[LEAPSECS] Multi-timezone meetings

[Ian Batten]

On 25 Jan 2012, at 19:05, Rob Seaman wrote:


> Tony Finch wrote:

> 

>> You'll have to explain why you think videoconferencing breaks the Olson timezone database to me, because I don't get it.

> 

> I don't recall saying any such thing.  The original reply was to this comment from Daniel R. Tobias:

> 

>> Usually such events are only "fixed" relative to local civil time in the place where the event is to take place...

> 

> I was pointing out that in the modern world events often have multiple timezones, and included my usual plea to collect use cases and discover requirements before speculating on appropriate solutions.


But in most cases I've been involved in (and as a UK resident who worked for many years for a Japanese company with a large American operation, and worked on several taskforces that spanned upwards of six timezones, I've done my fair share), that's solved by the meeting organiser announcing the meeting in their home timezone (having, to some greater or lesser extent, figured out if that's three in the morning for anyone) and everyone else being expected to figure out their local time for themselves.  You've imposed the additional requirement that you can't have a primary timezone, for political reasons.  That's not an engineering requirement, or at least, it's a constraint more easily solved by sacking people than dreaming up some baroque solution.

ian