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I know. But I want no time zone. When I plan my Germany trip next week I want to see the 10 am meeting there at 10 regardless of where I am. It should operate

I know. But I want no time zone. When I plan my Germany trip next week I want to see the 10 am meeting there at 10 regardless of where I am. It should operate like a good old paper calendar.

harpastum 8y ago
Google Calendar is built around notifications and coordination, which both require an agreed upon "actual" time. The feature set you're looking for sounds more like an "agenda" to me.
- Arnt 8y ago
  I think what he wants is that the software defers asking for a time zone until the item relates to two users who have different timezone. And that if the event arrives without having touched users in different timezones, then the software should infer that the event's timezone is the local timezone of all users at that point in time and space.
  - kevincox 8y ago
    What I would like is to to be able to set my "local time schedule" and be able to do it in advance. So for example if I am traveling next week I can indicate that my local time will change. This is great not only for me but also for other people trying to schedule events in my calendar. With Gmail picking up flight and hotel confirmations this could even be mostly automatic.
jdblair 8y ago
Its not that you want no time zone, you want to mark the appointment as "local" time. That could be useful, though I expect it would create as many problems as it solves. The explicit timezone is crucial for conference calls that cross timezones. That is at least half of the appointments on my calendar (I coordinate projects between the US, Europe and Asia).
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  For international phone meetings this is good but for travel it’s really bad.
  - jdblair 8y ago
    I still disagree. I also travel a lot, and I set the meetings in the timezone where the meeting is. It's not a paper calendar.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Right. When I travel I usually have a combination of physical meetings in local time and phone calls back home or spanning multiple time zones. I do mess up sometimes but I’m not sure how much you can automate.
zodiac 8y ago
> It should operate like a good old paper calendar. In that case, you enter a recurring 10 am conference call every Monday, and the moment you move timezones you miss the call. The problem really is (as mentioned in this thread) that the user's intent is not known.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  There are two use cases: one is for meetings with participants in different timezones. Gcal does this well. There other use case is travel. For this the current system is not very good.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Well, you know the timezone: it's of wherever in Germany the meeting will take place. I think the problem is the display: since you know you'll be in Germany from date X to Y, you should be able to configure the presentation timezone for those days (which would also show you those meetings in the local time when you'll have to make them).
lmm 8y ago
Most people have more events that happen at a particular instant but different local times (e.g. phone calls between people in different timezones) than events that happen at a fixed local time but different instants. When I'm planning my trip to Germany I certainly don't want it showing all my calls at the wrong time.
rlpb 8y ago
The iCalendar standard does actually support that, but perhaps Google Calendar's UI does not. I suspect it does work internally, because it interoperates with iCalendar fairly well. The standard calls it a "floating" DATE-TIME: "The recipient of an iCalendar object with a property value consisting of a local time, without any relative time zone information, SHOULD interpret the value as being fixed to whatever time zone the "ATTENDEE" is in at any given moment."
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I know. But I want no time zone. When I plan my Germany trip next week I want to see the 10 am meeting there at 10 regardless of where I am. It should operate like a good old paper calendar.

harpastum 8y ago

Google Calendar is built around notifications and coordination, which both require an agreed upon "actual" time. The feature set you're looking for sounds more like an "agenda" to me.

Arnt 8y ago
I think what he wants is that the software defers asking for a time zone until the item relates to two users who have different timezone. And that if the event arrives without having touched users in different timezones, then the software should infer that the event's timezone is the local timezone of all users at that point in time and space.
- kevincox 8y ago
  What I would like is to to be able to set my "local time schedule" and be able to do it in advance. So for example if I am traveling next week I can indicate that my local time will change. This is great not only for me but also for other people trying to schedule events in my calendar. With Gmail picking up flight and hotel confirmations this could even be mostly automatic.

jdblair 8y ago

Its not that you want no time zone, you want to mark the appointment as "local" time. That could be useful, though I expect it would create as many problems as it solves. The explicit timezone is crucial for conference calls that cross timezones. That is at least half of the appointments on my calendar (I coordinate projects between the US, Europe and Asia).

maxxxxx 8y ago
For international phone meetings this is good but for travel it’s really bad.
- jdblair 8y ago
  I still disagree. I also travel a lot, and I set the meetings in the timezone where the meeting is. It's not a paper calendar.
ghaff 8y ago
Right. When I travel I usually have a combination of physical meetings in local time and phone calls back home or spanning multiple time zones. I do mess up sometimes but I’m not sure how much you can automate.

zodiac 8y ago

> It should operate like a good old paper calendar. In that case, you enter a recurring 10 am conference call every Monday, and the moment you move timezones you miss the call. The problem really is (as mentioned in this thread) that the user's intent is not known.

maxxxxx 8y ago
There are two use cases: one is for meetings with participants in different timezones. Gcal does this well. There other use case is travel. For this the current system is not very good.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Well, you know the timezone: it's of wherever in Germany the meeting will take place. I think the problem is the display: since you know you'll be in Germany from date X to Y, you should be able to configure the presentation timezone for those days (which would also show you those meetings in the local time when you'll have to make them).

lmm 8y ago

Most people have more events that happen at a particular instant but different local times (e.g. phone calls between people in different timezones) than events that happen at a fixed local time but different instants. When I'm planning my trip to Germany I certainly don't want it showing all my calls at the wrong time.

rlpb 8y ago

The iCalendar standard does actually support that, but perhaps Google Calendar's UI does not. I suspect it does work internally, because it interoperates with iCalendar fairly well. The standard calls it a "floating" DATE-TIME: "The recipient of an iCalendar object with a property value consisting of a local time, without any relative time zone information, SHOULD interpret the value as being fixed to whatever time zone the "ATTENDEE" is in at any given moment."

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]