High Tech Happy Hour (Low Tech Happy Hour)

The “happy hour” was a navy term describing the period for entertainment and refreshments, used during World War I (1918). “Happy hour” became a time period for when bars and restaurants offered reduced-priced drinks; the usage appears to be from the west coast, about 1954.
 
A “High Tech Happy Hour” began in Austin in 1998, started by Harry Pape. High tech professions would have a few drinks, a few things to eat, watch some entertainment, and also be able to network. The high tech boom went bust a few years later, and, in 2002, Alison Roberts created the “Low Tech Happy Hour” for unemployed professionals in the Austin area.
 
 
Wikipedia: Happy Hour
Happy hour is a period of time in the late afternoons Monday through Thursday, and sometimes Friday (usually taking place between 4 pm and 7 pm — rush hour for many workers) during which some restaurants and bars give discounts for drinks, especially alcoholic drinks. The idea is that it acts as a promotion of the venue during the quieter times.
 
The term originated in the United States Navy. In the 1920s, “happy hour” was slang for on-ship performances. “Happy” in this context meant slightly drunk.
 
The idea of drinking before dinner has its roots in the Prohibition era. When the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act were passed banning alcohol consumption, citizens would host “cocktail hours” or “happy hours” at a speakeasy — underground drinking establishments — before eating at restaurants where alcohol could not be served. Cocktail lounges continued the trend of drinking before dinner. “Happy hour” entered civilian use around 1960, especially after a Saturday Evening Post article in 1959. Happy hour has become a tradition for many workers, white and blue collar alike.
 
The push against drunk driving and alcohol abuse has curtailed the use of the happy hour to some extent. In the 1980s, bars started providing free hors d’oeuvres to lower the blood alcohol content of patrons. Glasgow has banned happy hours to reduce binge drinking, as has the Republic of Ireland. In 1984, the U.S. Military abolished happy hours at military base clubs.
 
Despite the controversy, happy hour still exists around the globe. Today in the United States, “Happy Hour” culture consists largely of junior and mid-level professionals getting together for a drink to unwind after work. In the United Kingdom, the cocktail hour serves a similar purpose, but traditionally begins at 5pm and ends an hour later.
 
HireAustin
It’s About Austin Helping Austin
Hire Austin is an outgrowth of the Low Tech Happy Hour, one of Austin’s largest and most successful networking groups. Hire Austin is LTHH’s new initiative to bring job-seekers, employers and resources together. LTHH members represent a wide variety of experienced, talented professionals ranging from programmers and IT experts to executive assistants and office clerks. With nearly 1000 diverse members, LTHH is an outstanding talent resource that can help you fill any hiring need.
 
No Employer Cost
Hire Austin is a free resource for Austin employers. Just e-mail your job postings to us for immediate access to almost 1000 talented, motivated candidates.
 
Who Are We?
Low Tech Happy Hour or LTHH started in 2002 as a social gathering for a few “job-free” friends. It didn’t take long for the word to spread, and LTHH grew over the next two years to nearly 1000 members. LTHH is successful because we help both each other and Austin-area employers. Members meet once a month to share their talents, skills and job leads. A speaker provides valuable advice at each meeting on such subjects as job-search strategies, networking tips and professional career growth. 
 
(Historical Dictionary of American Slang)
happy hour n
1. Navy, a scheduled period for entertainment and refreshments on shipboard.
1920 Belknap Yankee Mining Sq. 52 [ref. to 1918]: Boxing and wrestling were taken up by the individual ships and, generally speaking, one evening each week was given over to “happy hours,” for hours in the ring and on the mat. Ibid. 86: [The mines’] presence forbade moving pictures on board, restricted smoking, and limited the “happy hours” and similar forms of diversion.
2. a time, usu. in the late afternoon, when a bar lowers the price of drinks or serves free snacks. Now colloq.
1959 Sat. Eve. Post (Apr. 25) 24: Except for those who spend too much during “happy hour” at the bar—and there are a few of these—the money mounts up fast.
 
(Oxford English Dictionary)
happy hour (orig. U.S.), a period of time (usu. in the early evening) during which drinks are served in a bar, etc., at reduced prices, or when free hors-d’uvres are available.
1961 Providence Jrnl. 4 July 24/2 All went home happy except the Newport police..and those deprived of their happy hour at the cocktail bar.
1967 Atlantic Monthly July 58/2 There have been other near tragedies which are, in retrospect, awfully good happy-hour bar stories.
 
20 November 1954, Hayward (CA) Daily Review, pg. 6, col. 1 ad:
GIL & BILLIE INVITE YOU TO
OUR HOUSE
FOR THANKSGIVING
“HAPPY HOUR”
5 to 7 Every Day
All drinks…40c
East 14th Street at 150th Ave.
SAN LEANDRO
   
27 November 1954, Hayward (CA) Daily Review, pg. 14, cols. 2-3:
HAPPY HOUR AT OUR HOUSE.
Gil Pouliot and Billie Adair, owners of San Leandro’s Our House, have come up with an idea that favors the customers more than a little bit. During the hours of 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., all drinks hit a 40 cent low. This is known as the “Happy Hour.” Come to think of it, Gil, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. is a long hour and a person could get mighty happy during that time. That’s what the man said, though, and “Happy Hour” it is.
     
4 December 1954, Hayward (CA) Daily Review, pg. 14, cols. 2-3:
Gil and Billie, owners of Our House have some all out plans for the coming Holidays and if you have not as yet made reservations for the company party, or private banquet, tarry no longer. Our House is the place. The Happy Hour from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. every night when all drinks are forty cents finds more than one person leaving the Our House portals very happy.
     
21 November 1958, Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, pg. A10, col. 5 ad:
TALK OF THE TOWN
DELICIOUS STEAKS . TEMPTING SEA FOOD . ENTERTAINMENT
HAPPY HOUR—4:30 to 6:30 P.M. 
 
13 February 1959, Long Beach (CA) Independent, pg. C11, col. 1 ad:
TALK OF THE TOWN
STEAK . COMB. STEAK & LOBSTER . SEAFOOD
Don’t Forget Our Happy Hour—4:30 to 6:30
 
3 April 1959, Daily Review (Hayward, CA)< pg. 21, col. 1 ad:
HAPPY HOUR
Every Nite 11:30 to 12:30
BEER 30c
SHOTS 40
AND DRINK 45c
RICKEY’S
17052 FOOTHILL
 
15 April 1959, Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), pg. 3, cols. 3-8 ad:
new..at the COACH ROOM
THE HAPPY HOUR!
all drinks 50c
(...)
The Happy Hour today
5:00 to 7:00
Starting today, to be every evening except Sundays, the Happy Hour will be a very happy time indeed. All drinks..even giant manhattans and giant martinis, will be 50 cents. Canapes…delicious and specially prepared…will be free of course.
(...)
Coach Room
HOTEL MAPES
 
2 October 1998, Austin (TX) American-Statesman, pg. C1: 
Tuesday’s first-ever official High Tech Happy Hour was one-third concert, one-third buffet and one-third job fair. About a dozen of the area’s high-tech ... 
 
Austin (TX) Chronicle - Best of Austin
Best Place To Pick Up A Geek: High Tech Happy Hour (Critics Picks, Arts & Entertainment, 2000)
A friend of a friend sent around this e-mail one day. It was something about how a guy named Harry Pape was organizing a happy hour where you could meet fellow high tech professionals in a fun setting. Not being high tech professionals ourselves, we were intrigued by this e-mail, so we went to check it out. Five dollars gets you into the happy hour and buys your first drink. The proceeds from the door benefit various charities around town.There was lots of networking, a few business cards exchanged, and plenty of high tech hotties to go around.
 
Business Week (June 5, 2000)
Making the Web Go
Sites hum with Vignette’s software, which helps publish and manage Net content
It’s a beautiful warm spring evening in downtown Austin, Tex., and the patrons are flitting around Serranos bar and restaurant, eyeing name tags and ordering $5 frozen margaritas. More than 1,000 people are here for Austin’s High-Tech Happy Hour, a monthly schmooze fest. Most work for the local dot-coms springing up all over, but nearly everyone wishes they worked for Vignette Corp (VIGN). ‘‘Vignette is the dot-com that made it,’’ says Harry Pape, 32, a freelance marketing consultant and longtime Austin resident who co-founded the happy hour. ‘‘They’re the example that everyone looks up to.’‘
 
Google Groups: alt.comp.blind-users
Newsgroups: alt.comp.blind-users
From: “Jason Cash Turner”
Date: 2000/07/14
Subject: Technical Recruiter at your service! 
 
After meeting with a representative from Knowbility.org at a recent high-tech happy hour I came to the conclusion that those with disabilities, be they blind, deaf or any such disability are a vastly under-utilized resource and I would like to offer my assistance.
   
Forbes.com (September 4, 2000)
THEY KNOW HOW TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT EATING PIZZA AND SPINNING ALGORITHMS. But can they party? Apparently, given the new crop of entrepreneurial event planners from GeekMeet in Dallas and the Digital Music Coalition Happy Hour in San Francisco to the High-Tech Happy Hour in Austin and the Venice Interactive Community’s VIC Night in Los Angeles. All that schmoozing and boozing can sometimes lead to relationships—personal and professional.
     
Google Groups: soc.org.nonprofit
Newsgroups: soc.org.nonprofit
From: A Cravens

Date: 2000/09/19
Subject: Re: NP needs to “reinvent” itself
 
What organizations around you appeal to a “twenty or thirty-something” constituency? I know that, here in Austin, it seems like there’s some kind of high-tech happy hour every week, and these events are great ways to network with “new blood.”
   
Austin (TX) Business Journal (September 2000)
One of Austin’s early dot-corn deaths, Networker Inc., has risen from the grave—only this time, it’s headed by marketing consultant Harry Pape, organizer of the popular High Tech Happy Hour.
 
Pape, who’s built the monthly High Tech Happy Hour from nothing last year to more than 1,500 people in attendance in August, bought the assets of Networker to start a company now known as TNI Acquisitions Inc.
 
CNNMoney.com (October 1, 2000)
Many here try to create it at events like the Austin High Tech Happy Hour, a recurring networkathon that began in 1998 with about five people. A more recent installment had 1,100 attendees. I attended a Happy Hour at the Austin Lyric Opera House where about 800 showed up. The sponsors were three start-ups with venture funding and a deep desire for momentum.
 
One of those sponsors was Convio, a fledgling Internet firm that had designated a microbrew called Fat Tire as its “official beer” for the night and was giving away a trip to the brewery in Denver. The winner would be announced later in the evening by fully costumed opera singers, after they performed a short operatic piece about Convio, written by the company’s ad agency. I spent part of the evening with Vinay Bhagat, the founder and CEO of Convio and a smooth and charming 30-year-old with a mild British accent and a cosmopolitan air. He’s a Trilogy Software alum. As I sipped a Fat Tire, Bhagat pointed toward a Convio sign tied to the balcony above us. Events like this are really for the branding, he said. Get known. Get your name out there.
 
26 May 2002, Austin (TX) American-Statesman:
Low Tech Happy Hour—2:30 to 3:30 pm For unemployed professionals.
       
Austin (TX) American-Statesman
Letters
Date: January 6, 2003
Publication: Austin American-Statesman (TX)
High-five to ‘Low-Tech’ Thank you for the Dec. 29 article about the Low-Tech Happy Hour (“Unemployed but coping”). Being unemployed in Austin during a period when loads of talented high-tech folks are in the same dilemma and facing countless forms of disappointment could understandably put one in a deep, blue funk.
 
Thanks to the the founder of Low Tech Happy Hour, Alison Roberts, for making lemonade out of lemons, rinds and seeds and then… 
 
Austin (TX) American-Statesman
TECHNOLOGY
Austin’s high tech happy hour scene parties like it’s 1999
By Omar L. Gallaga
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, March 28, 2008
When zombies claw their way out of the grave, they do it slowly, steadily, carefully; no use losing a jaw.
 
And so it is with Austin’s high-tech happy hour scene, which over the past year has cautiously arisen from the dead, emerging from a gravestone with “1998-2001” on it.
 
Back then, local Internet companies and their sponsors poured money into extravagant parties at places like Speakeasy and La Zona Rosa. Now, a more tightly focused set of tech parties crowds calendars. They’re fueled by online social sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Meetup.com that have emerged since the dot-com boom, as well as a renewed interest in face-to-face networking that those sites have helped create.
 
Despite efforts by some to avoid the excess of those dizzying dot-com days, some of the new gatherings are growing quickly, signaling the breadth of the Austin tech industry and how connected it’s becoming.
 
On a Tuesday night in February, about 150 fresh-from-MBA-program entrepreneurs, grizzled vets from the semiconductor industry, staffing recruiters, programmers and bloggers crowded J. Black’s Feel Good Lounge on West Sixth Street. The initial tentativeness (the sticky name tags, the uncertain meeting-and-greeting, the pocket-digging business card exchanging) morphed within an hour and a half into a festive party lubricated by a steady flow of beer and snacks.
 
The happy hour brought together two Austin tech groups, GeekAustin — essentially an e-mail list of techies kept by happy hour organizer Lynn Bender — and Dorkbot-Austin, a monthly gathering of electronic artists.
(...) 
Austin tech groups such as Bootstrap Austin, the Austin Linux Group, the Association for Women in Technology and the Austin Wireless Alliance regularly hold happy hours that can range from a dozen attendees to more than 50.
(...) 
Getting Austin-networked on the Net
Door64.com — Features an extensive calendar of tech events in Austin, as well as discussion forums.
Geekaustin.org — GeekAustin, which partners with other tech groups for its happy hours, posts event news and updates on its site.
LinkedIn.com — The most widely used social networking site for business people.
NetworkInAustin.com — A subscription site, it also features a free area that lists upcoming business and networking events.
Austintechhh.com — The Austin Tech Happy Hour holds monthly get-togethers; no RSVP required. 
 
(Trademark)
Word Mark HIGH TECH HAPPY HOUR
Goods and Services (ABANDONED) IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: ORGANIZING AND CONDUCTING EMPLOYMENT JOB FAIRS FOR INDIVIDUALS IN THE HIGH TECHNOLOGY FIELDS RELATING TO COMPUTER SOFTWARE, THE INTERNET, AND RELATED HIGH TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINES. FIRST USE: 19980000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19980000
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 76029807
Filing Date April 19, 2000
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Owner (APPLICANT) LBJS Broadcasting Company, L.P. Radio Austin Management, L.L.C., a Texas limited liability company, as its general partner LIMITED PARTNERSHIP TEXAS 8309 IH-35 Austin TEXAS 78753
Attorney of Record William D. Raman
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD
Abandonment Date February 7, 2002