Kubecon — taking place between March 19th and March 22nd, in Paris at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles

Metro Station Line 12 from the Trainstation to Porte de Versailles gets you there.

Closest Train Station: Paris Montparnasse Train Station (Gare Montparnasse) | Distance from venue: 3.9 km; | Drive Time: 15 minutes by car; | Public Transportation: 24 minutes by Metro + walking.

Kubecon Opens around 8 every day. Check the schedule.

There is a great FAQ on the site.

Travel by bike: you can use the Paris public bike-sharing system: Velib. Paris has a public bike-sharing system, Vélib’ that allows residents and visitors to rent bicycles for short trips around the city. You can find more information on the official website: Vélib

21 Swarmies attending the conference

We’ll be at Booth K11 — the easier way to find us is to simply look for the booth with the cool, colorful graphics saying “Smarter Platform Engineering — creating environments for growth”

Swag at the booth? We’ll have cool t-shirts in different colors; cool stickers and raffle prizes that Tommy can talk about

How are our colleagues getting there? About half of the people are travelling by plane, another half travelling by train; Timo is coming by car

Accommodation: most of the Swarmies are staying in a hotel close to the venue: Oceania Paris Porte De Versailles; the Swarmies attending Cloud Native Rejekts prior to KubeCon, are staying in an AirBnB in in Malakoff (a suburbe in the south-west of Paris)

KubeCon parties has it's own website: Our Swarmies are also planning to check out some of the parties — here are the parties with the coolest names, happening during the event: KubeTrain Party, organised by the Cloud Native community; taking place at the Fitzroy restaurant; Kuberoke Spring Party, — a karaoke night taking place at KaraFun Bar; House of Kube — the tagline for this party says: “Where platform engineering meets Berlin techno. Your golden ticket to the darkroom of DevOps.” - taking place at a secret location that will be announced soon.

What to do in Paris

For our American Guests, service compris in restaurants means that tip is included but you can still tip of course. But it is then really a tip not a payment. :) There is a Five Guys somewhere ;)

Colleague Xavier has mentioned some cool Speakeasy's and Bars in Paris.

Food TIPS from Xavier. Avoid resteraunts with large menus or pictures of food!

La Felicita: Big food court with lots of different restaurant types, very cool industrial vibe

Chez Pietro: Recommended by parisian friends as amazing pizza place

Peruvian restaurant Amazonas – 5 mins walk from the exhibition center

Italian restaurant: Via del Gusto – 10 mins walk from the venue

Korean restaurant: Les Petites Dalles 15 mins walk from the venue

If you want to have a cup of coffee on the Champs Elysee, do so, but it is 50-100% more expensive than elsewhere, obviously.

Sightseeing:

You can take a Hop on Hop Off Bus at several locations call Big Bus Tours

You can take a boat ride on the Seine starting at the Eiffel Tower, for example River Seine Cruises which takes an hour.

Getting up the Eiffel Tower. You can walk, elevators are normally booked fully weeks in advance. But you can have a drink half way up. You might want to pre-book

You can go to Centre de Pompidou which people tell us is actually worth it :)

Xavier says Catacombes are cool but Oliver adds last time he went it was booked for over 2 weeks. So book in advance. There is no line for skipping in.