Cocktails with Courtney

08/27/2026

08/27/2026

Glasses were raised, conversations flowed, and new introductions were made when Cocktails with Courtney returned to Postino on Wednesday, August 26th.

Twenty-one guests came from across Tucson’s arts, business, education, media and nonprofit communities -- including people connected with AZPM, the University of Arizona BIO5 Institute, Junior Achievement of Arizona, Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona, Long Realty Company, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), @ Sandoval Creative, the Tucson Desert Art Museum and more.

Audrey Darnell, MA, Brandon Joule, Jennifer Camano, CFRE, Jenny Fiore-Magaña, Jyoti Jones, Kamron Hinatsu, Laura Holánszky, Leah Bogen, Özlem Ayşe Özgür, PhD, Amy Barber, Lynne Birkinbine, Rocio Cervantes Garcia, Camila Martins-Bekat, CEcD, Jade Rood Norden, Gustavo Rocha Jr., David Monrreal and Emmanuel Joubeaud were among those who came by—and several brought guests into the circle.

As always, there was no formal program -- just drinks, hors d’oeuvres and the kind of easy conversation that leads to unexpected connections, which has always been the idea behind Cocktails with Courtney: bring interesting people from different corners of a community into the same room and see what happens.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and helped make the evening such a warm one. Tucson’s community becomes smaller—and stronger—with every introduction.

08/27/2026

I've reached a 11-week posting streak with Buffer! Guess this is looking at my historical posting from the past 11 weeks. I've tried Hootsuite in the past, now playing around with this platform... We'll see how it goes!

08/18/2026

On this day...in 2001:

Red and white streamers fluttered in the cooling summer evening breeze at the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica, California.

The tents were set for the drinks and the gourmet tamales, and all the volunteers were busy helping with final details for the Cocktails with Courtney / Digital Commerce Lab benefit for the Electronic Cafe Intl on Tuesday, August 14th.

Trying to raise money for the café's video archives was the goal, and the goal was met with tremendous response!

Read all about it here:
https://thecyberscene.blogspot.com/2001/08/artists-benefit-from-digital-kind.html

And see all the pictures here (scroll down):
https://pulitzer.com/cocktails-with-courtney-photo-galleries

Kirsten Johnson
Joanna Minneci
Keren Taylor
Pug LaHart - CyberHag
Janice Norton Sterling - TheCoolHunters.com
Diane Duncan - Special Venue Entertainment
David Wettenstein - AT&T
Tony Winders - Interactive Agency
Phil Lelyveld - Walt Disney Digital Industry Relations and New Technology
Dennis Wilen
Michael Terpin - InternetWire
Lisa Osborn - Traffic411.com
Peter Daily - InternetWire
Chris Brown - InternetWire
Linda Jaffe - InternetWire
Shirley C. Sax Advanstar
Gina Cohen - Advanstar
Anna Marie Piersimoni - American Film Institute
Monica Stein - Universal Studios
Larry Aronson - Webscape
Lynn Thigpen (Rest in Peace)
Suzanne Hornwood - The Content Project
Miguel Fiallos - LINGUAE Translation & Web Localization
Honey Berman - SeaChange International
Tom Lincoln
Carl Goodman - American Museum of the Moving Image

08/12/2026

It was a hot, steamy night in Southampton, on this day 26 years ago!

On Friday, August 11, 2000 Country magazine presented Cocktails with Courtney -- Southampton!

With hosts Joe DiChristofaro, Cindi Cook and Courtney Pulitzer

This event showcased local photographers and benefited the East End Hospice and the Courtney Pulitzer Digital Divide Fund.

The Digital Divide Fund pooled proceeds from Cocktails with Courtney and Black Tie Benefit events into seed grants for City Cares affiliates nationwide, helping them replicate New York Cares' Partners In Technology Program and bring computer labs, wiring, and tech training to under-served schools and nonprofits. That original PITP model alone had already engaged over 1,300 volunteers for 3,000 hours of service, reaching more than 1,500 children and adults with hands-on computer instruction, a scale the Fund was built to multiply city by city.

08/04/2026

On this day, August 4th, back in 1999...

Cocktails with Courtney in Austin was hotter than ever -- and not just because of the famous Austin heat.

Sponsored by The Net-Worker, this event drew over 150 industry-related CEOs, managers, artists, webcasters and technology-related professionals. Held at the SpeakEasy on Wednesday, August 4th, we had food from Wholefoods(and the dot com) and once again Gundlach Bundschu, that lovely family-owned vineyard in California, provided some fine wines for the night.

ClickHear set up a full stage for webcasting the entire party, and MSI Austin also prepared some delicious treats for the guests. And when the hors d'oeuvres ran out, we ordered in more pizzas!

I got to meet Hugh Forrest, Event Director for the SXSW conference and Karen Johnson of The Loomis Group. Shane Cook of 1stBuy.com devoted much of his evening to taking digital photographs of the event. Glenn Birk, Terrell Lewis, Steve Cunningham and Gary Fortlin of MSI Austin came by to meet other new media Austinites. I'd been in their facility earlier that day for a mind-blowing tour -- I literally almost TOUCHED THE INTERNET!

Wow...(more on this later) Carrie Beaton and Ken Perry of Renaissance, Cheryl Seeman of RJ Kolar and Joe McLean of Computer Moms came by. A great group of NetWorkers like executive publisher Marc Bruneman and editors Amy Davis, Stacy Short, Stephanie Dauphin came by for some networking. Scott Miller and Melissa Windgard-Philips of PC Order and Marc Armstrong of Pencom and Elizabeth Billups of SpringBok PR were out for the fun night. Other guests who came were Dean Patton of Tidal Software, Troy Miller of Single Cell Productions, Giuseppe Ferrigno of MedStat, Chris Treadaway of Stratfor, Mike Morrison of Activerse and Michael Ho of Trilogy. Qwest was represented by Patrick Rohrbough and Jenny Mossman; Bill Kleinebecker and David Smith came from Technology Futures; and Clay Goodwin (a regular) of House of Moves and Rosie Vonzurmuehlen of Alchemy Studios (another regular) also showed up in support of the Austin Cocktails. Even the FG Squared top-tier crew, including Jason Fellman, Steve Golby, Doug Collins and a few others came by after a private dinner to check out the scene. Brent Davis of New England Financial and Craig Negoescu of Frogdesign were some of the new guests, and what was personally encouraging was hearing from many people that they'd heard about the cocktail party from several people. The word spreads quickly and hopefully the good spirits of the fun night did too!

all the pictures here:
https://pulitzer.com/cocktails-with-courtney-photo-galleries

full story here:
https://thecyberscene.blogspot.com/1999/08/cocktails-with-courtney-austin-1999.html

06/30/2026

Cocktails with Courtney ~ June 99
Tery Spataro ([email protected]), COO of Blue Dingo, wrote in a lovely recap of the June "Cocktails with Courtney."
"With a blue moon in the sky, love or lust was certainly in the air at Courtney Pulitzer's cocktail party at Dolphins. Maybe it was the heat of the day, which turn the well to do techno-junkies into wanting more than bits and bytes. Courtney drew a handsome crowd of men and women! While we all spoke so passionately about our companies, products and services the eye contact from across the room was intensely felt. Thank goodness http://www.romanceboutique.com was there! A note to self there's more than business transactions taking place at Cocktails with Courtney! The woman, who shakes and stirs the industry, also has an art for mixing and matching!"

Thanks Tery! You can add your comments or reactions too on my bulletin board on-line at:http://www.TheCyberScene.com.

I must say, the turnout was terrific for the party on the last day of June. Stacey Schrader of Writers House created quite a pretty picture in her lovely creamy silk suit as she drove me over in her new silver Audi. Sharon Greenberg and Jasmine Thompson of Paladin Staffing, Andrew Duncan of EMC2 and Wes Horvath of Flycast Network came early and enjoyed some of the first glasses of chilled wine, compliments of Gundlach Bundschu vineyards. (www.gunbun.com). Once again there was a major reunion at the party (which is becoming a frequent occurrence) when Marina Kolesnik of IQgames.com and Michael Zaitsev of vIntranet met up with Vladimir Bernstein of AllAdvantage.com--college buddies who hadn't seen each other in two years! William Ryan of the hot PR firm Niehaus Ryan Wong was still in town and came by with Laura Hamilton, the NY office's managing director. Laura introduced me to Mark Modzelewski (who I'd met at a previous "Cocktails") and who just started with their firm.

Dynamic recruiter (currently contracting at Organic Online) came over & filled me in on how Organic is doing, (growing!) Even Matt Toner (formerly of the CanApple program) resurfaced, but was still hyper-exclusive in telling me what he's up to. I will say tho', the cartoon on the back of his card is hysterical. It's a picture of a man on the phone saying, "No, Thursday's out. How about never…is never good for you?"! Jeff Newelt (The Ad Club) and Roy Anderson (icomweb.com), Anne Chelius (Chrysalis Computer), and Regina Raiford of Buildings magazine also were guests. Anthony Richard of Globix, Scott Hall of Stream Search.com, and Steve Ward of CENTV.com came out too. Matt Wachinski (WorldSpy), Robert Robinson (4mp.com), Christopher Van Buren (PWBVB.com), Peter Warrick (WeiserGroup.com), Gwynne Beatty (Iname.com) and Philippe Schaack (Urban Utility Center, Polytechnic U.) and Travis Gering (Wuersch & Gering) added to the mix that enjoyed calamari and mussels throughout the night as well.

Gabriel Synder of The New York Observer and Paul Maxim of Independent News Service attended --but unlike me were not writing about the party scene! Jonathan Perkel once again cracked up the guests with his witty humor. Attorney Steve Filler, Tery Spataro ([email protected]), Bob Ponce of SiliconAlley.net, Seth Price of FreeRide, Lou Giacolone (Richmond Research) and Richard Frazer (Cowan Financial) and Rich de Sanctis (eekamouse.com) were some of the regulars who enjoyed the party. Wendy Cai of Hagglers.com introduced herself and Gavin McFarland (Inet Specialist), Barbara Frerichs (Consultant), Scott Sassoon (Illusion Fusion) and Jarret Summers (iXL) came for their first CWC. Jay Sulzberger, a regular poster on the WWWAC list, came and wowed the guests with his Jerry Garcia/Einstein-like look and fury of wisdom. By the end of the night, Stacey was juggling lemons, my cousin was enjoying a steak, Amy Brownstein of KPE was my new PR personal agent ("You oughta be in pictures") ; ) and my escape car was Brad Paley's hot black Porsche. Wheeeeeeee!

06/25/2026

And just like that, we sipped, supped, and smiled through the June "Cocktails with Courtney" in Tucson!

What a lovely evening with infinitely interesting people! It was great to see friends and introduce guests to each other.

Our little corner of Postino cradled Micaela Barber, Lynne Birkinbine, Steve Duson, Kamron Hinatsu, Emmanuel Joubeaud, Mattie Klass, Ph.D., Özlem Ayşe Özgür, PhD, and Krista Stoker for convivial conversations.

June 24th was a busy night in Tucson - the Tucson Young Professionals also hosted an event at Postinos (trying initially to take over! ;)) where I met James Tokishi before he headed out to the Film Tucson event just a little later.

(Psst: all the pictures are here: https://pulitzer.com/cocktails-with-courtney-photo-galleries)