Looking for a developer to solve a DST / Time-zone conversion issue

Hi everybody,

We have a webinar system, where hosts create events and invite participants from around the world to register and then attend (attend at the same time).

Each person, host and participant, would like to see the event time rendered in their own timezone, and each timezone has not only a different GMT offset but a different set of daylight savings differences.

The web-based system currently stores and displays the time in Pacific time (which has a daylight savings fluctuation built in), and the customer/host sets the time via a drupal interface. The system generates a “Self-registration page” where participants will ideally see the time in their timezone (and can change the timezone). The system will send an email reminder in the day before the conference. If that email reminder says the time in the body (which is ideal), then that means the system needs to record the timezone of the registrant, and use that to zone to generate the reminder.

Of course, with daylights savings differences, the “GMT offset” of the participant, host, or system might change between independently of the others. So, calculating (based on the the javascript time) the offset, and then projecting that to a future event will be incorrect in many instance when a daylight savings difference is between the registration time and the time of the actual event.

As part of this, we’d like to have a system to put the event reminder on people’s standard calendars (gmail, outlooks, .ics etc)

We’ve considered not rendering the actual time in the reminder, and instead saying “it’s 8 hours from now” and offering a link e.g. to a google calendar event which hopefully would render correctly for the participant. [we call that “V1”]

We are currently only displaying and rendering the times in Pacific Time, and Eastern Time (which are always 3 hours off, as their daylight savings schedules are synced).

What options do you see to provide a better experience for both host and participant?

Please submit your contact details and resume as well as a very short description of the proposed solution (we are under-staffed so we are looking to hire external help to develop the solution)

Thank you!
Maria Focsa
Product Manager
MaestroConference