Introducing the 24-hour ResBaz community call

By Damien Irving.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been thinking about how best to provide support and assistance to the global network of ResBazadors (local site hosts) in the lead up to ResBaz 2016. In particular, we know from previous experience that global communities eventually hit the “timezone barrier”. Half the world is asleep at any one time, so as an event grows it quickly becomes impossible to run a meetup that everyone can attend.


Organisations like Moziila Science Lab and Software Carpentry often hold the same meeting twice to cater for different timezones, but the audience on some of those calls gets so large that it’s hard to have the detailed one-on-one conversations that we’re looking to cultivate. Taking inspiration from mozsprint, we’ve therefore decided to run a continuous 24-hour call on the last Thursday of every month. Anyone who is interested or involved in organising a ResBaz event can call in to hear the latest news and to ask questions about running their own event. Members of the global coordination team will do shifts on Google Hangout to ensure full coverage of the 24-hour period, and notes from all conversations will be taken in the ResBaz gitter room.


This month’s call starts at 8am on Thursday 28 May on the east coast of Australia (i.e. AEST) and will then make it’s way around the world (the Google Hangout link is here). To help you figure out what time that corresponds to in your part of the world, here’s the shift times in UTC (this site is great for making timezone conversions):

  • Damien Irving (@DrClimate): 22:00 UTC, Wed 27 May - 04:00 UTC Thu 28 May
  • David Flanders (@dfflanders): 04:00 - 10:00 UTC, Thu 28 May
  • Leslie Carr (@lescarr): 10:00 - 16:00 UTC, Thu 28 May
  • Bill Mills (@billdoesphysics): 16:00 - 22:00 UTC, Thu 28 May

The only pause in the conversation will be from 10-11am AEST for the Mozilla Science Lab Australasia Community Call, which we figured would be of interest to ResBazadors in Australia and New Zealand. The major topic of conversation will be the ResBaz cookbook, which will eventually contain all sorts of information and advice for ResBazadors. We’ll be hacking on the cookbook during mozsprint, so if you’re participating in that event we’d love your assistance!