Registration Limited to 30; Presentations from Affected Industry Sectors Invited

DOC: Timezone Workshop at Microsoft.

The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (www.calconnect.org) has opened registration for a one-day workshop on timezone implementation and management in information technology, and how it can be improved. The workshop will be held Tuesday, February 3, 2009, from 0830-1730, hosted by Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. Registration is limited to 30 people. There is no charge for attendance, but interested parties must request an invitation, to ensure a balance of interests in the limited space.

“This workshop is intended for parties with an interest in timezones, how they are currently implemented and managed, and what to do about them in the future,” said Dave Thewlis, Executive Director of CalConnect. “We want to attract representatives of other industry and technology areas to gain a broad perspective on the problems with timezones as implemented today, and the relevance of our proposed direction.”

“We invite those representatives to contribute problem statements and use cases, and offer topical presentations on the issues their industries face,” Thewlis continued.

The lack of a standardized timezone registry and service has led to significant problems for vendors and users alike. A recent example is the widespread impact of, and changes required to implement, Extended Daylight Savings Time in the United States in 2007.

Among these problems are:

CalConnect members are working on and promoting the development of standards and services to address this pressing need. This workshop is intended to inform consumers of timezone data from a variety of industries and areas on CalConnect’s approach, and to develop consensus on an approach acceptable to all.

To request an invitation to the event, go to Timezone Workshop Request for Invitation.

CalConnect has established a public discussion list to allow workshop participants and others to discuss the topics in advance of the workshop. Go to CalConnect Timezone Workshop Discussion List for more information and to sign up for the discussion list.

The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect) is a partnership among vendors, developers, and customers to advance calendaring and scheduling standards and implementations. The mission is to provide mechanisms to allow calendaring and scheduling methodologies to interoperate, and to promote broad understanding of these methodologies so that calendaring and scheduling tools and applications can enter the mainstream of computing. The Consortium develops recommendations for improvement and extension of relevant standards, develops requirements and use cases for calendaring and scheduling specifications, conducts interoperability testing for calendaring and scheduling implementations, and promotes calendaring and scheduling. Organizational members are Apple, Cabo Communications, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Duke University, Eventful, Fresno State, Google, IBM, Kerio Technologies, MailSafe, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, neutralSpace, New York University, Oracle, Patricia Egen Consulting, PeopleCube, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Scalix, Sony Ericsson, Stanford University, Stockholm University, Sun Microsystems, SWAMI (Swedish Alliance for Middleware Infrastructure), Symbian, Synchronica, TimeBridge, University of California, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Yahoo!/Zimbra.