A couple months ago I added an extra layer of security to this site by adding SSL encryption. However, it wasn’t on by default so we weren’t really getting the full benefit.

Then this weekend I saw an article to that point explaining that Life Is About to Get a Whole Lot Harder for Websites Without HTTPS.

Well, with that I decided to turn on HTTPS by default. And turns out it was a lot easier to do than I expected, with just three quick steps:

1. Login to your WordPress panel
2. Use the SEO by Yoast plugin, which I conveniently already had installed, to locate and access your .htaccess file
3. Finally, edit the file by adding the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Easy enough.

Going forward www.jeffsteinke.com should always automatically load securely. To tell that it’s working just look in the URL bar. For example, Chrome will show a Secure tag like this:

And I suppose I’m also curious…are there any downsides to forcing all site traffic to use HTTPS? Granted this site is about 99% content with little to no form entry or data being transferred but still, what’s the harm in adding this extra layer of security? Let me know your thoughts…

Once again summer is almost over and many students are heading back to school in the next few weeks.

This week I want to spotlight one such student, a mentee of mine from Virginia. Take a moment this week to stop by her blog and see what Jeannie’s accomplished this summer on her European Adventure.

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Expected value is a wonderful topic. Easy enough to learn in an hour, but complex and applicable enough to keep you interested for years.

As someone who’s always in search of the answer, always trying to synthesize (or let’s be honest, over analyze!) a dataset into meaning, EV has become my sliderule, toolbox, and IDE, letting me input the right parameters to spit out an objective solution.

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There’s a wonderful, free, blogging platform out there in Medium. Yet I shake my fist and defy it every week as I choose to write here. Why? A friend recently asked this in so many words.

The Medium option has never quite appealed to me although I’m not exactly vehemently against it either. So I took him up on his recommendation and cross-posted my recent post about Product Managers and Business Analysts over on Medium:

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This is the Lessons Learned blog after all so it’d be appropriate to recap the 2014 technology lessons learned.

With that lovely graphic, in no particular order…

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This post should have been written a few weeks ago…

With the travel-heavy Thanksgiving Holiday I couldn’t escape people talking about their plans to listen to Serial while on the road to visit friends & family.

Actually, if I’d waited just another week back in September I’d have had another podcast to add to my list. But now this post feels a little late to the (podcast listening) party.

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We’re coming up on our six month anniversary since BlueFletch moved into our new digs at Southern Dairies.

The overwhelming response has been positive so I wanted to share what we did, what’s worked well and what hasn’t.

Welcome to BlueFletch

• Large, clean and crisp signage (thanks to FASTSIGNS Atlanta)
• Dogs encouraged, but also taking precaution to reduce legal liability
• Tore out the outdated secretary desk so Lauren isn’t stranded by herself all day

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Technology and government don’t always mix.

After all, I recall registering BlueFletch a few years ago and the Georgia Secretary of State website recommend I use Netscape to complete our corporate registration (and yes, this was after 2008).

At the 2014 Great Wide Open conference Clay Johnson touched on this government technology gap a bit during the keynote. As he continued, one chart from his presentation has stuck with me over the past few weeks.

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Which is your poison – Mac or PC?

A little over 12 months ago I made the inevitable switch from Windows to Apple. I’d been a long time windows hold out.

However I do work at a startup so I can’t be showing up to events and meetings with a PC, right? (seriously, are you even allowed to do that?)

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Cities…

Creativity…

Classrooms…

and now the day of Catalyzing concluded with  Crowds.

Amy Baxter

Pain, Empathy, and Public Health

• People commonly associate pain with the Doctor’s office – take a second and think about how backward of a concept this is
• There is an ongoing erosion of empathy in medicine
• Making health care more accessible means many things, one of which is making health care an experience people don’t fear

One of Amy’s visuals showed a crazy increase in the amount of vaccinations delivered through shots now vs 20 years ago. I apologize if I missed her saying this, but I want to know why this is the case. What are the alternatives (e.g. oral doses) and why aren’t they more common?

Mary Frances Bowley

On the Brink

• 100 girls are sold for sex in Atlanta every night
• One a girl joins the sex trafficking industry, the average life expectancy is only 7 years
• This quote stuck out – “men order girls like food on a menu”
• Yes, this dark world does exist and these girls need our help

As Mary put bluntly, this is a very ugly subject, but also one that needs to be acknowledged. Her program is helping these girls break free from the trafficking. I wasn’t clear though – are these girls being held against their will, or do they simply feel entrapped in this lifestyle they’ve been drug into?

Lisa Earle McLeod

The Triangle of Truth

• Compromising during negotiation is just “chip trading”
• A compromising mindset focuses on what’s already on the table; you no longer consider the full realm of possibilities
• During conflict, let go of your own ideas and invite the other side to find a solution with you that is better than anything on its own

Neale Martin

Why TED Talks Don’t Change Your Life Much

• Thinking about something vs. doing it are wildly different things
• Being inspired isn’t enough; you must trick your unconscious mind into behavioral change
• Thoughts are weak; behaviors are strong
• If you want to change the world, GO! It’s your turn…

Appropriately placed at the end of the day. And talk about a link-bait headline!

Jokes aside, what good is going to a TED event if you’re not going to learn something that you can then apply once you leave? Neale had a very practical TED talk that prescribed three steps for actually making a behavioral change based on what you learned today:

1. Develop a reliable, repeatable trigger for behavior change
2. Create initial early success and power reinforcement
3. Repeat until it feels normal, or until not doing it feels abnormal