Organising an event

L’heure de convocation is the time the crew and the speakers have to be on site, and the noun in the middle of it is a false friend of the quietest kind. In English a « convocation » is a gathering: the ceremonial assembly of a university or of the clergy, hundreds of people in one hall, a word most speakers meet twice in a lifetime. A French convocation is the opposite in scale. It is the paper, or the message, that tells one named person to be somewhere at a stated time — sent by a court, an employer, an examining board, a hospital or, here, a production office. Recevoir une convocation is to be called in; être convoqué à neuf heures is to be told to report at nine; convoquer un salarié is to summon an employee to a meeting he cannot decline. Only the verb overlaps, and only in one of its uses: convoquer une réunion is indeed to convene one. So read the noun as « call time » on a schedule and as « summons » everywhere else, and never as a ceremony. Nobody is honoured by une convocation; somebody is expected.