A timer for lectures and training days

In a lecture or a training day you are both the person speaking and the person watching the clock — and you cannot do both well. OnCue Stage puts a large timer in front of you that runs on its own, so you can watch the room instead of the time.

What goes wrong in lectures

Overrunning is almost never a preparation problem. It is that when the material is going well, you cannot feel how much time has passed.

• You check the clock on your phone, and the whole room sees the lecturer checking a phone.
• You discover thirty slides are left with fifteen minutes to go — so you rush, and that was the important part.
• In a full-day training the breaks drift, and everyone loses track of when the next one is.
• In a group exercise every table finishes at a different moment, because they have nothing shared to look at.
• When someone else has to signal that you are out of time, they signal — and the whole class turns to look at them.

How it works in a lecture

A screen only you are looking at

A tablet on the table in front of you or in the front row. You see exactly how long is left; the participants see you speaking.

Colour instead of a number

After a few minutes you stop reading the number at all and respond to the colour. Amber — start closing. Orange — go to your last slide. Red — you are done.

A shared timer for exercises

For a group exercise, turn the screen to face the room. Seven minutes everyone can see ends the discussion without you walking between tables chasing people.

No operator needed when you are alone

Schedule the time the timer starts, stand up and begin talking. There is no need for a second person to press play for you.

In a long training day

Past the one-hour mark the screen switches to a clean display with no seconds, and a countdown to the break shows the whole room how long until everyone is back.

Before the participants come in

Under five minutes, and the same setup repeats for every session.

Decide where your eyes go

If you stand — a tablet in the front row at chest height. If you sit — on the table next to your laptop. The only place that doesn't work is behind you.

Set the length, not the finish time

When the session starts seven minutes late, a timer that only knows the length stays correct. And if you need to, you can nudge it a minute either way while it runs.

Make the numbers bigger

Three sizes, up to full screen. Take the largest one you are comfortable with — the point is not to squint mid-sentence.

Decide in advance what amber means

Knowing five minutes are left only helps if you already know which slide is the closing one. Mark it before you go on.

You can try it in your next session

A tablet or an old phone becomes the stage screen — open the site, type a code, and you are paired. The timer and messages are free; the controlling side runs in the phone app.