Timezone literacy is a thing to be learnt and practiced. Here's what I know now about scheduling international video calls. #digitalskills #managingexpectations #WFH
1. Find out the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) standard for your own timezone, and learn it in 24 hour format
3. If you're scheduling recurring meetings across seasons, remember to adjust for daylight savings for countries and states that do. Including your own!
4. Always refer to the *UTC time and date* for the meeting, and provide a link so people can see it in their own timezones: timeanddate.com/worldclock/fix…
5. If you plan activities seasonally, always clarify with the month. Be specific! None of this random Fall business!
6. Use a timezone converter to find common windows across your timezones. timeanddate.com is great.
7. Best rule of thumb is to schedule meetings between 10am-4pm in everyone's timezone. This is the optimum time for people to be awake and responsive. If this is not possible, repeat the meeting.
8. Timezones are an equity issue! Who's got carer/childcare responsibilities? Who's self-isolating and their home internet is dodgy at peak times? Who's taking one for the team and joining at 11pm but can't think straight and are sleepy?
9. If you can't avoid participants joining between 8pm-6am in their local timezone, thank them for their tenacity and make sure their contributions are heavily scripted or structured.
10. Coming back to daylight savings: this is always an adjustment! For me, this means Sydney, Australia is no longer the centre of the universe (sigh).
11. Please use 24 hour format when referring to UTC. Not 2am UTC and 2pm UTC, because you will forget the am and pm. UTC2:00 and UTC14:00 or go home.
12. Don't expect to instantly achieve all these suggestions successfully now that you've reached the end of the thread 😃 Learning takes time and practice, go easy on yourself!
