My fellow managers,
as you have noticed, we have been discussing about using fixed/designated time for HGL matches, so that they start at exactly the same time no matter which part of world you are. Now that I received an answer from BigChill, I have all time zone information available, and will update it to a table done and posted today on this thread. Based on all information, I have reached the best compromise I was able to come up with, keeping in mind that it might be preferable to choose either an exact hour, or half an hour as a starting time (and not, say, 5 to 3PM for instance). Therefore, as we are literally 17-18 hours away from each other at most, all times are going to be compromise of some sort.
The official designated match time for all HGL matches is 14.30, on other words 2.30PM EET (Eastern European Time) normal time, not Daylight Savings Time, DST. EET time zone is GMT+2. This EET will function for us as a reference time (but further explanation will follow later, if you still didn't read Homegrown teams II-thread posts on Wednesday).I will also copy this information to official HGL threads, by adding time zone and match times information to the participating teams list, likely before the team name as in aforementioned team name/time zone table published today, here:
(324689.559).
If you see an error in your time information, please send me a BBMail (preferable) or message on forum.
In the team name list after time zone/reference marking I will include the time, that team uses when arranging/organizing matches, which they are responsible of organizing. All regular season matches are organized at this same time, so in that sense it's logical and easy.
For example: GMT-5/-7=07.30AM.
This means: team is located in time zone GTM-5. The difference to reference time (GMT+2, Eastern European Time is used as a reference) is -7 hours, so reference number of team is -7. So therefore all matches organized by this team in question will start 2.30PM minus 7 hours=07.30AM local time. For teams west of Eastern European Time zone, GMT and reference number will of course be plus, so it will be added to 2.30PM starting time to conclude what is the actual local starting time for the match.
As you may remember from earlier post, we have agreed to use a system with 8 volunteered teams who do most of the organizing, but each and every one of us, also those rest 8 non-volunteered teams are responsible for sending some challenges. As also mentioned earlier, which team is responsible for challenging has already been marked to the schedule by bolding the team name.
I might update the information here or to the official HGL thread tomorrow (and just update the name table on this thread, so that you can check it out for possible errors.
When checking out your information (whether GMT information is correct in table, and whether your match start time is correct), please remember: we use standard time, not DST.
For example in Finland "normal time", a.k.a. winter time, is EET (Eastern European Time) GMT+2, but Daylight Savings Time (DST, "summer time") is GMT+3. And for instance difference between USA East coast and Finland is normally 7 hours (GMT-5 and GMT+2), but for a short period we're only 6 hours apart, as US already started using DST on March 9th and we'll do that later this month. But again, for the purposes of this HGL we will use Standard Time, not DST.
I'm currently very tired, so I probably make this sound a lot more complicated than it is. Yes, differences between countries on applying DST (or to which way it is added, as we today noticed a dramatic difference between Europe and Australia) could create some situations in where matches are not ending exactly at the same time, but this is best I can come up with this time on my hands. More tomorrow, but I'll update the table before heading to bed. Here's the link to it:
(324689.559).