Volcano Mayhem Thanks...

As many of you will know due to my relentless updates on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been trying to get to San Francisco for DrupalCon, an event I’ve been waiting for 4 months to attend and was particularly excited to get out of Europe and see a city I’d always been interested in. As we all know a certain volcano had different ideas and while I still may not make it there, I have to say the last few days I’ve been amazed by the helpfulness, initiative and dedication of a number of people. I wanted to pay thanks and respect to a number of them...

Travel Bureau Gosforth

http://www.travelbureaugosforth.com
http://www.twitter.com/travelb
I booked my tickets with the Travel Bureau originally, they’ve always been invaluable in my travel arrangements and always make sure I get the best value and manage to find just the services I require. On this occassion I noticed it more than ever as Michael was constantly in touch to try and arrange me the best alternative arrangements for flights as news of the volcano hit. Imagine my surprise when he contacted me at 8pm on Friday to tell me there was an opening in the ash cloud that could allow me to get on a flight at Durham Tees Valley at 6am that morning. In the end it didn’t work out as nothing left that morning, but Michael had arranged everything until the last minute cancelling of the flight. Superb.

KLM

http://www.klm.com
I’ve always enjoyed flying with KLM, but when I called them on Friday night following my cancellation, they did the business. There were no seats available on Saturday, Sunday or Monday, and so they actually booked me on a competitors flight going via London and Calgary on Monday morning. Not only that, they put me on the waitlist for a flight on Sunday and today when that was cancelled, automatically put me on the waitlist for Monday, just incase I can fly with KLM instead! While I’m by no means going to get to San Francisco yet I’m still very impressed.

To top it all off, they actually had the bottle tonight to send up a plane to test the air and see if there actually is a problem with the air. So far seems not so who knows, maybe KLM will start flying again tomorrow!

London Drupal Community

http://drupal.org

Within 24 hours, the London Drupal Community, most of whom now have no chance to make it to DrupalCon, managed to arrange a live broadcast of the keynote speeches and a meet up or MiniCon in London starting on Monday for those who can’t make it to San Francisco. This is an amazing achievement and must be a good sign for the Drupal Association to put them in the position to host the next European DrupalCon which is still available in 18 months time. If I don’t get my flight on Monday/Tuesday then I’m pretty sure I’ll be there.

Jon and Mandy

http://houseofgin.blogspot.com/2010/04/marathon-walking.html

OK so they haven’t in any way affected my trip to SF, but I have to give a lot of respect to my brother Jon and his wife Mandy as since I’m stuck at home tonight I’m enjoying tracking their progress and feel very inspired by their Marathon walk that they’re doing through Manchester tonight. Wishing them luck and hoping they’ll continue to get sponsorship - which you can do too! :) http://www.sponsormetoshine.org/thehills