For many live meetings, a speaker timer, a countdown clock presenters on stage see to know how much longer they have in their allotted time, is very valuable. There are speaker timer units that use proprietary control unit and display, software to run on a computer and display on a monitor (my favorite is “SpeakerTimer Pro” by the company that developed the Playback Pro system – it has the “Timewarp” feature to smoothly adjust the timer to be what you need, not what a real clock would say) and I also have a countdown slide deck (120 slides set to auto advance every 60 seconds).
But having a full computer inline for such a simple task is overkill. Here is a recent show where I loaded up my countdown presentation into Keynote on the iPad, connected the iPad to the monitor and saved a lot of desk space (and lightened my tech case by not needing to pack a computer for the task).
– Troy @ TLC