From Churchill Club CEO, Karen Tucker

Amazing, but true:  Churchill Club is 25 years old!  There has been a lot of technology excitement in Silicon Valley over the past 25 years, with the rise of game-changers such as personal computing, the Internet, social Internet, and mobility.

Technology now dramatically affects nearly every part of our lives, work, and hopes for the future. Looking back at the role Churchill Club has played as a conversation catalyst, we have a lot to celebrate.  

Since Intel co-founder Bob Noyce appeared as our first speaker, Churchill Club has drawn together hundreds of key thinkers and leaders to exchange views on entrepreneurism, innovation, and economic growth. 

As a history lover I am all for remembering the past, and at the same time, as a Churchill Club member and “Silicon Valley state-of-mind person,” I can’t wait to see what comes next. 

As part of the celebration on the occasion of our silver anniversary, we’ve introduced a new symbol to both honor our past and take us into the next 25 years. Working with the talented team at Gwen Francis Design Group, we explored many ideas.  Uniformly we found ourselves drawn to the image of the bowler hat. 

Ever since the Churchill Club began, the bowler has been around in one form or another as an object associated with our namesake, Winston Churchill.  Our founders, Rich Karlgaard and Tony Perkins, were inspired by Churchill as an outstanding world leader who valued open dialogue, free exchange of ideas, wit, and critical thinking. Churchill even today is associated iconically with the cigar, two-finger V-for-victory sign, and the bowler hat*.

As it turns out, our choice of the bowler hat goes far beyond its association with Sir Winston. Our attraction relates to the history and iconography of the hat itself.

Before the bowler was introduced, hats delineated social hierarchy:  e.g., the gentry wore top hats; the working class wore flat caps. The bowler came along, and cut across classes, geographies and gender— from trade workers, to Parliamentarians, businesspeople, actors, cabaret singers, Peruvian women in the Andes, and far, far beyond.  In fact it was the bowler hat, not the Stetson, that “won the West,” in the words of one historian of the time.  The bowler united the great diversity of its wearers through their common act of embracing the new.

The stylish, minimalistic bowler became a sign of modern times, and the continuity of change.  For the Churchill Club, a venerable, 25-year-old public affairs forum obsessed with “what’s new, next, not yet known,” the image of a bowler hat is a fitting symbol to both celebrate the past and propel us into the future.

Coming soon…I will share recent focus group results with you. Find out what our members said sets the Churchill Club apart and how it led us to develop our new logo and tagline.

*Although Winston Churchill wore a classic bowler hat at times in his life, he favored a hybrid version of the bowler nicknamed a “bowker,” with a slightly flatter crown.

Watch the latest event with James Cameron & Eric Schmidt on demand on fora.tv: http://f4a.tv/9kJ309