UTC and ISO 8601, or GTFO
Posted by jpluimers on 2022/11/08
Always schedule your meetings in UTC, and use ISO-8601 date and time notation. Because time zone conversions are hard, especially with so many daylight saving time conventions.
I want not just a “UTC or GTFO” shirt, but a “UTC and ISO-8601, or GTFO” shirt.
It means I do not agree with [Archive.is] Colin Nederkoorn on Twitter: “Pro tip: Don’t schedule recurring meetings in UTC if you live in a place with daylight savings.… “ with multi-time zone teams: having it in UTC will balance out the DST changes over the teams.
Some more relevant Tweets that triggered me writing this post:
- [Archive.is] Florian Haas on Twitter: “Weekly team meeting at 0800 UTC, as usual. Part of the team shifted off DST this weekend, the rest did not. Everyone showed up on time; nobody needed a reminder that the meeting is one hour earlier in their local timezone. In globally distributed teams, UTC works. Just use it.”
- Archive.is Jonathan McDowell on Twitter: “I think every clock (certainly on computers) shoud have a dual local-time and UTC display, and that it should become standard to schedule meetings with multiple-time-zone participants in UTC… “
- [Archive.is] Steve Song🇨🇦🇿🇦 on Twitter: “Google Calendar #ProTip to avoid meeting timezone screw-ups. Schedule your meetings in UTC not your own timezone.”
- [Archive.is] 🚝🌴Six Miles Tall 🏰🚡 on Twitter: “I always have UTC in view. When I plan online meetings across the world, I always schedule to UTC time. That way I never have to do math and account for daylight savings.… “
(Most via [Archive.is] schedule meetings in utc – Twitter Search / Twitter)
Reminder in 4.5 months: [Archive.is] Shaun McCance on Twitter: “This is your semi-annual reminder that most of the US starts DST on March 14, most of Europe starts DST on March 28, and Australia ends DST on April 4. So you should just go ahead and cancel all your meetings now.”
There are always XKCDs too:
- archived 1 Mar 2021 13:18:45 UTC[Wayback/Archive.is] xkcd: ISO 8601
Title text: ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.
- [Wayback/Archive.is] xkcd: Now (which has a live rotating image; a full day simulation is at [Wayback/Archive.is] 1335: Now – explain xkcd)
Title text: This image stays roughly in sync with the day (assuming the Earth continues spinning). Shortcut: xkcd.com/now
- [Wayback/Archive.is] xkcd: Supervillain Plan
Title text: Someday, some big historical event will happen during the DST changeover, and all the tick-tock articles chronicling how it unfolded will have to include a really annoying explanation next to their timelines.
- [Wayback/Archive.is] xkcd: EST
Title text: The month names are the same, except that the fourth month only has the name ‘April’ in even-numbered years, and is otherwise unnamed.
- [Wayback/Archive.is] ISO 8601 or GTFO – Iso 8601 – T-Shirt | TeePublic FR
- [Wayback/Archive.is] UTC or GTFO – Utc – T-Shirt | TeePublic
- archived 4 Nov 2021 10:49:49 UTC[Wayback/Archive.is] UTC or GTFO | Ops Lessons
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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