Drinking wine leads to deep thoughts.

This past weekend, my wife and I held an informal wine tasting for our neighbors. We were joined by Simon Beck, Editor – Special Editions, The Globe and Mail.

Simon had become exhausted in completing his latest project: the University Report Card 2007. The Report compiles the results from a survey of 43,000 Canadian students on their schools. (Fortunately Simon summoned the energy to sample the wine.)

In the Report, Dr. Tim Blackmore a professor at the University of Western Ontario was quoted: This isn't the MTV generation we're talking about — this is the everything, all-the-time generation. It's difficult for a professor to compete with that. It's like trying to capture the attention of a cat." Dr. Blackmore struggles to keep students engaged but continues to achieve high student ratings as he incorporates video and audio in his lectures.

As one is often prone to do, I compare this to my days in university, when we had to jealously share PCs in a PC lab to complete our required assignments. My generation was grossly underwired and under-social networked in comparison.

Therein lies the rub, are all audiences equally attracted to Web 2.0 media? Is a blog (insert any Web 2.0 medium) required for my company?

In our pursuit of the next new thing, we sometimes forget that it all starts with the customer.

With a deep understanding of the customer, the path becomes clear. Yet , the low cost of entry for Web 2.0 makes these media ideal for testing.

So if your knowledge of your customer is limited, even a small scale test is probably worthwhile.

And like Dr. Blackmore, the level of your customer engagement is a key metric.

One fine day in Chicago

This afternoon I flew into Chicago from Toronto.

The weather was ideal for my plans before the MarketingProfs Conference began: sunny and warm with a nice breeze off of Lake Michigan.

With the blessing of my family, I flew in early today to take the Architecture Cruise on the Chicago River in picture perfect conditions.

My newfound knowledge of Chicago architecture came in handy at 6:00 pm during the speakers cocktail party. We stood on the third floor patio of the Renaissance Chicago and talked of the behemoths that lined the river.

It was great to meet and chat with the MarketingProfs team: Allen Weiss - Founder, Roy Young - President and Ann Handley - Chief Content Officer and employee #2. The MarketingProfs team was hyped about their first conference and the 300 attendees.

Ann Handley, Paul Dunay (my presentation partner) and I spoke on the patio, amongst other things, about blogging and Twitter. According to Paul, master blogger / podcaster Robert Scoble was surprised that he was not inundated with baby product pitches after covering the personal event online.

My response was that it seems odd that with rampant privacy concerns such as identity theft, bloggers are not more guarded about their private life. If Robert and his family are at the hospital, who is watching his house?

Would-be burglars no longer have to watch the newspapers and mail pile up. Its now as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed to know when no one is home.