I read in this call for papers for some symposium:
Paper Submission: Saturday, 2nd June 2012 anywhere on inhabited Earth (disregarding Baker and Howland Islands)
What's the timezone for anywhere on inhabited Earth? UTC-11:00 all year long?
asked Sep 22 at 14:11
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2Great. Now someone is going to travel to Baker Island with a laptop and satellite internet link, submit a manuscript at 23:01 local time, and raise a stink when it's rejected :)– Nate EldredgeSep 23 at 16:10
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2Please avoid posting answers (particularly wrong answers) in comments. This is a good example of a question where short answers are perfectly acceptable.– cag51 ♦Sep 25 at 14:28
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3 Answers
UTC-11:00 is indeed the most natural interpretation. Anywhere on Earth normally means UTC-12:00, but since that time zone is entirely uninhabited it leaves UTC-11:00 as the last inhabited timezone.
There may be technical reasons for conference management software to use UTC-11 as the cutoff instead of UTC-12, see e.g. here.
The point is just that wherever you are in the world, if you do it by Saturday 2nd June 2012, it will be OK.
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Interestingly, this convention has its own Wikipedia page. It states:
Anywhere on Earth (AoE) is a calendar designation that indicates that a period expires when the date passes everywhere on Earth. It is a practice to help specify easy to understand deadlines...without requiring timezone calculations.... For any given date, the latest place on Earth where it would be valid, is on Howland and Baker Islands, in the IDLW time zone (the Western Hemisphere side of the International Date Line). Therefore, the day ends AoE when it ends on Howland Island.
Curiously, your instructions state to disregard Baker and Howland Islands, so your deadline is technically an hour before Anywhere-on-Earth time. Still, the intention is clear: "by the end of the day on 2 June 2012, for any reasonable definition of 2 June 2012."
