Twenty years on, Silicon Valley has expanded way beyond its birthplace in Palo Alto, it includes San Francisco and I would say it even reaches the outskirts of Santa Rosa, in the North Bay.

It would be fun to have a sort of "new" Churchill Club up in the city, where there are plenty of people interested in Churchillian type events but they can't get down to Palo Alto at 6pm because they are working until 8pm.

So, I've been floating the idea for the Rooster Club SF--[a salon of peers rather than podiums] over the past couple of weeks, here on SVW and elsewhere.

I mentioned it to Raymond Nasr, the new Churchill Club president who liked the idea. And it's not competition to Churchill Club, it's an SF affiliate. It is not either/or--but an and.



I've no idea how to pull such things together, Raymond and his team have plenty of experience.

I think that if Silicon Valley is going to make a comeback--and it is making a slow comeback--it has to have new institutions, new media voices and new organizations that represent and reflect these times.

And they have to come out of all this media disruption, this blogging movement.

And that is why it should be called the Rooster Club, imho, because the Rooster is a perfect metaphor for the blogger. Take a look:

-The Rooster crows away on its little patch of the farmyard, look at me, look how fine I am, my voice carries far and wide.

-The Rooster is all puffed up, all feathers and air, yet the Rooster is always the first to see the faint light of the future, the dawn of a new day, and proclaim it for all to hear.

-The Rooster always wakes you up way too early--and you curse the Rooster for it--but you can always fall back to sleep.

-A Rooster has to have cajones, by definition. But that is not a gender reference, it is a balls reference;-) because men and women bloggers have to have the balls to put their ideas and writing out into the blogosphere, into a public arena where they can be challenged, ridiculed, and attacked.

-This is the Chinese year of the Rooster.

. . .

Let me know what you think, we'll pass around a sign-up sheet very shortly. Also, send me some of your Rooster/blogger metaphors, we can compile them here :-)