In a sense, yes. I'm a plant. I need to have at least some light to function properly when I open my eye.. sorry stomata.
As a plant which is participating to many international meetings regularly (including a one which spans from USA to Japan with everything in between), I think I know a thing or two about scheduling.
However, thanks for sharing your valuable insight.
I know dealing with international meetings is challenging. In a former life I managed trading Korean equities from an office in Cambridge, MA (in addition to US equities— those were long days!!)
But doesn’t the fact that the scheduling itself requires some form of attention/expertise (e.g. is that time in your timezone or mine? Does DST apply this week? Does that change anything?), reveal that we’ve perhaps made this unnecessarily complex?
If you and me or any group were tasked with scheduling a meeting, wouldn’t it at least hypothetically be simpler to offer availability in terms of UTC (assuming nobody cares where you live, or if you’re a plant, or vampire)?
No problem, I both have a thick skin pretty flexible sense of humor.
Working with international projects for 15 years have shown me that the process can be relatively simple. There are some pretty robust tools and conventions for that, too. So, without further ado, this is how we do it:
0. Agree that we need a meeting for discussing something.
1. Send a Doodle[0] link to everyone involved, knowing two ends of the timezone involved is enough. Take intersection of your logical hours and theirs. Forget DST and other stuff. +/- 1 hour doesn't mean anything. If you're really unsure, give both slots as an option. Send Doodle link to everyone. Doodle handles timezone conversion and availability.
2. Set the slot with the majority vote, create a calendar file (.ics) with that slot. Be sure to set the timezone and time itself right. Mail the .ics file with the meeting announcement. Use UTC in the announcement. Every responsible party knows their delta relative to UTC.
3. ???
4. ???
5. Profit (meeting).
This removes most of the burden, mental calculation and whatnot. Doodle is free for the most part, a good calendar is either provided by your company or your OS already, and rest is handled by the time libraries. This method makes our life much easier, and enjoyable in fact.
*: If the times are too absurd, a person will send an e-mail with a better availability nevertheless. I do it rarely (once a year). So it's not rude.
**: Also there's World Time Buddy [1] for seeing time differences at a glance.
Regardless +1 UTC or permanent anything… I believe I can adjust my schedule for my needs more easily than trying to fix everyone else’s.