I read a post about #LPUD, and it mentioned "November 15th UTC" and I thought "here we go again with the UTC! And I wondered: "what time is that to me?"
You see, I've been here on Hive a long time, and people on the blockchain tend to talk to other people on the blockchain, creating what I call 'The Blockchain Bubble.' They have all the lingo down, and I think sometimes we feel that everyone knows what we know, but that isn't the case.
Now, I have no illusions that anyone reading this will change the way they do things because of this post. What I have seen is people complaining about how few people show up for their events. Did they ever think it might me because they refuse to list the day and local time, and instead slavishly list UTC only? Ya think THAT might be one of the reasons why only a few people show up for your streams?
I've been here long enough to know that they will never change the way they do things. They openly resist change and will continue doing things they way they've always done it, this post isn't for them. But what I'd like to see from the more recent bloggers is more of a willingness to help new people find your content.
I see UTC used all of the time to announce podcasts, contest entries, and other events here on Hive. This is "insider talk" to me. Then you tune in (by accident in my case) and see only a few people attending. Here's how I find events:
Since I live near New York City, I'm in the eastern time zone. I use NY as a base to work from. So when they announced HiveFest was to be held in Amsterdam, I know that it's 6 hours ahead of NY time, and was able to catch the events. If you check out the site, you can see everything listed in local time. But all I needed was a nearby large city to work from NY time. They even had a countdown clock so you couldn't miss it, smart.
Why Make It Hard? (Make It Easy)
Had they announced the HiveFest 2022 livestream starting at say, 15:00 UTC, I would have had no reference as to when to tune in, and would have had to search for one of those confusing UTC time converters. Why add friction for a potential viewer and make them hunt for your content?
It's almost like saying you're going to publish your blog posts in esperanto in order to be more international, what?
If you stream every Sunday and Thursday at noon Honolulu time, just say that, along with the UTC time as well. Easy. The local time gives us something familar to work with.
Nowadays with my busy lifestyle, I skip announcements made only in UTC time. If they can't be bothered to list the local day and time for me I'm not going to bother to seek out a UTC converter in order to find out. Man Does Not Live By UTC Time Alone, If that's you, think about making it easier to find your content, it's the "Hive" thing to do.
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