Time Zones

Please put any ideas on this page, about A) how working across time zones is a problem; and B) ideas that might help.

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Universal Time

A) It is really hard finding suitable meeting times for technical work over diverse longitudes. Hemispherical diversity adds to the challenge, because typically relative times shift by 2 hours over the year. There is no standard time for time zone shifts, either, so there are periods of a month or more twice a year when different places are moving both directions on different days, (amplified by hemispherical diversity because the summer time period is often shorter than the winter one). I have been told that this is easily understood between US and western Europe, but there is nothing simple about it for the rest of us. Furthermore, bookings of W3C resources such as teleconferences change because the time in Boston changes, no matter whether East Coast US is participating or not!

This is a challenge for technical meetings, but also for many other W3C participation practices. For example, official W3C email of 7th Jan, "This is to remind you that the TAG election closes 23:59, Boston time on 2014-01-08. " Which Boston? What time zone? And when I figure that out, I have to translate to my own time and date - is that today?

B) W3C should operate on UTC time in all communication and resources, and encourage all W3C participants to do the same for W3C activities. UTC never moves, and people everywhere know how their current time relates to UTC without having to look it up. At least, this is simpler and reduces confusion, although it does not help to create suitable meeting times...

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