Our Location
Schedule
For those booking flights to Minneapolis, please note our general schedule for RailsConf has us starting our days around 9:30am and ending them around 6pm. Registration on Day 1 (Tuesday, April 30) will open approximately two hours before programming begins. On Day 3 (Thursday, May 2), we will be ending programming around 5-6pm. All three days are full days of programming; we will not be having any workshop- or tutorial-only days.
Hotel
Our conference hotel is the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, which is conveniently located downtown, connected via skywalk to the Convention Center where all RailsConf 2019 programming takes place. Our discounted RailsConf 2019 rate is $209 (plus fees) per night.
Getting There
Both our conference venue and hotel are in downtown Minneapolis, about 10 miles from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The airport has two terminals, and from either, you can take the Metro Blue Line lightrail directly to downtown Minneapolis. You catch the lightrail by the Transit Center in Terminal 1 or by the Orange Ramp skyway in Terminal 2, and disembark at the Nicollet Mall station. One-way lightrail fares are $2.50 during rush hour and $2.00 all other times.
From here, you can either walk the pleasant 8-block/12-minute distance to the conference hotel going south down Nicollet, or look for southbound buses at Nicollet/5th St. marked “Free Ride” and pay no fare when boarding along Nicollet Mall (exit at Alice Rainville Place, directly outside the conference hotel). Nicollet Mall is a mostly pedestrian thoroughfare where the only vehicles allowed are the aforementioned busses, pedi-cabs, and bikes.
You can also take taxis (20-30 min/$40-50), rideshares, or airport shuttles from the airport to downtown. More information on each of these is listed here.
Getting Around
Downtown Minneapolis is compact and clean. It's extremely pedestrian-friendly and walkable when the weather is nice, and is criss-crossed with a number of skywalks connecting major downtown hotels and landmarks for when the weather is... not.
Additionally, many busses downtown, especially in the Nicollet Mall area, offer free rides downtown -- just look for the "Free Ride" sign on the bus.