debconf timezone overlap for 3 continents

[lkcl <luke.leighton@gmail.com>]

hi folks,

it was mentioned in the meeting that the time of the conference would
be discussed later, and to focus on the dates, so i therefore did not
say anything further.  however a follow-up comment by people with more
experience (whom i did not feel comfortable contradicting, having been
asked not to discuss the matter further in the meeting) led to a
potential assumption that i had been asking about *website* timezones.
now that the meeting is over i feel it is ok to clarify.

i was not asking about the accuracy of *website* timezones, i was
raising a different matter.

when people attend a physical conference, if they are from a different
continent they will usually come over a few days beforehand in order
to adjust to that timezone.  however for an online conference it is
extremely unlikely that people will adjust to waking up in darkness
*in their own timezone*, a few days beforehand in order to attend an
online conference in real time :)

my point is that *when* the discussion takes place as to what range of
times the conference is to take place, given the world-wide
distributed nature of debian it would be really nice for it to be
possible for people from all continents to be able to attend in
real-time as opposed to looking at the schedule, realising that
there's not a single talk they could be awake for, and, given that one
of the nicest things about conferences is interacting with other
people to discuss a talk and ask questions, not attending at all.

from experience in having done online international conference calls
for 15 years, there is *one* range of times that can (just about) be
attended by people in GMT-8, GMT+0-2, and GMT+8-10 (US, UK/EU, AU),
which is around 21:00 UTC to 23:00 depending on which half of the year
(summer, winter).  winter (northern hemisphere winter that is) is a
lot easier due to AU going 2 hours (they go forward, we go back).

i really liked the idea of the international language conferences.
whilst this might sound natural/obvious, it occurred to me that
perhaps if there is a strong focus on say spanish-speaking submissions
that the times for those could be analysed to suit the geographic
timezone locations of attendees.

l.