I agree that we don't want a super huge policy around meetings, but I think the original proposal - always include UTC when listing/inviting people to meetings or similar global events - makes sense and doesn't take us down that rabbit hole.
Dealing with Reps has given me a good experience with meetings on a more global scale (there aren't many of us in North America compared to other regions). I think understanding how your time zone relates to UTC is a basic and simple skill. A much simpler skill than many other we require for contributing to Mozilla. I understand that sometimes this breaks especially with people who aren't used to dealing with other time zones, but I think that's a sort of entitlement argument. I haven't had to learn UTC so far and I don't think I should have to. We need to compare the demands we're putting on one segment of our community - show up at the same time all the time vs potentially 4 time changes throughout the year (remember that the US/Canada observe DST on different dates than other countries). In the Norther Hemisphere this means the meetings happen at 2 different times throughout the year, but doesn't it mean that the meetings happen during at least 3 different times in the Southern Hemisphere? While it would be nice to solve problems for *everyone* it does seem like we're putting some parts of our community at a much stronger disadvantage than others. Yes, there are tools to help people and we should investigate that, too. But can't meeting organizers also use those tools to make sure they're listing the correct UTC? Yes, some mistakes will still be made during the periods when DST goes in and out, that is inevitable with DST being observed (yes you can use a calendar, but are you using alerts? and if you're using alerts are you becoming complacent to those alerts and don't notice the time change?). Asking for UTC times isn't supposed to be some magic bullet. It's meant to help, and acknowledge the global nature of the community. Also UTC is a standard. It doesn't change. It is much easier to convert back and forth from your own timezone than it is to convert from another timezone that may or not be observing DST while you may or may not be observing DST. I think it will also just be helpful all around to have a standard way to handle this as we are getting more and more global and not all meetings are anchored in PT anymore. I missed a meeting once because I didn't notice it was set in ET. Some people are starting to include a bunch of common Mozillian time zones, which has even more room for error, even with using conversion tools. I don't think we need to get into the potential mess that could happen when different meetings anchor in timezones that observe DST differently, I think teams will be aware of who can make what meetings and find a solution that is appropriate for that team (eg Reps anchor their meetings in UTC, which works for us). You'll also notice I am typing ET and PT, many North Americans who aren't used to having to think in other timezones keep typing PST, which means Pacific Standard Time, which is UTC -8, even when observing Daylight Savings, (PDT, UTC -7). If a state doesn't observe DST it will remain in Standard Time. You could argue that this is a good reason not to try and make people use UTC as well, but in my experience, and I think the logic holds, that the opposite would be true. Getting used to dealing with UTC will help a person better understand their timezone and remember when they're observing Daylight Savings or Standard Time. Awareness and practice go a long way. On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Mark Banner <[email protected]> wrote: > On 13/05/2013 15:43, Rubén Martín wrote: > >> El 13/05/13 15:14, Gervase Markham escribió: >> >>> By posting this here, are you saying that Mozilla should have an >>> >>> official policy (as opposed to, say, a best practices recommendation) on >>> the right way to do meeting announcements? If so, I'm not sure I agree >>> with that. >>> >> Uhm, probably it's a good idea to have a policy, I don't see how that >> >> can be a bad thing. For me is part of being global and inclusive with >> the rest of the community using a standard way to express times and >> facilitating the work to mozillians. >> > > I believe that having a policy for everything will end up in a huge list > of policies, that we won't manage, and that will probably tend to mean we > all have to act the same way, irrespective our our individual cultures. > I've no proof of this, but that's my feeling. > > I'd rather we look at what we can do to improve things for everyone, not > just a section. Hence, see the post entitled "Improving our tools for > meeting scheduling" that I'm just about to post. > > Mark. > > ______________________________**_________________ > governance mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/governance<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance> > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
