Inside the Exclusive NYC Tech Week Happy Hour at IBM’s Headquarters

At 6 pm on Monday evening, the two of us joined a small mob of other Tech Week hopefuls in the lobby of IBM’s New York City headquarters, right off of Madison Square Park. We were all waiting to get into the same event: a rooftop happy hour full of Big Tech employees, founders, and free champagne.

Not everyone in the lobby made it past the snaking check-in line, though. We passed a duo in the lobby pleading with an event organizer, who was patiently repeating that their Partiful invites said “pending” instead of “accepted,” and that the happy hour was at capacity. (Sorry, Apple Invites, but it seems like most Tech Week hosts are Partiful people.)

It appears we weren’t the only ones who got an ego bump from making it onto the guest list. One attendee told us it felt like trying to get into high school parties — except this time, he actually got past the door.

Once safely on the roof, we sampled comically small hors d’oeuvres and chatted about AI, landing a tech job, dating in New York, and more AI.

Here’s an inside look at the boozy affair, complete with a photo of the cocktail list that the bartender kindly pretended wasn’t weird for us to take.