Time differences……………..One challenge I’ve experienced recently is determining the times in other cities of the world. Each country has various time zones and I’ve learnt that the USA has CST, EST, MST and PST. (Central, Eastern, Mountain and Pacific Standard Time). However, the time zones didn’t mean a lot to me and in arranging a convenient time to participate in a web conference meant trying to understand the time zones or finding out which cities the other participants were in, to determine the time differences, and work out the best time for us all to meet.
When you are conversing with others globally, particularly in email, it is important to recognise that others might not understand your time zones or even the abbreviations for the city or state you are talking about. Special consideration must be given to the thought that readers might misunderstand what was meant by a certain abbreviation or not know what CST actually is and how to translate it to a time they understand.
Enter www.timeanddate.com - with this website you can look up major cities around the world to see what time it is right now in another place, find out about various time zones and use their meeting planner to determine a good time for you and other participants to meet globally. What a timesaver this site is! No longer do you have to do calculations, GMT+ hours, then work out that a certain area is 17 hours behind you or 5 hours ahead, and that would make it….. at 6pm your time.
Timeanddate.com also has a Time Zone Menu, Fixed Time Clock, lists Time Zone abbreviations and gives information about Daylight Saving. There is the facility for customising the world clock to suit your requirements. You can also get a calendar and download countdown timers – a lot of things to explore and look at. But what I like best is that I can look up San Francisco in a couple of clicks and know what time it is there right now, compared to here in Melbourne. No more guestimates. Certainly beats ringing someone in the early hours of the morning because you didn’t know his or her correct time… something that happened to me just recently.
So, now you’ve worked out the time you’re going to meet but how are you going to meet? Well, another great site I’ve discovered is www.voxwire.com. I mentioned Voxwire in last month’s newsletter. It has voice meeting rooms for a very reasonable monthly rental price. There isn’t a need for your guests to purchase a license to meet with you – they can just join you in the meeting room. Add a microphone to your computer and you can speak to the people in the room, or opt to type your messages for them to view online instead. What I particularly like about this facility is the fact that you can place websites, presentation pages, documents, slides, or flash on the internet screen and all your guests or customers can watch the presentation while you narrate and/or respond to questions. You can also produce a printed log of the text activity of the web conference as well.
I just love what can be achieved with today’s technology and it excites me to think that I can chat with my fellow operators around the world.
Remember, It's the WORLD Wide Web! - To learn more about this author, visit Kathie Thomas's Website.
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