It is easy to forget about time and get stuck too long in for example addressing a question from your audience. The result is that you may not be able to get to all the other important topics of your presentation or using the time of the other presenters, which may upset them. The opposite may also happen. You probably recognize the situation where another presenter before you took more time then was agreed and now you have less time available for your presentation. Will you skip part of your presentation or try to squeeze all content in a shorter timeframe?
The best you can do is to avoid this situation from happening at the first place. The book Public Speaking Excellence (part of the Public Speaking Kit) includes a lot of tips and trick about what to do in case you need to present together with others. Getting the timing right is an important aspect. We have seen the excellent presentation clicker with a timer, but there is one extra thing that you can do to better enforce the correct use of time.
Having someone in the audience (sitting on the first row) to keep track of time and showing different colour cards depending on how much time is left is one basic option, but there are better, more technically advanced options. You can for example use a screen with a countdown timer that is visible for the presenters. The screen with the countdown timer can be placed on the floor in front of the audience and / or at the back above the heads of your audience. The countdown timer will count down till the end of each presentation. The colour of the numbers / screen may change. For example, the numbers start flashing in red as there is one minute left. When time is up a message with “Time’s up!” will start flashing on the screen. By means of this, it is easy for each of the presenters to keep track. You can use a tablet as screen and with a specific app you can have the timer on the screen of one or more tablets.
There is an app that allows you to pair the tablet with your smart phone and you can then control the countdown timer on the screen of the tablet(s). Start or stop the timer, pause the timer or provide some extra time is all possible by using the app. There are different apps available for this. Some even offer the option to show a message on the screen that can be send from the phone. By means of this you can include some quick messages for the presenter that may be helpful for him/her during their presentation. Contact us, if you would like a recommendation for a specific app to use:
Note that we are not in the business of selling apps. We are not affiliated to the producer of the app that we recommend. The recommendation is purely based on our own experience in terms of what works and doesn’t work when using different apps during presentations.
