FastTrain

Here’s an interesting one for you, a good example as to how communications can easily get confused.  A colleague is involved in organising a meeting which will have a videoconferencing input.

People who will be ‘present’ include a number from the UK where the meeting is taking place, one in the United States (on the West coast) and another based in Eastern Australia.

So what time will the meeting take place?  Well the first thing the organisers have had to consider is that the time zone of the person in the United States is eight hours behind, whilst the time zone of the person in Australia is ten hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time; but the UK is on British Summer time.

So assume the meeting is at 1200 noon.  The person in the States will expect the call at 0400 – 4 a.m. in the morning local time (just to emphasise the point).  The person in Australia will expect the call at 2100 EST.  That is EST as in Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Which raised another slight communications problem; when the notice of the meeting went out the secretary had put 2100 EST.  The American assumed that this meant United States Eastern Standard time which is three hours ahead of the West Coast time.
Fortunately the confusion was short lived because one person very quickly realised what had happened and was able to correct everybody with a brief email.

The moral of the story is not to take short cuts when communicating important information.  When dealing with different time zones it is best to put the name of the country or city alongside the time.