Seasonal time changes for UBL TC calls

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Hello UBL TC,

Due to a recent ill-considered change in U.S. law, daylight time
in the U.S. will begin this year next Sunday, 11 March, rather
than in April as formerly.  This will, of course, destroy various
international time-change alignments that have been painfully put
in place over the last 20 years and make the job of scheduling
international conference calls much more difficult for the next
month or so.

In keeping with established practice in the UBL TC, our meeting
times will change as follows beginning next week:

 - The Pacific call will stay at 00:30-02:30 UTC/GMT every
   Tuesday, but due to the change to daylight time, the clock time
   for callers in the U.S. will appear to shift forward one hour
   (to start at 17:30 Monday in San Francisco and 20:30 Monday in
   New York).  The starting local time will remain at 08:30
   Tuesday in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Beijing and at
   09:30 Tuesday in Seoul, Tokyo, and Perth.

 - The Atlantic call, on the other hand, will move back one hour
   to run from 15:00-17:00 UTC/GMT instead of 16:00-18:00 UTC/GMT
   so that the local (now daylight) times in North America appear
   to stay the same as they were during the winter (08:00-10:00 in
   San Francisco, 11:00-13:00 in New York).  Unlike previous
   years, however, this year times in Europe WILL NOT appear to
   stay the same until European locations make their own change to
   daylight time later in the season; beginning Sunday, European
   call-in times will shift backward along with the UTC/GMT change
   -- for a few weeks, anyway.

Given the almost hopeless task of accurately maintaining the
detailed list of local times that I've been including in meeting
agendas, I think the best strategy is to give up on that and
simply rely on everyone, beginning next week, to check the Time
and Date site to find the local time for each call at their
location:

   http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Then the rule becomes very simple: starting next week, and until
next November, the Pacific call starts at 00:30 UTC/GMT, and the
Atlantic call starts at 15:00 UTC/GMT.  Check the site above every
week to find out what the clocks will say in your locale.

Jon