Here’s another post with things I’m reading this week. An article from Seth Godin, reducing malpractice payouts with apologies, doing Facebook well in local government, and whatever else ends up in here. Let’s jump right in, the water is fine:

The forever recession (and the coming revolution)

From: Seth Godin’s Blog
By: Seth Godin
One-Sentence Summary
The cause of this recession is not the cyclical nature of the economy, it’s that a fundamental realignment of work is underway, and it’s one where there are fewer traditional jobs and more gigs and temporary work (all of which sounds pretty scary).
My Thoughts
I think Mr. Godin is following some important assumptions, many of which I think are accurate. If his prediction does come true over the next few decades, I don’t know what we’re going to do as a society. How do you work in a world where there is no structure or security? And how do we support, right in the US, the people who may not place such a high priority on work and education and instead want to raise families and work stable jobs? Not everyone wants or can be an entrepreneur in the way Godin describes. Is it only low-tech service jobs for them forever? I’m just not sure how I feel about that. But part of this is exciting:

When everyone has a laptop and connection to the world, then everyone owns a factory. Instead of coming together physically, we have the ability to come together virtually, to earn attention, to connect labor and resources, to deliver value.

Sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and say, “Let’s see what happens.”

Can the flu shot give me the flu?

From: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
By: CDC
One-Sentence Summary
The flu shot cannot give someone the flu.
My Thoughts
Uhhh, then why am I sick today? I just got a flu shot around noon yesterday and I felt sick within two hours. Last night, I felt worse and worse. And now today I’m still feeling bad, but sorta better than last night. But there are a lot of people with various sicknesses around me right now, so maybe I already had something floating around in there? Who knows, but this is definitely not the full flu yet, so I probably can’t blame the vaccine. Anyway, let’s proceed with the articles I’m actually reading.

How to do Facebook REALLY Well in Local Government

From: Helen Reynolds (via someone on Twitter, I think)
By: Helen Reynolds
One-Sentence Summary
To do Facebook well in local government, you have to understand your audience, interact with your fans, and make it useful for people.
My Thoughts
This was just a solid interview with a local implementer of Facebook. It gave me some good ideas of what we could do at the City if we really wanted to. This would be especially effective for departments that have direct interaction with residents, especially young people. Parks and Recreation, Sister Cities, and a few others would probably fit that list. Even our Neighborhood Services Department would probably be well-served by establishing a strong online presence.

You Love Your iPhone. Literally.

From: New York Times (via Daniel Pink)
By: Martin Lindstrom
One-Sentence Summary
Instead of being addicted to our iPhones, our brains show the classic patterns of being in love with them.
My Thoughts
Wait, where’s my iPhone? Oh no, is it not near me? Hang on, I gotta go find it. I miss it.

Measuring Community Health: Achieving Balanced Social Media Growth

From: ZDNet (via Twitter, I think)
By: Jorge Camargo
One-Sentence Summary
Uhh, well, there’s this thing called the Pyramid KPI and it’s important in helping build healthy social networks, I think.
My Thoughts
Let’s be clear, I didn’t read a lot of this because I stopped understanding pretty early on in the article. Actually, this is the pull-quote at the top of the article that killed it for me: “The content contribution pyramid reporting model enabled us to understand variations in context, purpose and participants within each of our communities while keeping an eye on overall growth trends.” If you understand that fully, I commend you. So why did I write about this? I don’t know, I think I need flu medicine. Or an article about hypochondria. Either way, read this whole article because I certainly didn’t. But I want to sometime today!

Will Robots Steal Your Job?

From: Slate
By: Farhad Manjoo
One-Sentence Summary
The number of jobs that can be done better, faster and cheaper by robots or software is pretty scary, and who knows how long we have until almost all jobs are taken over by computers.
My Thoughts
This is very similar in theme to the first article. Godin seems to attribute more to outsourcing than computers and Manjoo seems to say more about computers than outsourcing. Either way, well-paying blue collar jobs are getting harder to find. We have warehouses and fast food jobs – what about medium-technical jobs that can be done at half the price in some other country? That’s what we need to figure out how to keep for a huge segment of the population who need good jobs in order to support every other industry. That’s why good, high-quality stimulus works and tax cuts do not.

That’s it for this week. I’m feeling pretty sick still, so I’ll save the one or two more I have left for next week.