Yet another Daylight Savings Time annoyance.

[jon_leonard]

Today's video-conference was confusingly scheduled, because not all of the participants have matching time zone rules. It's annoying enough having to adjust my clocks, but having to keep track of the time changes in other zones (Arizona: no change. Europe: change on a different day) adds an extra level of silliness.

Comments

[nemene]

interesting. We use outlook to schedule calls, and the meeting automatically shows up at the right time for the participants in other countries.

[jon_leonard]

The problem being, what is the "right time"? One call endpoint had an hour's shift, and the other didn't. So I may remember a meeting as being "always at 9:30 am", and they remember it as "always at 6:30 pm". That usually works, but for a few weeks a year, it gets shifted. Next: How do you know which endpoint gets shifted? Does it depend on the home timezone of the person who originally set up the recurring meeting?

[nemene]

yes.
But since our meetings involve US employees, non-Us emplyees, and US based clients, it is more things stay constant for the client.

[dushai]

Shouldn't cross-timezone-rules meetings be scheduled in UTC (which is independent of DST) and changed by mutual consent, with probing for mutual consent being triggered (if it hasn't already) by all timezones having entered or left DST?

Meetings between SF and NYC, while cross-timezone, are not "cross-timezone-rules" -- everyone shifts at the same time (pretty much). Pedants who scheduled a meeting last Sunday at 5am EDT / 1am PST can discuss corner cases offline.

[rikchik]

This is why all meetings should be scheduled using Swatch beat time.