Subject: IETF must use only UTC in its announcements (Was: Live Streaming of the IETF 88 Technical Plenary

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:13:55 +0100

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 09:10:08AM -0400,
 IAB Chair <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 54 lines which said:

> The Technical Plenary session is expected to be popular.  It will be
> held on Wednesday, 6 Nov 2013 at 0900 PST,

Why why why using a local timezone when announcing a live broadcast,
which will be seen by many people anywhere in the world?

Do note also that there are three different timezones in the world
which are named PST. Not everyone lives in North America!

IETF must use only UTC when announcing a worldwide event.

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:25:59 +0100

> IETF must use only UTC when announcing a worldwide event.

I don’t know about “only UTC" for events that are also visited locally, but giving the UTC time as well would be a good idea.  Even more so for a event that is days from a local time zone change.

Beyond UTC, I would normally point to

	http://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/agenda-utc

and its “display in browser time” feature here as well, but the latter seems to be broken by a missing file right now.

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 01:28:35 -0700

> IETF must use only UTC when announcing a worldwide event.

I would prefer SHOULD rather than MUST (or must) :-)

But anyway, FYI, 0900 PST (Canada/US Pacific Standard Time) == 1700 UTC.

	Ross.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:36:12 +0100

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 09:25:59AM +0100,
 Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 16 lines which said:

> I don’t know about “only UTC" for events that are also visited
> locally, but giving the UTC time as well would be a good idea.

My experience with international organizations is that, when you
indicate the time in two zones, there is often a discrepancy. With
only one zone, there is no doubt about the real value.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:37:51 +0100

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 01:28:35AM -0700,
 Ross Finlayson <[email-masked]> wrote 

> I would prefer SHOULD rather than MUST (or must) :-)

What could be a good reason to use the local time, when it is an event
broadcasted on the Internet? For a physical meeting, I can imagine
such good reasons but for a network one?

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 16:42:20 +0800

hmmm - I thought the "Technical Plenary" which you used as an example
actually is (partly) a physical meeting. We should have the local AND
UTC time announced.

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 16:05:07 +0200

There is both a local participant aspect and over-the-network aspect. I think giving the times both as local times and UTC is a good idea.

We'll try to do that from now on. I have changed my blog article.

Jari

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 14:08:44 +0000

> 	http://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/agenda-utc

This was something I suggested a couple of IETFs ago, and the tools team implemented it very quickly.

I think if you have constructive suggestions that can be implemented, the tools team is all ears :)

Tim

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 07:08:03 -0700 (PDT)

> only one zone, there is no doubt about the real value.

And my experience is that regardless of what sort of organization you're
dealing with, if you ask them to convert a time for a future event that is
being held in a particular physical location to some other time zone, they
won't apply time zone rules correctly and the only announced time will be
wrong.

Which argues for including the local time when the event will take place. If
you want to mandate that the time also appear in UTC, great, but it's quite
important that the local time also be there.

				Ned

---

From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:18:40 -0400

I hope everyone in the IETF is familiar with sites such as:
<http://www.timeanddate.com/>
<http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/>

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Tim Chown <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > I don’t know about “only UTC" for events that are also visited locally,
> but giving the UTC time as well would be a good idea.  Even more so for a
> event that is days from a local time zone change.
> >

---

From: IAB Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:19:10 -0400

Stephane:

I think that the use of the local timezone make it easy for people to look it up on the agenda.  I do agree that inclusion of UTC as well would have been very helpful.  I'll try to remember to do that in the future.

Russ

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:24:50 -0400

One aspect of the problem is calendar apps.  Some rather popular ones don't
have a way to enter UTC, only UK time eg. BST, so you need some local time
somewhere to enter the event in your calendar.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 07:26:13 -0700

since we were looking for a rat-hole, i can crawl in this one.

from the ops pov, uct/gmt (and let's skip that rathole) makes sense.
most of us think that way.  but it is amusing to note that i worked for
one global isp which runs on the new jersey timezone and another global
isp that runs on japanese standard time <blush>.  and i am sure there
are more.

but i suspect we all know how to convert.

randy

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 14:30:11 -0000

Richard Barnes wrote:
> <[http://www.timeanddate.com/: <http://www.timeanddate.com/>]> 
>  
> <[http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/: <http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/>]>
>

Yes, but given we're in the throes of timezone mutilation for the purposes of 
playing a longer game of golf, I'm not sure what the offset is, nor what it 
will be by then.

If you pick the translation into local now, for most folk in Europe, it'll 
give you 1700. By Wednesday 6th November, it'll be 1800. I think.

For UK folk, it'll be 1700. (Which I get by entering Vancouver as the timezone 
in Google calendar).

Did I mention I hate daylight savings time?

Dave.
​—
Dave Cridland -- Sent with Inky -- [http://inky.com/: <http://inky.com/>]

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 07:32:02 -0700 (PDT)

I *strongly* recommend http://www.timescroller.com/About.html

(if you have a Mac).

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
Home: +1 415-550-9427
Cell: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]
URL: http://organdemo.info
Skype: organdemo

---

From: Richard Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:34:15 -0400

This is why these tools have an option to set the date when computing
future times.

--Richard

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Dave Cridland <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Yes, but given we're in the throes of timezone mutilation for the purposes
> of playing a longer game of golf, I'm not sure what the offset is, nor what
> it will be by then.
>
>
>
> For UK folk, it'll be 1700. (Which I get by entering Vancouver as the
> timezone in Google calendar).
>
>
>
> —
> Dave Cridland -- Sent with Inky -- http://inky.com/
>
>
>

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 15:38:33 +0100

> important that the local time also be there.

And local time should be normative to deal with such unforeseen
circumstances as a papal visit.  From the southamerica file in the TZ
database:

# From Daniel C. Sobral (1998-02-12):
# In 1997, the DS began on October 6. The stated reason was that
# because international television networks ignored Brazil's policy on DS,
# they bought the wrong times on satellite for coverage of Pope's visit.
# This year, the ending date of DS was postponed to March 1
# to help dealing with the shortages of electric power.

;-)

Eliot

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 07:52:55 -0700 (PDT)

Good point. I agree.

				Ned

---

From: Tony Finch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 15:19:24 +0000

Scott Brim <[email-masked]> wrote:

> One aspect of the problem is calendar apps.

My "favourite" is the one that uses the name GMT for the UK's time zone
all year round, even though it knows the summer time rules.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <[email-masked]>  http://dotat.at/
Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first.
Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good,
occasionally poor at first.

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:23:22 -0700

Hi [email-masked],

--On October 30, 2013 at 7:52:55 AM -0700 [email-masked] wrote:

>> > Which argues for including the local time when the event will take
>> > place. If you want to mandate that the time also appear in UTC, great,
>> > but it's quite important that the local time also be there.
>
>> # because international television networks ignored Brazil's policy on
>> # DS, they bought the wrong times on satellite for coverage of Pope's
>> # visit. This year, the ending date of DS was postponed to March 1

Timezones can (and do) change at very short notice in different parts of 
the world. Typically computer systems have timezone data cached as part of 
the OS, and only get updates when the OS is itself updated - often long 
after a timezone change has occurred or long after future events were 
booked but are now out of sync for participants in different timezones. To 
address that a number of folks in the calendaring and scheduling community 
have been working om a timezone service protocol - 
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-douglass-timezone-service/> - our 
initial focus for that has been iCalendar (RFC5545) based VTIMEZONE 
component delivery to calendar and scheduling clients and servers. However, 
we would like to also deliver OS-style timezone data to devices to break 
out of the requirement for those to be updated only when the OS itself 
updates. For unix-based OS's that means being able to deliver "raw" 
zoneinfo" data over that protocol.

Anyway, if you are interested in that work please comment over on the 
ietf-calsify list (cc'd) - we (the authors of that draft) - intend to get 
it moving to last call soon. There are already several implementations that 
have undergone testing at the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium 
(CalConnect) interop events, so we are happy with it, but would appreciate 
more feedback.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 16:36:32 +0100

>IETF must use only UTC when announcing a worldwide event.

If it was given in a easily and umabiguously machine-readable form like 
`2013-11-06T05:00Z` we could make our computers recognise it and render
it in whatever form we prefer, including offering adding a note in the
calendar or whatever people find useful...
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:54:11 -0700

On Oct 30, 2013, at 7:24 AM, Scott Brim <[email-masked]> wrote:

> One aspect of the problem is calendar apps.  Some rather popular ones don't have a way to enter UTC, only UK time eg. BST, so you need some local time somewhere to enter the event in your calendar.

And the United Kingdom and Great Britian are not on BST all year. Ghana on the other hand is.

---

From: Andrew Feren <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 13:18:42 -0400

> IETF must use only UTC when announcing a worldwide event.
What, not Internet Time
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time)?
;-)

-Andrew

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:24:38 +0000

GMT would be better than BST if you want UTC. (BST is GMT+1, used in summer.)

--
Christopher Dearlove
Senior Principal Engineer, Communications Group
Communications, Networks and Image Analysis Capability
BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre
West Hanningfield Road, Great Baddow, Chelmsford, CM2 8HN, UK
Tel: +44 1245 242194 |  Fax: +44 1245 242124
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> | http://www.baesystems.com

BAE Systems (Operations) Limited
Registered Office: Warwick House, PO Box 87, Farnborough Aerospace Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU, UK
Registered in England & Wales No: 1996687

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Scott Brim
Sent: 30 October 2013 14:25
To: ned+ietf
Cc: Carsten Bormann; IETF Discuss
Subject: Re: IETF must use only UTC in its announcements (Was: Live Streaming of the IETF 88 Technical Plenary

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One aspect of the problem is calendar apps.  Some rather popular ones don't have a way to enter UTC, only UK time eg. BST, so you need some local time somewhere to enter the event in your calendar.
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From: Warren Kumari <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:27:15 -0700

> And the United Kingdom and Great Britian are not on BST all year. Ghana on the other hand is.

So the obvious solution to this issue is to hold all our meetings in Chana from now on.

There, I solved it for you…

W

-- 
A. No
Q. Is it sensible to top-post?

---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:30:33 +0000

UK and GB is a bit redundant (GB is part of - most of - the UK). Basically we run GMT (UTC+0) in winter and BST (UTC+1) in summer. The S is summer. [We did once run an experiment to run BST - the S now standing for standard - all year, but a long time ago, and not for long.]

[If - I don't know for sure either way - there's a subtle difference between GMT and UTC, for meeting start times, it's irrelevant.)

[email-masked] | http://www.baesystems.com

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 30 Oct 2013 17:50:04 -0000

>only one zone, there is no doubt about the real value.

I've basically given up asking people what time zone their schedule is
in, because most people have no idea, and don't understand that time
offsets vary from place to place and from one time of the year to
another, so the correct zone matters.  

In San Francisco in July, they'll say PST.  Do you mean PDT?  Yes,
PST.  Or this call will be at 10:00 in New York, 11:00 in San Juan.
where the time is an hour ahead.  Uh, it's May and there's no daylight
time in Puerto Rico so the times are the same.  What?  Huh?

This problem is not helped by a widely used alleged calendar
application sold by a vendor located about 220 km south of Vancouver
that doesn't even try to get the time zones right.

The least broken approach I've found is to ask what place the time is.
If they say Vancouver, I can figure it out.

R's,
John

---

From: Vinayak Hegde <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:51:06 +0530

> <http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/>

All times for events should be in UTC or atleast mention UTC time in
addition to local time (especially for events such as plenaries which have
a larger number of remote participants). On one hand IETF wants more remote
participants. On the other hand, I see resistance to do some
(UI/Notification fixes) from several volunteers of IETF.

I hope you all are aware of rot-13. please use www.rot13.com to decipher
the following.
<sarcasm>
 V ubcr lbh ner njner bs ebg-13
</sarcasm>

-- Vinayak

---

From: Vinayak Hegde <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 01:00:11 +0530

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 7:49 PM, IAB Chair <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Stephane:
>
> I think that the use of the local timezone make it easy for people to look
> it up on the agenda.  I do agree that inclusion of UTC as well would have
> been very helpful.  I'll try to remember to do that in the future.
>
> Russ
>

Why is it so hard to even mention the offset of the local time from UTC if
not anything else on the Agenda itself ? Everyone is aware of the offset
from the timezone they are in but may not be aware of the local timezone
offsets during the time of the year (think day-light savings) and the place
(several countries have different timezones so different cities within same
country can have different times).

I think the problem here is of the mindset within the IETF which looks at
IETF meetings as local physical meetings rather than a place of
congregation of people (whether physical or remote) at certain point in
time. If IETF really means to encourage wider participation (both in number
and diversity), then they need to make small changes such as these to
accommodate remote participants more. The change should start right from
the very top if this were to work.

-- Vinayak

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 05:42:44 +0000

No, Ghana is on GMT, which is equivalent to the time still used British winters. But Ghana has policy control over the offset it chooses...
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=4

The nearer the equator you are, the less you need daylight savings.

If you read "Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time", you'll come to loathe William Willett and all he stood for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Willett

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/

________________________________________
From: [email-masked] [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of joel jaeggli [[email-masked]]
Sent: 30 October 2013 16:54
To: Scott Brim
Cc: ned+ietf; Carsten Bormann; IETF Discuss
Subject: Re: IETF must use only UTC in its announcements (Was: Live Streaming   of the IETF 88 Technical Plenary