs. 1.3-1.7). I was also surprised that Utz would refer to the limitations of “an exclusively art historical or aesthetic focus” (349), since an art historical approach is not equivalent to an aesthetic focus as quite a number of the contributions in the volume attest, and it seems an ungenerous point to make in an anthology that is so strikingly post-disciplinary. Authors throughout the volume draw nimbly upon a range of materials--visual and otherwise--to make their case, and the strongest essays focus in on their particular topic without being constrained by any one method, field, or discipline.
The real subject of this work is of course only ostensibly the Gothic cathedral, which serves as a kind of “time machine” (as one contribution dubs it) for this series of compelling essays about how we construct and impose meaning on the world around us. It is an important contribution to the field of medievalism.
+++
Note:
1. I cannot resist making a reference to the essay by Michel Pastoureau, “‘Programme’: Histoire d’un mot, histoire d’un concept”, in J.-M. Guillouët and C. Rabel (eds.), Le programme: Une notion pertinente en histoire de l’art medieval? (Cahiers du Léopold d’Or, 12; Paris, 2011), 17-25, which identifies “program” as a term originating in the modern period. Although not a word that insists on temporalities such as those with which Utz is specifically concerned, Pastoureau persuasively argues that this new term underscores a larger shift in approach, much like the term medievalism, as Utz urges us to consider.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Carson Pastan
Emory University
epastan@emory.edu
Medievalism--which may be briefly defined as the investigation of the reception of the Middle Ages in later periods--has emerged over the last several decades as a field in its own right. This anthology is a testament to the strength of this burgeoning and multidisciplinary field. What might have once been a later chapter in a monograph devoted to a given medieval monument, in The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral has become an exploration that focuses on later perspectives towards and appropriations of Gothic monuments in a sustained way. For example, Emile Mâle’s famous statement enunciated in his monograph L’Art religieux du XIIIe en France (1898) that the art of the thirteenth century is “frozen music” might be understood within the context of Mâle’s chapter as a metaphor attributable to his interest in medieval liturgy. But in her essay, “Frozen Music and Symphonies in Stone,” Stephanie A. Glaser demonstrates that the analogy between architecture and music is part of a much larger discourse with origins in eighteenth-century aesthetic philosophy. Not only do her insights highlight unexpected thematic connections between such luminaries as Goethe, Victor Hugo, Viollet-le-Duc, Beethoven, and Mâle, but they also further contextualize how Gothic architecture came to be viewed in a more positive light, at least in part through its analogies to music.
Some anthologies can be dipped into at random, but The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral is structured from the opening historiographic overview by Glaser to the concluding reflections by Richard Utz to build upon itself in a coherent way. The essays are divided into three sections: The Cathedral and the Nation; The Cathedral between Art and Politics; and The Cathedral in the Arts. Within each section, the final essay provides commentary on the other contributions. Thus, Kevin Murphy’s “The Gothic Cathedral and Historiographies of Space,” is not only a fine essay in its own right, but he is also in conversation with the other essays in this particularly strong first section. His reference to the other historiographies in this section further strengthens his case, using Henri Lefebvre’s influential Production of Space as a conceptual model, that Gothic cathedrals tended to be “read” rather than understood as “lived” social spaces. An illuminating essay such as Klaus Niehr’s “Patterns of Behaviour: Architectural Representation in the Romantic Period” gains additional momentum through its appearance in this volume. Niehr thoughtfully examines different modes for illustrating architecture--including Viollet-le-Duc’s unpeopled “scientific” illustrations emphasizing structural issues and Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s “verbal pictures” with their atmospheric and snapshot-like perspectives--without forcing a teleology upon them. Niehr’s is one of a handful of essays in this volume, along with those by Jean-Michel Leniaud, Maylis Curie, and Utz, that insist on the importance of subjective response, a point made quite deftly by the latter in drawing attention to neologisms of the period, including “medievalism” itself (345), which serve to define and qualify time. [1]
As Michael J. Lewis articulates, “The Gothic Revival was a bundle of ideas--artistic, religious, and political--but the relative proportion of those ideas differed in England, France, and Germany.” (81) Yet despite the varied national discourses drawn upon--which include British travelers looking at Spanish cathedrals, the engagement of Spanish cathedrals with forms found in Islamic buildings, French painters’ representations of Gothic architecture, imagined, unfinished, and unbuilt cathedrals in Germany, and the French architect and restorer Viollet-le-Duc’s popularization of Viollet-le-Duc--the reader is guided clearly and cogently into the thesis and expertise of almost every author. This volume is about the idea of the Gothic cathedral, a notion which provides a focus for a yeasty range of perspectives, including (but not limited to): nationalistic, pedagogical, anarchical (here rather idiosyncratically defined), fantastical, and by means of “fictions of factual representation” (259, from Niehr’s contribution, quoting Hayden White to good effect). Each new historical artist or commentator presented is clearly identified with dates, and complete bibliographic references in the footnotes offer scope for further reading. A case in point is the rich documentation in Matilde Mateo’s “Moorish-Gothic Cathedral,” which allows the reader to pursue the fascinating historiography of the much-debated Islamic roots of Gothic architecture.
Besides the excellent essays already noted, I particularly enjoyed Elizabeth Emery’s “L’Histoire d’une cathédrale: Viollet-le-Duc’s Nationalist Pedagogy,” examining the historical fiction geared towards adolescents that Viollet-le-Duc penned later in life, which provided him with a means of delivering his last word(s) on the Gothic cathedral. Although he was criticized by contemporaries for downplaying the religious function of Gothic architecture in the Dictionnaire, Emery argues that the semi-fictional genre allowed Viollet-le-Duc to further publicize his theories promoting the Gothic cathedral as a symbol of social solidarity and French patriotism.
Even in this exceptionally well-structured volume, there are a few minor areas that might be improved upon or critiqued. Occasionally, I wished that the illustrations were larger or commented upon more fully in order to understand how a given author was reading that image (for example, figs. 1.3-1.7). I was also surprised that Utz would refer to the limitations of “an exclusively art historical or aesthetic focus” (349), since an art historical approach is not equivalent to an aesthetic focus as quite a number of the contributions in the volume attest, and it seems an ungenerous point to make in an anthology that is so strikingly post-disciplinary. Authors throughout the volume draw nimbly upon a range of materials--visual and otherwise--to make their case, and the strongest essays focus in on their particular topic without being constrained by any one method, field, or discipline.
The real subject of this work is of course only ostensibly the Gothic cathedral, which serves as a kind of “time machine” (as one contribution dubs it) for this series of compelling essays about how we construct and impose meaning on the world around us. It is an important contribution to the field of medievalism.
+++
Note:
1. I cannot resist making a reference to the essay by Michel Pastoureau, “‘Programme’: Histoire d’un mot, histoire d’un concept”, in J.-M. Guillouët and C. Rabel (eds.), Le programme: Une notion pertinente en histoire de l’art medieval? (Cahiers du Léopold d’Or, 12; Paris, 2011), 17-25, which identifies “program” as a term originating in the modern period. Although not a word that insists on temporalities such as those with which Utz is specifically concerned, Pastoureau persuasively argues that this new term underscores a larger shift in approach, much like the term medievalism, as Utz urges us to consider.