Proposal: Alter TSC meeting schedule

[nzlosh]

During the (March 2024 TSC Meeting)[https://github.com//issues/133] there were some attendees missing due to confusion around daylight savings changes in the US Pacific timezone. This is a recurring problem as the local time and US Pacific timezone shifts 2 to 4 times per year.

It was suggested the meeting schedule use UTC timezone which is not affected by daylight savings so that attendees need only take into consideration their own local timezone daylight savings obversvations. A second suggestion was to consider an alternating meeting schedule that would allow participation from people across the globe (America/Europe/Asia) specifically with contributors in Japan and India in mind.

Proposal 1: Use the UTC timezone for all TSC meeting scheduling.

Proposal 2: Use alternating dates to include America and Asia as best as possible. Due to the 16 hour time difference between Tokyo and New York, the available time periods are limited when aligned.

https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?pl=1&lid=100,2643743,5128581,5368361,2988507,360630,524901,30,1850147&h=100&hf=0

Europe Asia (Tue 09 Apr 2024 09:00:00 UTC)

America/Los_Angeles      Tue 09 Apr 2024 02:00:00 PDT
America/New_York         Tue 09 Apr 2024 05:00:00 EDT
Asia/Calcutta            Tue 09 Apr 2024 14:30:00 IST
Asia/Singapore           Tue 09 Apr 2024 17:00:00 +08
Asia/Tokyo               Tue 09 Apr 2024 18:00:00 JST
Europe/London            Tue 09 Apr 2024 10:00:00 BST
Europe/Paris             Tue 09 Apr 2024 11:00:00 CEST

Europe America (Tue 09 Apr 2024 17:00:00 UTC)

America/Los_Angeles      Tue 09 Apr 2024 10:00:00 PDT
America/New_York         Tue 09 Apr 2024 13:00:00 EDT
Asia/Calcutta            Tue 09 Apr 2024 22:30:00 IST
Asia/Singapore           Wed 10 Apr 2024 01:00:00 +08
Asia/Tokyo               Wed 10 Apr 2024 02:00:00 JST
Europe/London            Tue 09 Apr 2024 18:00:00 BST
Europe/Paris             Tue 09 Apr 2024 19:00:00 CEST

America Asia (Tue 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 UTC)

America/Los_Angeles      Mon 08 Apr 2024 17:00:00 PDT
America/New_York         Mon 08 Apr 2024 20:00:00 EDT
Asia/Calcutta            Tue 09 Apr 2024 05:30:00 IST
Asia/Singapore           Tue 09 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +08
Asia/Tokyo               Tue 09 Apr 2024 09:00:00 JST
Europe/London            Tue 09 Apr 2024 01:00:00 BST
Europe/Paris             Tue 09 Apr 2024 02:00:00 CEST

This issue is get peoples feedback on the idea, not an official change of the TSC meeting schedule.

[jk464]

Would the suggestion be one of the following:

• Have 3 instances of the TSC meeting each month - i.e. on the 2nd Tuesday of each Month there would be a meeting at APAC, EMEA and American (AMER) aligned times?
• Or would we have the TSC meeting on a 3 monthly rotation. As an example: on month 1, have the time being aligned for APAC/EMEA, month 2 have EMEA/AMER and then month 3 be AMER/APAC

Personally the 2nd option would make the most sense to me - as that would ensure that any one person could make 2 out of 3 meetings, while also covering every possible pairing of the 3 regions - to best allow cross-collaboration between regions.

Taking the timezones you listed @nzlosh - to provide example meeting times that seem to be most accommodating to each paring (I'll give the UTC time, the earliest timezone and latest timezone for each):

• APAC/EMEA - 8am UTC - 9am Europe/London > 5pm Asia/Tokyo

• EMEA/AMER - 3pm UTC - 8am America/LA > 6pm Europe/Moscow

• AMER/APAC - 1:30am UTC (Tue/Wed) - 7am Asia/Calcutta (Tue/Wed) > 9:30pm America/New York (Mon/Tue)

  • Note the two regions would be in adjacent days i.e. At 1:30am UTC - It would still be the previous working day in the US.

The 3rd month doesn't seem the greatest - it would be very early morning in India while being quite late in New York - but there doesn't seem to be any great options that allows both ends of the AMER timezones and both ends of the APAC timezones to still be during waking hours and not actually fall during the night. Which does raise two other issues:

• Would anyone actually attend in the first place - your either having to get up very early, or attend during the evening where you'd eating/socializing etc after you workday, or even potentially be asleep already.
• We'd need a TSC member other that @nzlosh to run it (I believe you're in Europe, right? In which you'll be fast asleep at this time - unless you're a night owl! 🤣)

So the other option would be to drop the AMER/APAC session in favor of rotating about the first two - however, I'd personally vote for still keeping it - even if it ends up not be widely attended - at least it would still be there to give APAC and AMER StackStorm members a chance to meet together if they wanted too. Worse case is the TSC meeting becomes 2 times every quarter.

---

Those are some of my thoughts on the matter, and suggestions - but yes 👍 for both proposals - the UTC suggestion surely just makes sense - and the timezone shifting one also does, but I guess would require input on everyone on what times to actually schedule the meetings for.

On that second topic, I'd like to to add another suggestion, perhaps people should provide their timezone (and in UTC time) what time frame they'd be able to attend so to help with setting times for meetings, to try and best cover as many people as possible. In my case I'm in the UK timezone and I'd be able to attend anytime between 7am and 7pm UTC.

Please note I'm a UK based member, and may have unintentionally shown basis in the suggestions of times above. I made the assumption that the European style of working ~8am > ~6pm applies everywhere and people tend to sleep between ~10pm and ~6am. If any of that is not true, I apologize and meant no offense :)

[amanda11]

I think the idea of fixing on UTC and rotating the time on a monthly basis sounds a good idea. Also UK based so wouldn't be able to make the AMER/APAC session.

[mamercad]

I think the idea of fixing on UTC and rotating the time on a monthly basis sounds a good idea. Also UK based so wouldn't be able to make the AMER/APAC session.

Seconded.