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Following the debacle with Qantas cancelling my plane, I eventually got to Sydney an hour later than planned. I got straight into a taxi and off to the university where I was straight into the room in the bowels of the pharmacy faculty where the DrupalCamp event was being hosted. As it happened I only missed the initial chats and greetings etc as they were running a bit behind.

The first session I attended then was Justin Randell talking about the upcoming Drupal 7 new features. Most impressive for me to see is the new WYSIWYG capability features. Drupal are not going to pick a specific editor, rather let you choose, but the support and handling of WYSIWYG on different text fields looks great. Perhaps more importantly is the delay to release. From my perspective this is a good thing. We need to see Drupal 6 settled down better and more module conversion completed before having to worry about a new version.

Simon from Taniwha Solutions talked next about using SimpleTest to create and run test scenarios in Drupal 7. Part of helping make the code more secure, and part of helping usability and module interoperability be tested automatically.

The next session was Jeff and Josh from Marmalade Soul talking about 960 Grid design in relation to websites. This was very interesting as the concept is about converting the golden rectangle and typographical grid concepts to the web. We shall be looking more closely on this with some projects we have in the wings.

After lunch – kindly sponsored by Cochlear I sat in another session by Jeff and Josh on Panels 2. This was very eye opening and I have already implemented some ideas with panels.

I am looking forward to meeting up with them at the Brisbane Drupal user group meetup this Thursday.

I had to leave early from this session to catch the plane back.

My taxi driver from the morning, Sam from Israel,  picked me up and went crazy on the back roads to the airport. We went through 3 red lights, up a one street the wrong way and turned right twice where there was no right turn marked! It was a fast ride tot he airport and I got there right on time to be told my plane was  cancelled! I couldn’t believe it.two flights in one day! I had missed the previous flight by 5 minutes and the next one was another 30 minutes after my original one. I was going to be late to the Card and board game I was hosting!

Eventually I got home and we had a great time playing card games and board so it was all good.

However I am not at all happy with Qantas. They refused to offer me any compensation, refused to bump me to business class, jerked me around, gave me one hours notice on the first planes cancellation and none on the second. I shall be writing a letter!