One of Vancouver’s biggest advantages as a tech ecosystem is that it’s the only major international city in the same time zone as Silicon Valley. At least, that was one of it’s biggest advantages.
As of Sunday morning, the province of British Columbia moved to permanent daylight savings time. And in doing so, it made things more challenging for Vancouver’s startups to compete.
Let me start off by noting that I think we’re long past the point when switching clocks back-and-forth every 6 months makes any sense whatsoever — so I’m very much in favor of doing away with it. And, realistically speaking, it was never going to done in one fell swoop. But the idea that Vancouver would ever be in a different time zone from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and LA never actually crossed my mind.
Yet here we are.
Think I’m overreacting? I regularly travel back-and-forth between Vancouver and the Bay Area and since Sunday my calendar has been turned upside down:
SF meetings that I scheduled while in Vancouver aren’t when I thought they were (and vice versa), leading to unexpected challenges with travel times and kid drop-offs.
Lunches I scheduled weeks in advance are turning out to be at 11:00am. Or 1:00pm.
I’ve had to reach out to multiple people already this week to apologize and ask to reschedule meetings that weren’t when I intended them to be.
And, just yesterday, my personal trainer (whom I normally work out with at 6:30am), called me at 5:30 for a virtual session. That hurt.
There’s obviously going to be a period of adjustment. But before you go and dismiss this as a case of “old man who can’t do math”, understand the following:
Almost nobody in California knows that BC changed time zones.
I’ll say that again for the folks in the back:
Almost nobody in California knows that BC changed time zones.
So if you’re in Vancouver, understand that any timezone mixups that happen with investors, customers, partners or anyone else south of the border are yours to shoulder. If a investor meeting gets missed or a customer call is incorrectly scheduled, you’ll be the one to blame. Period.
So what can you do about it?
My simplest advice: until we all get back to daylight savings time in April, you should offer to send every calendar invite you have with anyone in the U.S. That’s right, every single one. If you don’t already have PST and PCT both pinned in your calendar app, you will by the end of the week. And by the end of the month, you’ll be a pro at doing the timezone conversion in your head.
Meanwhile, half of California still won’t know about “Pacific Coast Time”.
Trust me.