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The message we get most often from people who have not bought a ticket yet is some version of the same sentence. I want to be there, and the price is more than I can justify for a room I have never been in. Students have always had a price that answers that. Nobody else did, and telling somebody that their only options are the full rate or nothing is not much of an answer when they have already told you they want to come.

So there is a third way in now. It is called Discovery, it is $175, and it gets you through the same door as everybody else.

What it carries

Everything General Admission carries. Every keynote and every panel in the Main Hall, all day. The Habibi Startup Bazaar. Halal lunch and the networking floor. The same QR code at the same door, checked in by the same person. It is not a cheaper room or a shorter day or a seat at the back, and if you are standing in the building on the Saturday nobody can tell which ticket you are holding.

What it limits, and why that is the honest place to put the limit

You can reserve two breakout sessions across the day instead of as many as you like.

Here is the reasoning, because we would rather you heard it from us than worked it out at the reservation screen. The Main Hall seats 400 and holds everybody who came, so nothing that happens on the main stage can run out. Our three breakout rooms seat 120 each. That makes a breakout seat the one genuinely scarce thing about the day, and it is the only part of the programme where one person taking more means another person getting less.

Every other way we could have built a cheaper ticket would have taken something away that costs us nothing to give you. A shorter day, no lunch, no bazaar, a worse seat. All of that would have been cheaper for you and pointless for us, and it would have made you feel like a second class attendee for the sake of it. Rationing the one thing that is actually finite felt like the only version of this that respects both of us.

Who we think this is for

If this is your first Habibi Tech and you are mostly coming for the keynotes, the floor and the people, Discovery is very likely the right ticket and you will not notice the limit. Two workshops is a normal day. If you already know you want to be in three or four breakouts, or you are coming specifically for the hands on sessions, buy General Admission and do not think about it again.

If you have a university email address, Student is still cheaper than this and you should take it. Discovery is for everybody who does not, which is most of the people who have written to us about the price.

Two more things worth knowing

Three Discovery tickets take $50 off your order, the same as three Student tickets, with another $50 for every further three. There is no code to type. Discovery groups on its own, so three Discovery seats are a group and two Discovery plus one General Admission is not.

And this price does not rise. General Admission, VIP and Student are all on a ladder that steps up twice more before the doors open. Discovery is $175 from today until the Saturday, which means that for the first time on this site there is a ticket where waiting costs you nothing. We would still rather you came early, because the breakout rooms fill from the inside out and the good workshops go first.

The agenda is public and we are still adding to it, so you can look at what is actually on before you decide which two you want. As always, if none of this fits your situation, write to us at info@habibi.tech and a person will read it.

The question we have been asked most this month is whether there is a rate for teams. Until this week the honest answer was that there was no policy, only a conversation: we would agree on something and make a promo code by hand. That works for the person who thought to ask. It does nothing for the person who looked at the price of three tickets, decided that was a lot, and closed the tab.

So it is a rule now, and nobody has to ask for it.

Three General Admission or VIP tickets take $100 off. Every further three takes another $100. Three Student tickets take $50 off, with their own $50 for every further three. At today’s prices, three General Admission seats are $750 with $100 of that gone, and three Student seats are $300 with $50 off.

There is no code

You do not have to type anything or be part of an organisation we have heard of. The saving is a property of your cart, so it appears the moment the third ticket does. That is deliberate: a code only reaches the people already talking to us, and a rule in the cart reaches the person who was never going to write in.

General Admission and VIP group together, so two GA seats and one VIP is a group of three. Student groups on its own at half the amount, because a Student ticket is already an underwritten price behind a .edu address, and pooling it in would take a third off a ticket that is already the discount.

Everyone still gets their own ticket

A group of three is three tickets, not one ticket with three names on it. Each person is named at checkout, each gets their own QR code in their own inbox, and each is checked in at the door. Buying together changes the price and nothing else, which also means you can buy for people who are not sitting next to you.

If you already hold a promo code you will get whichever is worth more, and the page will say which one it applied. We are not stacking them, and you will never end up worse off than the code you were given.

Sunday, September 13 is the last day at these prices, and the increase after it is the last one before the weekend. The saving is a fixed amount, so it comes off whatever the ticket costs on the day you buy, which means it is worth the most right now.

We will keep posting here as the agenda locks. If you are organising something bigger and the page does not fit it, write to us at info@habibi.tech.

When we announced that the Summit was becoming a weekend, the question that came back most often was not about the pickleball or the dinner. It was about where people were supposed to sleep.

That is a fair question, and it is one we created. Last year you could land Friday night, spend Saturday with us, and fly home Sunday morning without ever really needing a plan. This year the first event starts at 8 PM on Friday in Red Hook and the last one finishes at 11 PM on Saturday in Astoria, which is a real weekend across three different boroughs. If you are coming from out of town, that is two nights in a city where two nights is not a small thing to arrange, especially in September.

So we set up a room block at Hotel Indigo NYC Downtown, on Water Street a few blocks in from Wall Street. The group code is HAB, and you can book it now.

The rate is not really the point, though. The point is that everyone ends up under one roof. The reason we stretched this into a weekend in the first place is that the conversations people told us they remembered from last year were not the ones on stage, they were the ones in the hallway that got cut short because somebody had a train to catch. A shared lobby at 1 AM after pickleball, breakfast on Saturday with whoever else is up, four people splitting a car out to Astoria for the dinner: that is the weekend continuing when the programming stops. It is a lot easier to arrange when you are all in the same building, and it is most of why we did this at all.

One thing worth saying plainly: a block is a fixed number of rooms the hotel has held for us, not an open door. They are available while they last, and once they are gone that weekend goes back to whatever the hotel is charging anyone else who walks in.

Which, that particular weekend, is a lot. The Summit runs during UN General Assembly week. That is the reason it is scheduled then, and it is also the hardest week of the year to find a room in Manhattan: heads of state, their delegations and most of the world’s press are all in the city at once, and rates move accordingly. We negotiated this block ahead of that. It is a fair price for a Manhattan hotel in the last week of September, which is not a sentence anyone gets to write very often, and it is a better one the earlier you book it.

Why the link opens on two nights

The booking link is set to Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27. We want to explain that, because it would be easy to assume it is a default nobody thought about.

Pickleball on Friday runs until midnight. The dinner on Saturday does not finish until 11 PM. If you are doing the whole weekend there is no version of it where one night is enough, and we would rather the link open on the right answer than have you work it out at the booking page at midnight. If you are only coming for the Summit on Saturday, change the dates. Nothing about the block depends on you taking both nights.

Where it is, and how far

The hotel is at 120 Water Street, in the Financial District. Civic Hall, where the Summit is, is at 124 East 14th Street on Union Square. That is the 4 or the 5 from Wall Street up to 14th Street, about ten minutes on the train, and you will be doing it on a Saturday morning rather than in rush hour.

Friday night in Red Hook and Saturday night in Astoria are further out, the way most things in New York are from most other things. What downtown gives you is a base that is close to the Saturday, walkable to a good part of the city on either side of it, and not an airport hotel.

The practical part

• The group code is HAB. That is the part that carries the block rate, so if the link ever goes missing you can call the hotel or ask at the front desk and give them the code.
• The link opens on the two nights of the weekend. Change the dates if you need a third, or only need one. The block is the rate, not the itinerary.
• Rooms are booked with the hotel and paid to the hotel. We are not handling the reservations or the money, which also means that if something is wrong with your room at 11 PM, the hotel is who to call.

We will keep posting here as the rest of the weekend comes together. If you are traveling in and something about the logistics is unclear, write to us at info@habibi.tech and we will answer.

Last year people flew in from Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Brazil to spend a single day with us, and drove or flew in from Florida, Texas, California and a dozen states in between. Many of them landed the night before and left the morning after. One day, one room, and then everyone scattered.

That always felt like the wrong shape for what this community actually is. If someone is crossing an ocean or a continent to be here, the least we can do is give them more than eight hours to make it worth the trip. So this year the Summit becomes a weekend.

Two new events, on either side of the Summit

On Friday, September 25, the night before the Summit, we are hosting the Habibi Tech Pickleball Social at Velto Pickleball Club in Red Hook, Brooklyn, from 7 to 10 PM. Paddles, mixed teams, and the people you would otherwise spend Saturday trying to catch between sessions. It is the least formal way we could think of to meet the speakers before they are standing on a stage.

Then on Saturday, September 26, once the Summit floor closes at 5 PM, we are closing the weekend with the VIP Dinner from 8 to 11 PM. It is a charity dinner, buffet style, where the community comes together over a good cause. The venue is being finalized and we will announce it here first.

Between the two, someone flying in for the Summit now has a reason to arrive Friday afternoon and leave Sunday, with three separate rooms to meet people in instead of one. That is the whole idea behind the change from Habibi Tech Summit to Habibi Tech Weekend.

What this costs, and what it does not

Both side events are ticketed on their own, because not everyone can make Friday night and not everyone wants to stay for Saturday dinner. Pickleball is $80. The VIP Dinner is $100. You can buy either one on its own, both, or neither, and none of that changes your Summit ticket.

The price of the Summit itself has not moved. General Admission and Student tickets are exactly what they were, on exactly the ladder we published in May. If the Summit is what you came for, nothing about today changes what you pay.

The one price that did change is VIP, which rose by $25, from $350 to $375. VIP has always included the dinner. What it gains now is pickleball, an $80 event that did not exist a month ago, for a $25 increase. Everything else VIP carries stays exactly as it was: the lounge, priority seating, and the VIP workshops.

Where to find it

Everything is on one page. You can pick a Summit ticket and add whichever evenings you want, or come for just the pickleball or just the dinner without buying a Summit ticket at all. Each event is issued its own ticket and its own QR code, so a plus-one for the dinner is a real ticket in their name rather than a note on yours. Buying VIP is still the cheapest way to do all three, and it is the only ticket that carries the lounge, priority seating and the workshops.

The Early Bird ladder still steps up on its published dates, and the side events have real rooms with real capacity behind them. Velto has a fixed number of courts and the dinner has a fixed number of seats. Neither is a marketing number.

We will keep posting here as the venue for the dinner is confirmed, as the speaker lineup fills in, and as the agenda for the day locks. See you in September.