Subject: Announcing times of interim meetings

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 11:10:10 +0000

I've noticed that often interim meetings are only announced in one timezone, which means there are a lot of people who have to translate into their timezone (wasted effort and risk of errors).

I think it would be a good idea if Chairs & ietf-announce could include several time zones. One good method could be to use https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html which lets you create a link that anyone can click to find their local time for the meeting.

Best wishes,
phil

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From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 11:03:20 -0500

Hi Phil,

> I think it would be a good idea if Chairs & ietf-announce could include several time zones. One good method could be to use https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html which lets you crea…

Actually, it seems most logical to announce the time in UTC so that
everyone can have a common reference point, especially given the
variations in Daylight Savings time start/stop points.

Regards,
Brian

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From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 17:41:37 +0100

Hi guys,

Isn't that issue already addressed by RFC 5545? Some WGs (or ADs)
already share .ics files that fit the job.

I'd be tempted to take from Phil's comment only the requirement and jump
onto an IETF-based solution: could interim meeting announcements
consider including a .ics file?

My 2 cents,

Julien

> variations in Daylight Savings time start/stop points.

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From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 17:45:21 +0100

On 2020-02-12, at 17:41, [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> could interim meeting announcements

+1000

Actually, could **everything** datetime-related please include .ics files?

(Note: Next DST irregularity March 8 for US, March 29 for EU, so we have a three-week period of utter confusion ahead of us that includes the Vancouver IETF.)

Grüße, Carsten

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From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2020 17:41:06 -0600

> > consider including a .ics file?

I'll only +1, but I agree!

Best,

Spencer

> (Note: Next DST irregularity March 8 for US, March 29 for EU, so we have a
> three-week period of utter confusion ahead of us that includes the
> Vancouver IETF.)
>
> Grüße, Carsten
>
>

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 10:45:36 +0000

<[email-masked]> wrote:
    > I've noticed that often interim meetings are only announced in one
    > timezone, which means there are a lot of people who have to translate
    > into their timezone (wasted effort and risk of errors).

    > I think it would be a good idea if Chairs & ietf-announce could include
    > several time zones. One good method could be to use
    > https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html which lets you
    > create a link that anyone can click to find their local time for the
    > meeting.

    > variations in Daylight Savings time start/stop points.

Two things to be aware of:
    1) there is a ics feed of all virtual interim meetings
       https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/upcoming.ics
       I believe that this is driven directly by the data tracker inputs
       from when you push the virtual-interim meeting button request.
       Subscribe to it, then copy the things that are relevant to you into
       your own calendar.

    2) While announcing a specific meeting in UTC is reasonable, it turns out
       that this does not perfectly work for everyone.  The CELLAR meeting is
       anchored, for instance, to 9pm CET, because that's the time that the
       participants (mostly central european) want.  So that means it wanders
       around in March and October if you aren't in CET.

Here is the example of the CELLAR meeting:
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/agenda-interim-2020-cellar-01-cellar-01/

I don't think we get markdown there yet: txt (no link highlights), or html
(which requires another click).

1) have the date and time.
2) self-referential links the data, so that people can follow the link to the
   latest version.
3) link to etherpad.
4) link to conference software (webex, whereby, etc.)
5) the chair should loda the etherpad with the agenda beforehand.
6) even if the agenda just, "cue Kermit the Frog to sing" it still matters.

Since not every system is accessible to everyone at every location
{incompatible OS type, overly restrictive corporate firewall, not enough
bandwidth, maybe you need for dual-monitors to effectively deal with
github+conference screen+editor for proposed text changes}, it helps people
decide if they will work at home or go to the office early, etc.

Particularly for people who need to join the meeting from a mobile, having it
all in one place really helps.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

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From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 10:53:50 -0500

>        Subscribe to it, then copy the things that are relevant to you into

Thanks for the pointer. I was not aware of this feed and I suspect most
regular WG participants are not aware of it either.

>        around in March and October if you aren't in CET.

I don't see the relationship. The only requirement would be for the
CELLAR chairs to *announce* their meeting time in UTC for each
occurrence. If they anchor it to a time in a specific timezone, that's
ok as long as the announcements state the UTC time.

Regards,
Brian

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From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2020 11:18:09 -0600

> regular WG participants are not aware of it either.
also, it's on the top level menus (at Meetings->Upcoming).

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 10:46:40 +0100

Brian Haberman <[email-masked]> wrote:
    >> Two things to be aware of: 1) there is a ics feed of all virtual
    >> interim meetings https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/upcoming.ics I
    >> believe that this is driven directly by the data tracker inputs from
    >> when you push the virtual-interim meeting button request.  Subscribe
    >> to it, then copy the things that are relevant to you into your own
    >> calendar.
    >> 

    >> 2) While announcing a specific meeting in UTC is reasonable, it turns
    >> out that this does not perfectly work for everyone.  The CELLAR
    >> meeting is anchored, for instance, to 9pm CET, because that's the time
    >> that the participants (mostly central european) want.  So that means
    >> it wanders around in March and October if you aren't in CET.

    > ok as long as the announcements state the UTC time.

For a specific meeting, putting the UTC in the announcement is certainly
doable, and I certainly want that!!!! 

I'm saying that it is important to note, for recurring meetings (of which
there are happily quite a few now!) that people put the right anchor time
zone for the meeting into their calendar.

{An annoyance that I have with calendaring, and I think it's a product
limitation, rather than a protocol limitation, is that while I can subscribe
to the IETF virtual interim calendar, I can't tell my calendar that I'm
attending a specific meeting.  So I can "copy" the meeting from the IETF
calendar to my calendar, which has the effect of marking me busy at that
time, if I do that, then it's a new, unrelated event, and my copy won't get
updated if the IETF copy gets updated for time or place, etc.  I think that
this is a product limitation though, but I haven't seen a product that does
this better}