When is the meeting? Advice on working across time zones

When trying to fix online meetings with people around the world it can be quite difficult to find times that suit everyone.

Doodle is a great utility for getting people to agree times for meetings and it has introduced a time zone option, although it is a bit clunky.

If on the other hand you have decided to run a session at a particular time then I really like www.timeanddate.com, which has lots of utilities including one where you can fix a time and then send a link to all other attendees to allow them to find the time in their time zone.  So the other day I set a meeting and sent this message to other people:

We will meet at 13.00 GMT Monday 24th November (see http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=11&day=24&year=2008&hour=13&min=0&sec=0&p1=0  for your time zone)

And they all could check their own time zones.

Things to watch with fixing meetings across time zones are:

1. Daylight saving time happens at different times in different places, and some places go forward when others go back, so it is always wise to use the date.
2. If a meeting is happening on a Monday evening in Europe, it will be Tuesday in Australia, so be careful when saying see you Monday, otherwise some people may be 24 hours early.
3. Try to avoid setting meetings at times that are in the middle of the night for some participants. Consider if it would be better to run the meeting twice, record it, or at least alter the times so everyone is equally inconvenienced.