Virtual Finland meeting, that is. I got up a bit early this morning, so I could finish breakfast and be ready to start my ISO Photography Standards meeting at 7 o’clock. There were delegates web-conferencing in from all over the USA, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and me in Australia.
Unfortunately with people scattered across the globe, the time zone is bad for at least somebody. Last meeting, it was bad for me, having to stay awake until 2:30am every day (for five days in a row). This time it’s a decent block of time in the morning, but the people in Europe are suffering with an 11pm to 2:30am shift.
The first sessions are administrative, and we discussed the next meeting in February, which was supposed to be me hosting here in Sydney. Given the current COVID situation and the fact that there’s no end in sight to the Australian Government ban on foreign visitors entering the country, we decided to make the call and convert it to another virtual meeting. Then the question of timing came up. The chair suggested that we revert back to the timing of the last meeting, which is described as “Morning, New York time”, as opposed to this meeting’s “Evening, New York Time”.
“Morning, NYC” (last meeting) corresponds to:
- Sydney: 11pm – 2:30am
- Tokyo: 10pm – 1:30am
- Europe: 3pm – 6:30pm
- East USA: 9am – midday
- West USA: 6am – 9am
“Evening, NYC” (this meeting) corresponds to:
- Sydney: 7am – 10:30am
- Tokyo: 6am – 9:30am
- Europe: 11pm – 2:30am
- East USA: 5pm – 8:30pm
- West USA: 2pm – 5:30pm
I was dreading having another late night shift. And then someone pointed out that daylight saving will have changed by February… which makes the proposal to switch back to “Morning, NYC” look like this:
“Morning, NYC, DST” (southern hemisphere summer, proposed for next meeting):
- Sydney: 1am – 4:30am
- Tokyo: 11pm – 2:30am
- Europe: 3pm – 6:30pm
- East USA: 9am – midday
- West USA: 6am – 9am
USA/Europe move back an hour and Sydney moves forward an hour, making a two hour relative time shift. Japan doesn’t have DST, so moves forward an hour relative to Europe/USA. As you can see, this proposal is not merely bad for me, it’s much worse.
(Now, there’s also the fact that alternating between these two schedules alternately screws Sydney/Tokyo or Europe, but never screws anyone in the USA. But there are so many delegates in the USA that the idea of a schedule where Europe/Sydney/Tokyo get decent times and everyone in the USA has to stay up until 3 in the morning on whatever didn’t seem to be considered as a serious option, alas.)
Anyway, I had a go at proposing an alternative schedule for the southern summer meeting:
“Evening, NYC, DST” (southern hemisphere summer):
- Sydney: 7am – 10:30am
- Tokyo: 5am – 8:30am
- Europe: 9pm – 12:30am
- East USA: 3pm – 6:30pm
- West USA: midday – 3:30pm
This keeps things same for me, makes Tokyo have to get up a bit early, but also has the big advantage of pulling Europe into an almost reasonable timeslot. It’s actually not terrible for anybody. The timing will be discussed and finalised later this meeting. I’m hoping some sort of sanity prevails and we can have this schedule for February, and then I’d be happy (or at least resigned) to go back to the “Morning NYC” schedule for the next meeting in the southern winter.
Assuming it’s still virtual that is. The June 2021 meeting is currently scheduled for Okayama in Japan, and I’m hoping we might possibly be able to do it face-to-face by then.
I’ll let you know how it goes as this meeting continues.
New content today:
Might I suggest destroying the sun? That would enable the world to unify around a single time zone and simplify scheduling enormously.