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

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