The Ten Spot

Today in the TenSpot, three LevelTen-ians recap their trip down to the great town of Austin for 2010's SXSWi Conference. The team just returned from the event, which used "Tomorrow Happens Here" as the rallying cry for this year's participants.

Today in the TenSpot, we're talking about tactics for building a website that wins. Buying or building a website can be compared to choosing a car. Whether you budget for an $850 junker, an economical hybrid, or a high performance race car, the success of your purchase depends on your goals. If you are looking for a website that wins, this panel discussion is for you.

Today in the TenSpot, we're exploring the mystical world of creative tech seminars, specifically the growing franchise called "Ignite", coming to Dallas March 3rd. Ignite will be happening in about 60 cities worldwide simultaneously, as creative communities everywhere look to spark innovations.

Today in the TenSpot, we are taking Agile to a new level. Members of our staff recently underwent ScrumMaster and Product Owner training with Certified ScrumMaster extraordinaire Mike Cohn.

Cohn is a leading Agilist, having been involved with the process on an executive level since 1995. He has authored three books and led Scrum conferences and events around the world.

It's that time of the year at LevelTen. Time for everyone to make resolutions (goals) for the new year.

This podcast, we'll tell you about some of the plans we have for the company over the next year.

Kayla Wren discusses LevelTen's learning culture, and what we've got planned for broadening our minds in 2010.

Renee Dobbs talks about her plan to give more back to the community.

Note: due to podcast length (1:06), we had to go without the standard intro and outro.

We've got a special episode of The Ten Spot this week as we sit down with the marketing team from a Dallas entertainment institution - The Granada Theater. The Granada Theater is an award winning live music venue that's been having much success marketing online.

There's a project management revolution going on today, and it goes by the name of Agile.

Agile project management methodologies are an alternative to traditional waterfall project management, which is the style of project management used in the majority of web development and design projects today.

Large companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce.com have already made the switch to Agile.

Why?

In this week's TenSpot podcast, we get down to the nitty gritty. Kayla Wren discusses running the Scrum process with a blended product backlog, and Dustin Currie discusses some of the problems with project estimation, and some strategies for creating better estimates on your next project.

Power Tip

When do you usually make your sales calls? Is it first thing in the morning, around 9am? Or maybe you subscribe to the theory that the best time to make a sales call is around lunch time. Either way, you'd be wrong. According to a recent study by MIT, the best time to make sales calls from website leads is the 4-6pm block.