Re: [Manycouches] many-fine-dinners --- a view on how to organize virtual meetings

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 23/11/2020 04:47 Michael Richardson <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
> I was mostly successful in managing my time zones, but I couldn't stay awake
> past 1400UTC (9AM), having gotten up around 2000UTC (3PM) the previous day.
> Friday, I knew I was going to be a write-off, and it was.
> Maybe I should have found a hotel room.  Saturday was also mostly a write-off.
> 
> I'm sure that I'm not the only one who needed recovery time after this "travel"
> The question is: how can we, when we write the schedule, make this really
> clear to managers?  (many of whom probably didn't notice the "UTC" on the schedule)

I don't think you can change the perception of the time commitment just by mangling the appearance of the schedule - either the people around you get it, ot they don't.  Unfortunately, for physical meetings in remote locations, everyone understands that travel and jetlag recovery time is necessary, but it's not the same if you stay home and "only" wake up and go to sleep at "weird" times. 

In my case, the IETF meeting happened 6am-noon every day; this involved a very early wakeup, but in no way it would allow me not to work until 6pm as usual (even later if necessary), not to have dinner at home at "regular" times, and so on.  Last Monday, for example, I was booked as a panelist in a session of the U.N. Internet Governance Forum (which was held in parallel in CET) scheduled at 6:20-7:30pm my time.  

So, basically, "remote IETF" just meant up-to-14-hour-long working days, definitely less productive than usual, for a week - and I don't see any easy way to avoid this, except getting back to physical meetings.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[e-mail] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy