It is important to remember time zones and calculate the difference between yours and your associates’ zones correctly so as not to miss important meetings or deadlines. Cities and countries to the north or south of each other all observe the same local time. Be aware that many well-educated people in the United States and Canada think of South America as directly south of North America. As you can see, South American countries can be up to five time zones east of North America. A helpful site to convert local time to another time zone is http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgibin/tzc.tzc
Time zones are calculated in reference to the time zone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The time at that location is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). More recent references designate it as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) instead of GMT. The time zones advance from Greenwich in an easterly direction (Figure 15.1 World Time Zones. Standard time zones of the world by TimeZonesBoy ). However, at the international dateline (about the midpoint around the world from Greenwich), you subtract the time zone from GMT. To prevent confusion between a.m. and p.m., times are often given using a 24-hour clock. For example, midnight is indicated as 00:00, noon is 12:00 and 1 p.m. is 13:00.
Example: Conference Call between Toronto and Paris
A project manager for a software development project in Toronto is five time zones west of the reference zone, so the time is given as UTC–5 (or GMT–5). If it is noon in the reference zone, it is 7 a.m. (five hours earlier) in Toronto. The manager would like to contact a project team member in Paris, France. Paris is one time zone east of the reference zone (UTC+1 or GMT+1). If it is noon (12:00) in the reference zone, it is 1 p.m. (13:00) in Paris. This means that there is a six-hour difference between Toronto and Paris. If the project manager waits until after lunch to place the call (1 p.m. in Toronto), it will be too late in the day in Paris (7 p.m.) to reach someone.
- 1737 reads
