Fwd: Re: Always use UTC for moztimes

[Gervase Markham]

[Majken's reply was off-list, but we are bringing it back here]

On 08/05/13 01:34, Majken Connor wrote:
> Actually, US/CAN doesn't change clocks every 6 months. We're in DST for
> 8 months of the year.

OK, "every 6 months" was shorthand for "twice a year" :-)

> I wasn't suggesting a gradual shift. I was suggesting that someone else
> test out anchoring the meetings to UTC to collect more data to see if it
> would be worth proposing we make UTC the policy.
>
> I also think your vision of the future is a bit overly dramatic, what
> would happen is people would say "crap, this isn't working, we need to
> shift the meeting according to DST again" and go back to the way things
> were, so really the switch would fail, rather than there being much
> gnashing of teeth ;)

With both the attempt and the switch back being really disruptive.

Dealing with timezones in an international project is an exercise in
trade-offs; there's no perfect solution. And there are reasonably high
costs in switching from one set of trade-offs to a different set. People
who don't like the current set are vocal in arguing for the switch;
people who are less disadvantaged are less vocal perhaps because they
are not motivated to engage in the debate. So there always seems to me
some sort of a mandate for change. However, if we switch, then the
positions reverse and we'll have a mandate for changing back again.

I think we would do much better to encourage regular meeting organizers
(and there are only a limited number of those) to always include a URL
to timeanddate.com or a similar service, and enhance our browser to make
it easier to add ical events to web calendars.

It might also be good to build a "regular meeting tool", which sent out
meeting reminders. It could also deal with the regularly-encountered
issue of updating dates in headers or URLs. How often do you get a
meeting announcement, then a corrective follow-up because someone forgot
to update the date in e.g. the etherpad link? Such a tool could
integrate with calendars, and promote best practice in reminder-writing.

Gerv

[Majken Connor]

Yes, I did also suggest better leveraging software tools to make sure
people always have the correct time for the meeting, and that's necessary
no matter what time zone the meeting is anchored in.

If the right teams do the trial it won't be so disruptive. As a Reps
Council member I found the Sunday morning meetings disruptive to my
Saturday nights whether DST was in or not ;) I totally understand there are
some people who spend a lot of time in meetings, and many of those people
already have meeting conflicts anyway. Certainly if someone from such a
team is watching and is willing to give it a try then I don't see why they
shouldn't. I think if you're adamant that we don't use UTC to anchor *any*
meetings, we should discuss this in governance, not here, get a consensus
and make sure the meetings that are anchored in other time zones switch to
the policy zone.

BTW, when we anchor in PT we're not just causing people to change the
meeting times twice, it's more likely we're causing them to switch meeting
times *4* times a year - http://youtu.be/84aWtseb2-4?t=3m50s (sorry for the
ad first, but the link includes the time to start the video at the relevant
part)

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[Rubén Martín]

I think a good solution would be something like:

"Always include UTC times, you can also include your local time and we
recommend that UTC time is linked to timeanddate.com or similar tool."

Scheduled meeting can stay at the same for Pacific if needed, it's just
a matter of remembering that UTC time will change (this happens with
Reps council meetings btw).

Regards.

--
Rubén Martín [Nukeador]
Mozilla Reps Mentor
http://www.mozilla-hispano.org
http://twitter.com/mozilla_hispano
http://facebook.com/mozillahispano

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

Thanks Nuke two paragraphs with a single proposition that make sense :)

2013/5/8 Rubén Martín <nuke...@mozilla-hispano.org>:

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--
Fredy Rouge - Leader, Créatif, Autodidacte et Geek ☺

[Gervase Markham]

On 08/05/13 18:12, Rubén Martín wrote:
> "Always include UTC times, you can also include your local time and we
> recommend that UTC time is linked to timeanddate.com or similar tool."

Actually, I think we shouldn't recommend that people include UTC times
written in the email, because it causes great confusion when people
specify multiple times and they are not consistent with each other
(which can happen if e.g. someone updates one time but not all of them,
or if they don't realise a DST change in the locale of the canonical
meeting time means that the UTC time changes). I've seen this happen
several times.

It seems to me that best practice is to simply do these two things:

1) Specify the time of the meeting in whatever timezone it is fixed in
(without saying "Standard" or "Daylight" in the US case)

2) Give a timeanddate.com or other link which encodes that time, so
everyone else can find out what time it is where they are.

Example:

"The FooBar meeting happens every Thursday at 8.30pm US Eastern Time.
Find out what time that is for you using this link:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=FooBar+Meeting&iso=20130509T2030&p1=179&ah=1"


Actually, it would be great if timeanddate.com supported a link format like:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=FooBar+Meeting&tz=America/New_York&time=2030&frequency=weekly&day=Thursday"

because then the link would not have to change from week to week.

Gerv

[Stephanie Daugherty]

I'm thinking that this is enough of a pain point to seriously consider a
calendar tool integrated into Mozillians.org, whihc would not only do the
time zone conversion, but also show possible conflicts to organizers, show
each Mozillian "their" meetings based on their groups. affiliations,
invitations, and explicit subscriptions, and provide an ical feed to
subscribe to, provide templates for sending out mail (and optionally, send
those out automatically to the right mailing lists), automatically create
etherpads for each meeting for the agenda and minutes, and so on. If such a
tool were easy enough to use, and tightly integrated, it wouldn't take much
work to gently steer everyone there, at which point the problem would
largely go away.

Thoughts?

[Majken Connor]

I have to say I find the strong objections to this entirely bizarre. UTC is
a *standard* to help with exactly this problem. We're also really smart
people working in a global environment. I think learning how to convert
your timezone to UTC can be considered a requisite skill, and is in fact a
much easier skill to learn than many of the other skills required to
contribute to Mozilla. Also when using converters there is less chance of
error if you're converting from UTC to your own time.

Using UTC simplifies, you say the time the meeting is anchored in and you
say the UTC time. There, done. Don't include all the extra US or EU
timezones that you think your attendees are from and is more work to
include, but some people are doing it to try to help. It is as simple for
the meeting organizer to use these links to look up UTC as it is for
everyone attending the meetings to use the link to double check what time
it will be in their time zone.

Relatively speaking this is a small thing the global community is asking to
make their lives simpler. Is anyone else adamantly opposed to including
UTC times when referring to Mozilla meetings?

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Stephanie Daugherty <sdaug...@gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm thinking that this is enough of a pain point to seriously consider a
> calendar tool integrated into Mozillians.org, whihc would not only do the
> time zone conversion, but also show possible conflicts to organizers, show
> each Mozillian "their" meetings based on their groups. affiliations,
> invitations, and explicit subscriptions, and provide an ical feed to
> subscribe to, provide templates for sending out mail (and optionally, send
> those out automatically to the right mailing lists), automatically create
> etherpads for each meeting for the agenda and minutes, and so on. If such a
> tool were easy enough to use, and tightly integrated, it wouldn't take much
> work to gently steer everyone there, at which point the problem would
> largely go away.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>

[Majken Connor]

Yes, a master calendar would be nice, too. I think this has been in the
works. I know there's been a focus on events, not sure about meetings. It's
something we should be able to do though, we have the technology! ;)

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:02 AM, Stephanie Daugherty <sdaug...@gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm thinking that this is enough of a pain point to seriously consider a
> calendar tool integrated into Mozillians.org, whihc would not only do the
> time zone conversion, but also show possible conflicts to organizers, show
> each Mozillian "their" meetings based on their groups. affiliations,
> invitations, and explicit subscriptions, and provide an ical feed to
> subscribe to, provide templates for sending out mail (and optionally, send
> those out automatically to the right mailing lists), automatically create
> etherpads for each meeting for the agenda and minutes, and so on. If such a
> tool were easy enough to use, and tightly integrated, it wouldn't take much
> work to gently steer everyone there, at which point the problem would
> largely go away.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

I think that this is about a Global community!

If the hour is only for local people, use local time, if the hour is
for people in many parts of the world please use UTC.


2013/5/9 Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org>:

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[Gervase Markham]

On 09/05/13 18:05, Majken Connor wrote:>
> I have to say I find the strong objections to this entirely bizarre. UTC
> is a *standard* to help with exactly this problem.

Actually, it's not. UTC is a standard for referring to a single time
unambiguously. What we actually want is to be able to refer to a
_recurring_ time unambiguously, and one which is not the same all the
time in UTC.

> We're also really
> smart people working in a global environment. I think learning how to
> convert your timezone to UTC can be considered a requisite skill, and is
> in fact a much easier skill to learn than many of the other skills
> required to contribute to Mozilla. Also when using converters there is
> less chance of error if you're converting from UTC to your own time.
>
> Using UTC simplifies, you say the time the meeting is anchored in and
> you say the UTC time. There, done.

Except not done, because each week you send the same email, _except_
when the country in which the meeting time is set has had a DST change,
when you have to update it - not to change the time in that country, but
to change the UTC time.

From experience, I can tell you that people get this wrong, and
confusion results.

If you name only a single time, then everyone is absolutely clear what
time the meeting is defined to be - that week and every week, it's
8.30pm Pacific Time (or whatever). If that meeting is defined in UTC,
then specify in UTC (only) - great. But if it's not, you should specify
it the way it's actually calculated, and that way alone.

> Relatively speaking this is a small thing the global community is asking
> to make their lives simpler. Is anyone else adamantly opposed to
> including UTC times when referring to Mozilla meetings?

This proposal would make people's lives simpler when it works, but it
burdens meeting organizers, and makes people's lives more complicated
when it goes wrong (which it does).

No-one is opposed to making people's lives simpler; we are just
suggesting alternative ways to do it. I think providing a
dateandtime.com link in every meeting announcement email would be an
awesome improvement, reasonably easy to implement (write a polite email
to the organizers of the key meetings) and provide the necessary benefits.

Gerv

[Nikos Roussos]

On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 13:50 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 09/05/13 18:05, Majken Connor wrote:>
> > I have to say I find the strong objections to this entirely bizarre. UTC
> > is a *standard* to help with exactly this problem.
>
> Actually, it's not. UTC is a standard for referring to a single time
> unambiguously. What we actually want is to be able to refer to a
> _recurring_ time unambiguously, and one which is not the same all the
> time in UTC.

We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
of the community. Still, UTC is a better option.

> > Relatively speaking this is a small thing the global community is asking
> > to make their lives simpler. Is anyone else adamantly opposed to
> > including UTC times when referring to Mozilla meetings?
>
> This proposal would make people's lives simpler when it works, but it
> burdens meeting organizers, and makes people's lives more complicated
> when it goes wrong (which it does).

And obviously it's better to make things simpler for the whole community
even if it gets a little more complicated for meeting organizers, than
the other way around.

I think Nuke's proposition is the best I've heard so far and I feel that
people that have missed meetings in the past due to daylight mess would
agree as well.

[Mark Banner]

On 09/05/2013 18:06, Majken Connor wrote:
> Relatively speaking this is a small thing the global community is asking to
> make their lives simpler. Is anyone else adamantly opposed to including
> UTC times when referring to Mozilla meetings?

I'm definitely don't see the point of forcing everyone to use the same
timezone reference - we all live in different places and cultures, and
we should learn to embrace that and not force everyone to be the same;
whilst also respecting differences and making it easier for everyone.

Timezones are difficult - it is why I have a chart on my wall of the
three timezones that my teams cover.

I also agree with many of Gerv's comments that UTC isn't the right thing
to adopt due to the daylight saving changes. This would mean at the
right times at least twice during the year, I would need to go through
and adjust all the meetings I've got scheduled.

Even being in the UK myself, using UTC just isn't really sensible as for
half the year we're not on it.

I respect that this may make it slightly more difficult, but also
consider, that currently when I organise meetings, I need to deal with
at least 2-3 timezones (to make sure its at a time all of my team can
attend), then translating it into an extra time just seems to add
unneeded complication, especially if I can't just set it and leave it
which UTC wouldn't allow me to do (note that I also set up invites in my
calendars for a lot of meetings with the timezone set to where I am
using local time for the meeting).

Having public/team calendars is potentially the much better way to go,
I've already got this for one of my teams, I'm soon going to be
investigating it for the other.

Mark.

[Rubén Martín]

I'm moving this discussion to governance since I feel we are running in
circles here, I don't want this to become an Anglo-Saxon culture vs. the
world discussion.

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

Again:

I think that this is about a Global community!

If the hour is only for local people, use local time, if the hour is
for people in many parts of the world please use UTC.

Go out of your Comfort Zone or find a job in a local organization
using only local time.

2013/5/12 Mark Banner <mba...@mozilla.com>:

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[Rubén Martín]

El 12/05/13 14:12, Rubén Martín escribió:

> I'm moving this discussion to governance since I feel we are running in
> circles here, I don't want this to become an Anglo-Saxon culture vs. the
> world discussion.

A clarification here:

I want to apologize if someone feels the "Anglo-Saxon" reference was
offensive, I was told it could be. In Spain we refer as "Anglo-Saxon
culture" to all the English speaking countries. Apart from that I didn't
say this was the case, I said I don't want this to be seen as one (a lot
of times happens in mozilla discussions).

I also encourage people with other solutions to chime in the governance
list. My proposal was based on some comments here, but there are
obviously people that don't share it, so I prefer them to explain their
positions by themselves rather than me trying to figure out the best way
to summarize (I tried but I really don't get them).

[Gervase Markham]

On 10/05/13 14:45, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
> also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
> of the community.

Yes, you can. "8.30pm Pacific Time on Wednesdays" is an entirely
unambiguous reference to the time when a meeting is. It is defined as a
single point in time across all timezones. (In some timezones, it may be
a different point in time for two particular distinct meetings, but
that's going to be true whether you define the meeting in Pacific Time
or UTC.)

Gerv

[Gabriela Montagu]

With exactly the same reasoning, why not use UTC then? It's much less
localized and much more universal/internaational as Mozilla is!!!!


Best regards,
Gabriela
Saludos cordiales,
Gabriela

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 15:00, Gabriela Montagu wrote:
> With exactly the same reasoning, why not use UTC then? It's much less
> localized and much more universal/internaational as Mozilla is!!!!

Two reasons:

a) Defining meetings in UTC means that the meeting time changes for
_everyone_ twice a year. Defining it in the timezone of a majority of
participants (if there is such a majority) means that some people are
spared that difficulty.

b) Most meetings at Mozilla have historically been specified in Pacific
Time. Converting everything over to UTC would be a big disruption. The
worst situation is when some meetings are Pacific and some are UTC,
because it means that every six months, half of them move relative to
the other half and you get loads of clashes.

Gerv

[Pierros Papadeas]

+1 for that.

Pacific time changes depending daylight saving.
Universal systems should not be subjected to that. Not all countries
use DST and many our transitioning (or thinking about it) away from
it.

In true spirit of our universality we should use UTC.

ps. I would like to remind everyone of the *pain* we have when US
moves to DST weeks before Europe does... "just sayin.."

~p

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Gabriela Montagu <gmon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> With exactly the same reasoning, why not use UTC then? It's much less
> localized and much more universal/internaational as Mozilla is!!!!
>
>

> Best regards,
> Gabriela
> Saludos cordiales,
> Gabriela
>
>
>

> http://www.mozilla-hispano.org
> http://twitter.com/mozilla_hispano
> http://facebook.com/mozillahispano

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--
Pierros Papadeas
Community Architect
pierros @ irc.mozilla.org

[Nikos Roussos]

On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 14:21 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 10/05/13 14:45, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> > We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
> > also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
> > of the community.
>
> Yes, you can. "8.30pm Pacific Time on Wednesdays" is an entirely
> unambiguous reference to the time when a meeting is. It is defined as a
> single point in time across all timezones.

You mean Pacific or Pacific Daylight? :P
That's an unambiguous reference to time indeed but not a specific time
across the year, because daylight is not applied in all timezones or not
in the same day. So for most part of the world this meeting is an hour
later for several weeks. It's the same like saying "8.30 UTC
Wednesdays". That's also an unambiguous reference to time.

Using UTC is a common practice on every global project I participate, I
don't really know why we are even debating about it :-)

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 15:07, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
> +1 for that.
>
> Pacific time changes depending daylight saving.

And meeting times defined in UTC change (for many of the participants)
depending on daylight saving. You can't avoid meeting times changing
over the year for _some_ people.

> Universal systems should not be subjected to that. Not all countries
> use DST

But the countries where most Mozilla contributors live do - all of
Europe and north America.

> and many our transitioning (or thinking about it) away from
> it.

Citation needed.

> In true spirit of our universality we should use UTC.

This conversation started with a suggestion that meeting times should be
_announced_ in UTC. Are you now arguing that they should all be
_defined_ in UTC?

> ps. I would like to remind everyone of the *pain* we have when US
> moves to DST weeks before Europe does... "just sayin.."

And how does your proposal ease that pain?

Gerv

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 15:09, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 14:21 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> On 10/05/13 14:45, Nikos Roussos wrote:
>>> We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
>>> also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
>>> of the community.
>>
>> Yes, you can. "8.30pm Pacific Time on Wednesdays" is an entirely
>> unambiguous reference to the time when a meeting is. It is defined as a
>> single point in time across all timezones.
>
> You mean Pacific or Pacific Daylight? :P

I mean Pacific, which is exactly what I said. I can tell my calendar
"set this meeting at 8.30pm Pacific Time" and it will schedule it for me
correctly throughout the year.

You said "We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific".
That's simple false.

> That's an unambiguous reference to time indeed but not a specific time
> across the year, because daylight is not applied in all timezones or not
> in the same day. So for most part of the world this meeting is an hour
> later for several weeks.

Yes. That problem is unavoidable for any defined meeting time, because
various factors (DST, hemispheres) mean that _any_ defined time will
shift around for someone.

If you define a meeting as at "8.30pm UTC on Wednesdays", then for many
parts of the world (including anyone in the US and all of Europe) the
time of that meeting shifts twice a year. How is that any better?

> Using UTC is a common practice on every global project I participate, I
> don't really know why we are even debating about it :-)

Because it would be very disruptive to switch all of Mozilla's meetings
to be defined in UTC - both in the switch, and for many more people on
an ongoing basis.

Gerv

[Gabriela Montagu]

I'm very sorry but I cannot really begin to understand why changing the
time twice per year should be so complicated. Mozillians from all the other
countries have to do the time zone thing every time a PT or a PDT meeting
is scheduled. That´s much more annoying that just twice a year I think!


Best regards,
Gabriela

[Nikos Roussos]

On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 15:24 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 13/05/13 15:09, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> > On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 14:21 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> >> On 10/05/13 14:45, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> >>> We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
> >>> also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
> >>> of the community.
> >>
> >> Yes, you can. "8.30pm Pacific Time on Wednesdays" is an entirely
> >> unambiguous reference to the time when a meeting is. It is defined as a
> >> single point in time across all timezones.
> >
> > You mean Pacific or Pacific Daylight? :P
>
> I mean Pacific, which is exactly what I said. I can tell my calendar
> "set this meeting at 8.30pm Pacific Time" and it will schedule it for me
> correctly throughout the year.
>
> You said "We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific".
> That's simple false.

Yes, because you missed my point. I'm saying that this is the same as
UTC.

> > That's an unambiguous reference to time indeed but not a specific time
> > across the year, because daylight is not applied in all timezones or not
> > in the same day. So for most part of the world this meeting is an hour
> > later for several weeks.
>
> Yes. That problem is unavoidable for any defined meeting time, because
> various factors (DST, hemispheres) mean that _any_ defined time will
> shift around for someone.
>
> If you define a meeting as at "8.30pm UTC on Wednesdays", then for many
> parts of the world (including anyone in the US and all of Europe) the
> time of that meeting shifts twice a year. How is that any better?

Now meetings shift four times a year if your on a timezone that switches
to daylight on a different day than Pacific. Think about it.

I always know my timezone's UTC+? relation, and do so most people. I
don't remember differnece to Pacific, and I shouldn't required to.
That's another reason why it's less painful.

> > Using UTC is a common practice on every global project I participate, I
> > don't really know why we are even debating about it :-)
>
> Because it would be very disruptive to switch all of Mozilla's meetings
> to be defined in UTC - both in the switch, and for many more people on
> an ongoing basis.

The point here is that global communities use global standards. I would
consider it rude if I organize meetings in my local timezone, just
because it's more convenient for me.

[Gabriela Montagu]

+1 to Nikos!


Saludos cordiales,
Gabriela

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

I think that for people that is so hard participate in a Global
community and no want to change his local habitues for go in a global
direction is better work only in local environments with local people.

2013/5/13 Nikos Roussos <comz...@mozilla-community.org>:

> On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 15:24 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> On 13/05/13 15:09, Nikos Roussos wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 14:21 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
>> >> On 10/05/13 14:45, Nikos Roussos wrote:
>> >>> We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific when it
>> >>> also changes through year compared to the timezones of the vast majority
>> >>> of the community.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, you can. "8.30pm Pacific Time on Wednesdays" is an entirely
>> >> unambiguous reference to the time when a meeting is. It is defined as a
>> >> single point in time across all timezones.
>> >
>> > You mean Pacific or Pacific Daylight? :P
>>
>> I mean Pacific, which is exactly what I said. I can tell my calendar
>> "set this meeting at 8.30pm Pacific Time" and it will schedule it for me
>> correctly throughout the year.
>>
>> You said "We can't refer to a meeting time unambiguously using Pacific".
>> That's simple false.
>

> Yes, because you missed my point. I'm saying that this is the same as
> UTC.
>

>> > That's an unambiguous reference to time indeed but not a specific time
>> > across the year, because daylight is not applied in all timezones or not
>> > in the same day. So for most part of the world this meeting is an hour
>> > later for several weeks.
>>
>> Yes. That problem is unavoidable for any defined meeting time, because
>> various factors (DST, hemispheres) mean that _any_ defined time will
>> shift around for someone.
>>
>> If you define a meeting as at "8.30pm UTC on Wednesdays", then for many
>> parts of the world (including anyone in the US and all of Europe) the
>> time of that meeting shifts twice a year. How is that any better?
>

> Now meetings shift four times a year if your on a timezone that switches
> to daylight on a different day than Pacific. Think about it.
>
> I always know my timezone's UTC+? relation, and do so most people. I
> don't remember differnece to Pacific, and I shouldn't required to.
> That's another reason why it's less painful.
>

>> > Using UTC is a common practice on every global project I participate, I
>> > don't really know why we are even debating about it :-)
>>
>> Because it would be very disruptive to switch all of Mozilla's meetings
>> to be defined in UTC - both in the switch, and for many more people on
>> an ongoing basis.
>

> The point here is that global communities use global standards. I would
> consider it rude if I organize meetings in my local timezone, just
> because it's more convenient for me.
>
>

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[Gabriela Montagu]

+1 for Fredy


Best regards,
Gabriela

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 15:32, Gabriela Montagu wrote:
> I'm very sorry but I cannot really begin to understand why changing the
> time twice per year should be so complicated. Mozillians from all the other
> countries have to do the time zone thing every time a PT or a PDT meeting
> is scheduled. That´s much more annoying that just twice a year I think!

This is clearly a subject on which emotions are strong and so I think we
all need to be precise about exactly what we are talking about.

No-one should need to do frequent conversions for any meeting which is
regular because I would assume we are all using calendaring software
which is able to cope with timezones. Google Calendar certainly can. I
put the Monday Meeting (defined time: 11am Pacific Time) in there once
about 3 years ago, and have never had to do any calculations since, even
though it moves in time for me 4 times a year because of the UK/EU DST
change offset.

Good calendaring software means never having to do such calculations by
hand at all, because you specify the meeting in the calendar at the time
and in the timezone in which it is defined, and it takes care of making
it show up in your calendar at the right moment.

The Weekly Meeting is followed once a month by the MoCo meeting, whose
time is also defined in Pacific time (because, whatever we say about the
audience of the Weekly Meeting, it's certainly true that the majority of
participants for the MoCo meeting are in the Pacific timezone). If the
Weekly Meeting were changed to be defined in UTC, then not only would it
move twice a year for a large group of people for whom it is now stable,
but the MoCo meeting would either need to also be moved, or to start
being defined in UTC. There are knock-on effects to implementing such a
change.

Gerv

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 15:38, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> Now meetings shift four times a year if your on a timezone that switches
> to daylight on a different day than Pacific. Think about it.

I know that; it happens to me. However, given that I (like most
Mozillians) am in the Northern Hemisphere, it means that for most of the
year (apart from 4 weeks or so), the meeting is at the same time of day.
That's really convenient.

> I always know my timezone's UTC+? relation, and do so most people. I
> don't remember differnece to Pacific, and I shouldn't required to.

No-one is saying you should. This is why my proposal is that every
announcement should contain a link to timeanddate.com which will do the
conversion for you, and for everyone else.

> The point here is that global communities use global standards. I would
> consider it rude if I organize meetings in my local timezone, just
> because it's more convenient for me.

You are very welcome to organize meetings which are defined in your
local timezone. You may have to keep moving them to avoid clashing with
other meetings which are defined differently, but if you want to do
that, you are welcome to do so.

Gerv

[Pierros Papadeas]

Hey Gerv,

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:18 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> On 13/05/13 15:07, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
>> +1 for that.
>>
>> Pacific time changes depending daylight saving.
>
> And meeting times defined in UTC change (for many of the participants)
> depending on daylight saving. You can't avoid meeting times changing
> over the year for _some_ people.

Nope but you can make it easier to track your local offset that way.

>
>> Universal systems should not be subjected to that. Not all countries
>> use DST
>
> But the countries where most Mozilla contributors live do - all of
> Europe and north America.

Citation needed.
*most* mozilla contributors are *not* in Europe and NA anymore.
This is not 2004 anymore.

Some facts (based on mozillians.org summit2013 group)
APAC 263
LATAM 107
Africa 49
Sum = 419

Europe 311
NA 96
Sum = 407

>> and many our transitioning (or thinking about it) away from
>> it.
>
> Citation needed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DST (on Dispute)

>
>> In true spirit of our universality we should use UTC.
>
> This conversation started with a suggestion that meeting times should be
> _announced_ in UTC. Are you now arguing that they should all be
> _defined_ in UTC?

First step: Announce it in UTC.. we can take it from there, and see
what makes sense.

>> ps. I would like to remind everyone of the *pain* we have when US
>> moves to DST weeks before Europe does... "just sayin.."
>
> And how does your proposal ease that pain?

That *all* you have to know is your offset and not track the offset of
California as it changes too.

Pierros

>
> Gerv

[Pierros Papadeas]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> On 13/05/13 15:38, Nikos Roussos wrote:
>> Now meetings shift four times a year if your on a timezone that switches
>> to daylight on a different day than Pacific. Think about it.
>
> I know that; it happens to me. However, given that I (like most
> Mozillians) am in the Northern Hemisphere, it means that for most of the
> year (apart from 4 weeks or so), the meeting is at the same time of day.
> That's really convenient.

most mozilians are not necessarily in Northern Hemisphere (and we
should avoid in the future to make such generalizations)

>> I always know my timezone's UTC+? relation, and do so most people. I
>> don't remember differnece to Pacific, and I shouldn't required to.
>
> No-one is saying you should. This is why my proposal is that every
> announcement should contain a link to timeanddate.com which will do the
> conversion for you, and for everyone else.

And how the UX of that looks like? more click-throughs? More sites to
visit? You should be able to visually see a meeting time in UTC and
make the calculation instantly in your head. Saves time for all.
(poster and reader)

>> The point here is that global communities use global standards. I would
>> consider it rude if I organize meetings in my local timezone, just
>> because it's more convenient for me.
>
> You are very welcome to organize meetings which are defined in your
> local timezone. You may have to keep moving them to avoid clashing with
> other meetings which are defined differently, but if you want to do
> that, you are welcome to do so.
>
> Gerv
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> mozillians mailing list
> mozil...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozillians

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 16:40, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
> Citation needed.
> *most* mozilla contributors are *not* in Europe and NA anymore.
> This is not 2004 anymore.
>
> Some facts (based on mozillians.org summit2013 group)
> APAC 263
> LATAM 107
> Africa 49
> Sum = 419
>
> Europe 311
> NA 96
> Sum = 407

The Summit2013 group does not include employees, so is not a good base
from which to draw such data.

However, I agree that if it _did_, then it would be an excellent base to
get such data from. I hope it will be possible to use the full Summit
invitation list as a way of finding out where the "weight" is in 2013.

>> Citation needed.
>
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DST (on Dispute)

I do not see a list there of countries who are actively moving to drop
DST. DST always causes arguments (and this is one!) and there are
several movements for change in the UK, but none of them is close to
achieving enough support for a change to be made. Doing something
different to the rest of Europe would be a massive pain.

>> This conversation started with a suggestion that meeting times should be
>> _announced_ in UTC. Are you now arguing that they should all be
>> _defined_ in UTC?
>
> First step: Announce it in UTC.. we can take it from there, and see
> what makes sense.

But they are entirely different issues, with different sets of pros and
cons.

The issues surrounding _announcing_ in UTC are all about the best way of
describing some information and transmitting it to other people reliably.

The issues surrounding _defining_ in UTC are all about the relative
trade-offs of who has to rearrange their meetings when, cross-project
coordination, and so on.

>>> ps. I would like to remind everyone of the *pain* we have when US
>>> moves to DST weeks before Europe does... "just sayin.."
>>
>> And how does your proposal ease that pain?
>
> That *all* you have to know is your offset and not track the offset of
> California as it changes too.

But calendaring software does all that for you.

Gerv

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 16:44, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
> most mozilians are not necessarily in Northern Hemisphere (and we
> should avoid in the future to make such generalizations)

If I were a betting man, I'd bet you an amount of money equal to the GDP
of Greece that more than 50% of Mozillians live in the Northern
Hemisphere. And I'd bet you a smaller but still pretty large amount that
it's above 70%.

>> No-one is saying you should. This is why my proposal is that every
>> announcement should contain a link to timeanddate.com which will do the
>> conversion for you, and for everyone else.
>
> And how the UX of that looks like? more click-throughs? More sites to
> visit? You should be able to visually see a meeting time in UTC and
> make the calculation instantly in your head. Saves time for all.
> (poster and reader)

Except when the person setting the meeting has a DST change in their
timezone, and forgets to update the _UTC_ time (hey, it's UTC, it's
always the same, right?) and the reader does the calculation instantly
in their head... and turns up at the meeting at the wrong time.

This is not a theoretical risk. As someone who goes to a lot of
meetings, and sees a lot of meeting announcements, I've seen it happen -
and been the victim of it.

Putting > 1 time in text form in a meeting announcement is an invitation
to make mistakes. And if only 1 time is in the announcement, it should
be the time in the timezone in which the meeting is defined, because not
doing that leads to a whole other set of confusions.

Gerv

[Stormy Peters]

For what it's worth, I support all meetings being scheduled and announced
in UTC. I think it shows respect for a global work force and will help
foster a culture of more cooperation.

Stormy

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

When people not want understand not understand, I not want to spend
more time in this conversation (muted)

But again:
For local things with local people use local time, for a tings whit a
global participation UTC.

2013/5/13 Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org>:

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--

[Kyle Huey]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:

> On 13/05/13 16:44, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
> > most mozilians are not necessarily in Northern Hemisphere (and we
> > should avoid in the future to make such generalizations)
>
> If I were a betting man, I'd bet you an amount of money equal to the GDP
> of Greece that more than 50% of Mozillians live in the Northern
> Hemisphere. And I'd bet you a smaller but still pretty large amount that
> it's above 70%.
>

90% of the humans on Earth live in the northern hemisphere.

- Kyle

[Nikos Roussos]

On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 17:16 +0100, Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 13/05/13 16:44, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
> > most mozilians are not necessarily in Northern Hemisphere (and we
> > should avoid in the future to make such generalizations)
>
> If I were a betting man, I'd bet you an amount of money equal to the GDP
> of Greece that more than 50% of Mozillians live in the Northern
> Hemisphere. And I'd bet you a smaller but still pretty large amount that
> it's above 70%.

It doesn't matter. Being a global community means that we should respect
every contributor. Not just the majority.

Quoting Stephanie from a previous email:
"inconvenience everyone equally, or exclude people due to time
confusion."

[Rubén Martín]

El 13/05/13 17:36, Gervase Markham escribió:

> The Weekly Meeting is followed once a month by the MoCo meeting, whose
> time is also defined in Pacific time (because, whatever we say about the
> audience of the Weekly Meeting, it's certainly true that the majority of
> participants for the MoCo meeting are in the Pacific timezone). If the
> Weekly Meeting were changed to be defined in UTC, then not only would it
> move twice a year for a large group of people for whom it is now stable,
> but the MoCo meeting would either need to also be moved, or to start
> being defined in UTC. There are knock-on effects to implementing such a
> change.

Gerv, you are repeating this argument again and again, and it's not
true. A meeting can be at the same time for Pacific (or any local) time
during the year and announced always in UTC (it's just a matter of
knowing that when Pacific switch to daily saving time you have to
announce the new UTC time).

Review my proposal again, it includes UTC with a link and also local if
you wish. It has what you want and also what we want too.

Regards.

--
Rubén Martín [Nukeador]
Mozilla Reps Mentor

[Mark Banner]

Hi folks,

On 13/05/2013 18:25, Stormy Peters wrote:
> For what it's worth, I support all meetings being scheduled and announced
> in UTC. I think it shows respect for a global work force and will help
> foster a culture of more cooperation.

Having thought about it a bit, I can understand the desire to announce
times in UTC, and I agree it is desirable (scheduling I'm less
convinced, but please carry on reading, that's not what this is about).

So far in this thread the proposals and issues seem to be around
considering the needs meeting attendees and not the organisers. I don't
think that's right, especially if this was to become a 'policy'.

Take a step back for a moment, and think about the real problem. Is it
the fact that meetings are scheduled/announced in a particular timezone,
or is it the fact you've got to do the translation?

If none of us had to do a translation of timezones, wouldn't that be so
much better?

Therefore as Stephanie mentioned earlier, I think we should look at
improving our tools. I've therefore posted a message for "Improving our
tools for meeting scheduling" in mozilla.governance.

I'd rather make this simpler for everyone, than changing to make it
simpler for one group and harder for another.

Mark.

[Gervase Markham]

On 13/05/13 18:38, Rubén Martín wrote:
> El 13/05/13 17:36, Gervase Markham escribió:
>> The Weekly Meeting is followed once a month by the MoCo meeting, whose
>> time is also defined in Pacific time (because, whatever we say about the
>> audience of the Weekly Meeting, it's certainly true that the majority of
>> participants for the MoCo meeting are in the Pacific timezone). If the
>> Weekly Meeting were changed to be defined in UTC, then not only would it
>> move twice a year for a large group of people for whom it is now stable,
>> but the MoCo meeting would either need to also be moved, or to start
>> being defined in UTC. There are knock-on effects to implementing such a
>> change.
> Gerv, you are repeating this argument again and again, and it's not
> true.

It is; it's just that you are confusing arguments relating to two
different issues. The above paragraph is an argument against _defining_
the meeting in UTC time. You have interpreted it as an argument against
_announcing_ the meeting in UTC time.

I think that meetings defined in UTC time should be announced in UTC
time (only), and those that are defined in local time should be
announced in local time (only) - in both cases with a link to help
people do the conversion for their timezone.

There are two proposals people are making here (and confusing with each
other):

a) All meetings at Mozilla should be defined in UTC time.

b) All meetings at Mozilla should be announced in UTC time.

These are _very_ different proposals. The only way they are connected is
that if you do a), it implies that you should do b). But doing b) does
not imply doing a).

I am against both proposals being mandated policy, but the arguments
against each one are quite different.

Gerv

[Pierros Papadeas]

For the record I am *for* to both proposals (and see them as one thing).

Clearly most people in this discussion are positive to them too.

This discussion is already posted in the next level (governance
mailing list) and I propose we take it from there.

Calendaring software is a totally different discussion, completely
unrelated to this one. Meeting invites are announced in emails and not
all people have those two systems connected.

~p

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--

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

Hi

I want to impose mi position because I think that I and my culture is
better that the rest of the world, UTC is for looosers. #sarcasm

2013/5/14 Pierros Papadeas <pie...@mozilla.com>:

> For the record I am *for* to both proposals (and see them as one thing).
>
> Clearly most people in this discussion are positive to them too.
>
> This discussion is already posted in the next level (governance
> mailing list) and I propose we take it from there.
>
> Calendaring software is a totally different discussion, completely
> unrelated to this one. Meeting invites are announced in emails and not
> all people have those two systems connected.
>
> ~p
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:53 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:

>> _______________________________________________
>> mozillians mailing list
>> mozil...@lists.mozilla.org
>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozillians
>
>
>
> --
> Pierros Papadeas
> Community Architect
> pierros @ irc.mozilla.org
> _______________________________________________
> mozillians mailing list
> mozil...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozillians



--

[Janet Swisher]

On 5/13/13 10:44 AM, Pierros Papadeas wrote:

> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:
> No-one is saying you should. This is why my proposal is that every
> announcement should contain a link to timeanddate.com which will do the
> conversion for you, and for everyone else.

> And how the UX of that looks like? more click-throughs? More sites to
> visit? You should be able to visually see a meeting time in UTC and
> make the calculation instantly in your head. Saves time for all.
> (poster and reader)

If you can do that conversion instantly in your head, congratulations
for you. My brain is not well-designed for this task, and computers are
much better at it, so I would rather rely on them than on my brain,
which has repeatedly given me incorrect results.

Obviously, one system is not going to satisfy everybody, as this
discussion demonstrates. I support Mike Banner's proposal to seek a
technical solution, which hopefully will include user research &
analysis, and careful interface design, to support varying user
preferences, and the needs of both organizers and attendees.

--
Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVE...@mozilla.com>
Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org>
Developer Engagement Community Organizer

[Majken Connor]

"Pacific Time" Is not necessarily unambiguous. Currently all US states in
Pacific time do make the switch, but take Arizona and Saskatchewan in
Mountain Time which don't make the switch.

The problem here is we're trying to solve for DST which isn't actually the
problem that is solved with announcing UTC. We will not be able to solve
the DST problems without getting rid of DST (which we currently don't have
the power to do as we don't rule the world ;) )

The problem that adding UTC to meeting announcements solves is for getting
new contributors to meetings, or in scheduling one off meetings.

If you look at a site on Wikipedia eg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansasit calls out the timezone like so -
"Mountain:
UTC-7/-6"

Totally ignoring DST I hope we can all agree that adding UTC to
announcements wouldn't be that difficult and would be very beneficial.

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:10 PM, Janet Swisher <jswi...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On 5/13/13 10:44 AM, Pierros Papadeas wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org>
>> wrote:

>> No-one is saying you should. This is why my proposal is that every
>> announcement should contain a link to timeanddate.com which will do the
>> conversion for you, and for everyone else.

>> And how the UX of that looks like? more click-throughs? More sites to
>> visit? You should be able to visually see a meeting time in UTC and
>> make the calculation instantly in your head. Saves time for all.
>> (poster and reader)
>>
>
> If you can do that conversion instantly in your head, congratulations for
> you. My brain is not well-designed for this task, and computers are much
> better at it, so I would rather rely on them than on my brain, which has
> repeatedly given me incorrect results.
>
> Obviously, one system is not going to satisfy everybody, as this
> discussion demonstrates. I support Mike Banner's proposal to seek a
> technical solution, which hopefully will include user research & analysis,
> and careful interface design, to support varying user preferences, and the
> needs of both organizers and attendees.
>
>
> --

> Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVEswisher@**mozilla.com<jREMOVE...@mozilla.com>
> >
> Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org**>
> Developer Engagement Community Organizer
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> mozillians mailing list
> mozil...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/mozillians<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozillians>
>

[Gervase Markham]

On 14/05/13 18:28, Fredy Rouge Rouge wrote:
> I want to impose mi position because I think that I and my culture is
> better that the rest of the world, UTC is for looosers. #sarcasm

Insulting and caricaturing those who disagree with you, and attributing
bad motives without evidence, is not polite behaviour, and is unlikely
to win supporters to your side.

Gerv

[Majken Connor]

I think polite isn't the best measure of how we want to conduct the
conversations. I think fredy is frustrated because he feels you haven't
been polite either. I think the baseline should really be what is
constructive and helps move us forward to our common goals. I think neither
Fredy's post, or your calling it out publicly counts as constructive, so
let's steer the conversation back!

There has been some good discussion on the Governance list, especially with
regards to a tool for handling meetings. I think that was being moved
elsewhere? Can someone add a link to that discussion here so people can
follow it?

[Gervase Markham]

On 16/05/13 20:34, Majken Connor wrote:
> I think polite isn't the best measure of how we want to conduct the
> conversations. I think fredy is frustrated because he feels you haven't
> been polite either.

Please point me at any impolite messages either you or he think I have
posted.

Gerv

[Fredy Rouge Rouge]

Hi

I not want to be involved in this kind of dynamics, this is not a
school and we are not kids.

I'm a volunteer and I can decide how use my volunteer time, now for me
the priority is the launch of FirefoxOS.

Best regards.

2013/5/20 Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org>:

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