During his press conference about the stimulus package the other night, President Obama sounded tired. The source of his fatigue didn't seem to be the size of the bill he was proposing. Instead, Obama sounded burdened by the changes to American society that were required to make $800 billion worth spending. Here's a representative quote:

We are going to have to work with the banks in an effective way to
clean up their balance sheets so that some trust is restored within the
marketplace, because right now part of the problem is that nobody
really knows what's on the bank's books. Any given bank, they're not
sure what kinds of losses are there. We've got to open things up and
restore some trust.

And later:

Now, maybe philosophically you just don't think that the federal
government should be involved in energy policy. I happen to disagree
with that; I think that's the reason why we find ourselves importing
more foreign oil now than we did back in the early '70s when OPEC first
formed.

Okay, I have to admit it:  “My name is Clay and I am a political junkie.” They say the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. I am also a policy geek and I love watching C-SPAN.By now, I’m sure you’re wondering “What the heck does this have to do with I&KM pros?”

I believe last Wednesday’s House Hearing on Madoff and the SEC should be required viewing for all I&KM Pros – particularly for those of you that want to understand how BPM can keep you from getting fired.

If you caught the hearing in its entirety on C-SPAN (I had a front-row seat on my couch, thanks to being taken down by a nasty flu-like virus last Wednesday – this will become relevant a little later), you saw the whistleblower, Harry Markopoulos, rip into the SEC, FINRA, and other industry regulators. Mr. Markopoulos raised numerous red flags to the SEC about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme over an eight year period.

Pulling no punches, Mr. Markopolos called the SEC "incompetent" and FINRA "crooks" to their faces – senior representatives from both organizations were in the audience listening to the hearing and waiting for their opportunity to respond.  Following Mr. Markopoulos’s testimony, I thought "Hey, its time to get some popcorn, the fight’s on!" Then I recalled why I was home in the first place – sick, right? 

A popular topic among product management bloggers is, How can I say no to my customers? Christopher Cummings has the most recent musings. The Cranky Product Manager and Jeff Lash have also written about the topics--along with practically every other PM blogger out there.

Obviously, it's important to handle customers deftly when you can't comply with their requests. You'd like to keep the conversation friendly, but sometimes, the situation gets confrontational. Your diplomatic skills will face their toughest challenge.

All politics is local
I might have been unusually blessed with reasonable, understanding customers, but I never found the "foreign policy" part of saying no to be that difficult. The real headache, at least where I've worked, was "domestic politics"--what happens within your own company when you have to say no to a customer.

Ever since I did the research on tools for product managers, I've been diddling with an ROI calculator for improved product requirements, which can come from two sources: (1) hiring another product manager; and (2) implementing a specialized requirements tool.

Here's the final product. Really, this is a way of demonstrating the value of product management. Product managers and PM tools are just the tangible manifestations of that business function.

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]

It's time to finally address the elephant in the room. I've been writing for several years about the power of online video -- specifically the catalytic effect of online TV shows -- to change consumer behavior and the TV consumption model. Then this recession got in the way.

We're busily examining the ways that this will effect everything we cover, whether devices, services and consumer sentiment. But one specific area I want to collect evidence on is the question of online video advertising. For the last year, the rise in spending has been tremendous. The rise of Hulu.com as a destination site as well as a video syndicator plus while a few minor things like YouTube finally tinkering with a viable (read: harder to litigate against) ad model and the rise of Hulu+CBS aggregators like TV.com or Fancast have meant a flood of new inventory, most of it premium.

But when an economy gets as bad as this one, the only thing more predictable than US Democrats trying to insert protectionist trade policies into a stimulus bill is that advertisers will cut ad spend across the board. This excellent and gritty piece from Broadcasting & Cable yesterday discusses the expected bloodbath in the US broadcast upfronts later this year. That has to affect online video ad spend, simply because a lot of online TV show sponsorship is presold in upfront bundles each year (think Sprint + Heroes).